Early twentieth-century advertising moved from persuasion to brand loyalty and conversion

Evidence

MacManus’s alternative was an advertising of iconography. He built up his brands to be trusted, even revered. He sought not so much to persuade customers but to convert them; to create a lasting loyalty. In his hands, the Cadillac meant something, and its drivers were meant to identify with their vehicles. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 204

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s attention-economy historical arc: MacManus’s iconography advertising is an early form of the attention-based brand loyalty that platform merchants later industrialized. — connects to: Post-war advertising shifted from selling products to manufacturing and commodifying desire. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 119; Early newspaper advertising grew out of informational classified notices that newspapers treated as news.; Early advertising borrowed the Bible’s structure for promising cures to the despairing — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 92 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves #corroborates (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213
• Mass-scale attention harvesting began with advertising in the 1890s-1920s #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24