Salvatore Yankee Advertising in Buenos Aires

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YANKEE ADVERTISING IN BUENOS AIRES

Ricardo D. Salvatore a
a
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina
Online Publication Date: 01 July 2005
To cite this Article Salvatore, Ricardo D.(2005)'YANKEE ADVERTISING IN BUENOS AIRES',Interventions,7:2,216 — 235
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YA N K E E A D V E R T I S I N G I N B U E N O S A I R E S
Reflections on Americanization
Downloaded By: [European University Institute] At: 14:19 29 August 2009
Ricardo D. Salvatore
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina
................
consumer In an effort to assess the question of Americanization in a South-American
culture modern context, this article examines the activities of American advertising
company J. Walter Thompson in Buenos Aires (1928 /1935). This appears as an
Americanization instance of the early exportation of American advertising know-how to South
America and also of the production of new knowledge about the region’s
advertising
consumer markets. Although advertising men carried to Buenos Aires the
postcolonial assumption that consumer wants were universal, with time they learned to use
encounter ‘national culture’ (which they encountered already emblematized in the figure of
the ‘gaucho’) in order to promote modern products and make international firms
Buenos Aires more acceptable to locals. ‘Gaucho’ stories served to promote foreign meat-
business packing firms, cattle-ranching ‘estancias’ helped to sell American cars, and the
narratives prestige of British punctuality was suddenly used in connection with ‘national’
................traditions. Yankee advertising men used modern consumer surveys in order to
measure consumer preferences. By doing this, they entered into intimate
question-and-answer games with local consumers. Their market studies divided
the population according to income level and preferences: only the wealthy
Littoral provinces and its upper-income groups would be target of American
advertising. The company also carried out a study (presumably for the American
State Department) aimed at measuring the degree of anti-Americanism in the
Argentine press. The study pointed out that even conservative newspapers
......................................................................................
interventions Vol. 7(2) 216 /235 (ISSN 1369-801X print/1469-929X online)
Copyright # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080/13698010500146773
YANKEE ADVERTISIN G IN BUENOS AIRES
........................
217
carried some dose of anti-American rhetoric. Yankee advertising men came to

examine the peculiarities of the Argentine market, ‘discovered’ minor or
superficial differences in Argentine consumer preferences, and hence concluded
that their earlier assumptions were valid: consumer wants were universal. Only
in persuading local or national consumers did the use of local traditions and
values provide additional value. In the new periphery of consumer desire,
American advertisers learned that it was possible to present the ‘foreign’ as the
‘national’, suspending or minimizing the criticism of foreign firms and the
growing hegemony of American technology and material culture.
1 Ever since Hoggart Conceptions of ‘Americanization’ are manyfold.1 The term refers to the
(1957), the word
diffusion of ‘American’ values, consumer preferences and way of life across
‘Americanization’
has been associated different nations. It is also associated with the promotion of a particular
with the ideal of democratic government and of a capitalist free enterprise economy.
commercialization, And, at least since the Second World War, the concept evokes a global
standarization and
banalization of scientific and technological hegemony of the United States over the rest of
popular culture due the world (González Casanova 1999). Many scholars have criticized the
to the pervasive apparent homogeneity and occlusion of difference this concept implies,
influence of cultural
industries. In the
suggesting that what appears as ‘American culture’ overseas is already a
European intellectual hybrid. In this article, I want to contribute to this criticism by arguing that
terrain, the diffusion of American consumer culture in Argentina entailed an
‘Americanization’
appropriation of national symbols and, consequently, a masking of the
stood as a threat of
homogeneization ‘Americanness’ of foreign capital and technology. Like all other enterprises
facing traditional, associated with the construction of an informal empire, the process of
popular, ‘Americanizing’ Argentine consumer preferences involved an enterprise of
working-class
cultures. Those who discovery of ‘national culture’.
argue against the use As I have argued elsewhere (Salvatore 2001), the American informal
of this concept empire expanded its hegemony in South America through a vast repertoire of
emphasize the hybrid
nature of cultural
persuasion based upon new representational technologies. Transferring
mass products (see American technologies of consumer desire (window displays, billboards,
Cresswell and newspaper advertising, product packaging, mail-order catalogs, illustrated
Hoskin 1999).
magazines, radio programs, etc.) was crucial to the enterprise of ‘conquering’
South American markets (the new visual technologies for enticing consumers
are analyzed in Leach 1993). More importantly, the mechanics of
commercial penetration required an expansion of American knowledge
about the region. Scientists, travelers, amateur photographers and business-
men contributed to this enterprise, generating new information about these
‘emerging markets’. Native cultures, nationalism, consumer preferences,
social distinctions, race and religiosity became objects of investigation just as
American capital tried around the time of the First World War to open up
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 2 218
.........................
markets which, until then, had remained under the influence of European
firms.
The expansion of American capitalism involved a vast project of cultural
transformation. From the beginning of the twentieth century, American
companies selling or producing in Latin America took up the mission of
transforming the habits and manners of Latin Americans. American
productive enclaves (copper, bananas, oil) transplanted into the region
self-contained worlds (company-towns) within which they deployed their
‘civilizing mission’. Managers tried to instill American notions of punctu-
ality, hygiene, spatial organization and hierarchy to native workers (O’ Brien
1999). Outside of enclaves, the relationship established between the
American center and the South American periphery revolved around

