The Depression left consumers without money to respond to advertising pitches

Evidence

In Depression-era America, advertising’s pitches were falling on deaf ears, or at least, on the ears of people now lacking the means to buy all those items great and sundry on which they had frittered away so much money just a few years before. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 282

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Great Depression halved US advertising spending to a third of its pre-crash level — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1276; Advertising could sell solutions to problems consumers did not know they had — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 189; The Depression-driven advertising crisis forced commerce into the home as a new attention source. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 286 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Advertising could sell solutions to problems consumers did not know they had #qualifies (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 189
• The Depression-driven advertising crisis forced commerce into the home as a new attention source. #expands (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 286
• Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves #complicates (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213
• World War II resolved the Depression-era demand problem and launched American Fordist expansion #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 37