2 Argentine farmers consumption.2 In the 1920s, the transformation in the nature of American
importing
International
overseas investment and products / the growing importance of automobiles,
Harvester or John electric appliances, typewriters, news, movies and so on / expanded the
Deere machinery, contours of the ‘mission’ envisioned by American companies and marketing
lower-class residents
experts. The question emerged, then, as to whether the mass-consumer
of Buenos Aires
consuming Standar culture that Americans had seen adumbrate in the 1920s could take root in
Oil kerosene, and the Latin America. Hence, knowing the consumer and his or her national culture
growing fascination became an imperative of market development in the region.
of the Argentine
middle classes with The objective of this article is to examine the activities of an American
RCA radios and advertising company in Buenos Aires (the J. Walter Thompson Co., or JWT)
Hollywood movies at the moment of its arrival (1928/1935) in order to reflect upon the
should warn us about
the importance of
problem of the neo-colonial encounter. More specifically, I want to pose the
consumption in the question of ‘Americanization’ (the transmission of American values, tastes
construction of and ways of life to other societies) in the context of American marketing
American cultural
hegemony in the
strategies and the emergence of anti-American sentiments in Argentina. A
region. question of particular importance is the degree to which certain new
technologies of observation associated with the business of advertising
(consumer research) produced additional knowledge about Argentine society
and culture that permitted a better exploitation of commercial opportunities.
A second relevant issue refers to the relationship between commodity
internationalism and cultural nationalism. In the context of an informal
empire, the mission of advertising extended beyond the traditional one of
creating new markets for mass-produced goods. It had to provide innovative
solutions to the problem of cultural nationalism, an important obstacle to
the diffusion of American (commodity) culture overseas.
Advertising in the age of the automobile
The period and the company chosen / J. Walter Thompson Co. from 1926
to 1935 / capture a particular moment in the history of American capitalism
........................
219
3 The board and advertising. JWT went international (c.1926/1928) at the moment in
approved President
Stanley Resor’s plan
which General Motors (GM), the leading producer of automobiles in the
to open offices in United States, was trying to capture overseas markets for its products.3 A
foreign countries in momentary edge over its closest competitor (the Ford Motors Co.) gave GM
September 1926. The
the push it needed to launch an overseas offensive. The strategic global
decision was tied to
General Motors alliance between GM and JWT produced mutual reinforcement and
granting JWT the stimulation, and a great deal of new knowledge. The creative experience
exclusive handling of of selling cars in quite different cultures served as a testing ground for
market development
outside of the United existing theories of consumer behavior, marketing and advertising.
States (Pierce 1991: As a partner in the enterprise, JWT participated in this key experiment in
37). the exportation of American consumer culture.4 At this time, advertising had
4 JWT’s overseas become a professional business, run by large firms with a corporate
expansion
(1927 /1929)
organization. To sell cars, GM needed to know its customers. This required
coincides with a the development of consumer research in countries, a specialization the
major upswing of the company could not afford in every new market.5 Thus, they put JWT in
world economy.
charge of all consumer surveys concerning GM cars and trucks overseas. To
Quite surprisingly,
the company cover market development in South America, JWT opened offices in Sao
continued to expand Paulo and Buenos Aires. The overseas expansion of JWT (in 1929, the
during the worst company had 15 branches worldwide) coincided also with growing
years of the Great
Depression protectionism in peripheral countries. To overcome this protectionism,
(1930 /1933), chiefly some American companies (Palmolive, RCA Victor, Goodyear) started to
because of the need build assembly plants in the region, while the rest extended its distribution
to open new markets
overseas for
and marketing systems (Frigidaire, GM, Kolynos, Kodak).6
mass-produced International advertising companies such as JWT carried with them a
goods to compensate universalist conception about consumer wants and about marketing
the loss of domestic
strategies.7 Concerning questions of taste and consumer demand, they
markets.
assumed that a basically similar ‘human nature’ governed the desires of
5 While consumer
research had started most consumers around the world and that, consequently, the advertising
earlier (in the first designs and techniques proven successful in central economies could be
decade of the applied with benefit overseas.8 Selling cars overseas was considered a
century), stimulated
by the expansion of practical application of this general principle. Whether in Chicago,
the printed media, Copenhagen or Buenos Aires, people could be enticed to buy cars by
the automobile promoting certain ‘appeals’: power, speed, mechanical perfection, youth,
accelerated the
diffusion of this distinction and so on. A few principles of modern advertising / personality
research technique advice, modernist designs, and the reduction of a car’s appeal to ‘a single
(Lears 1994: 211). line, idea, or slogan’ / governed the idea of selling an automobile.
6 ‘Henry Flower in Executives at the London and New York offices were concerned with
South America’,
transferring the right image-ideas about GM cars to the Buenos Aires
Representatives’
Meeting, New York, branch. The key principles of marketing cars developed in the United States
20 August 1929, J. and Europe were to be directly transferred to Buenos Aires with minimal
Walter Thompson modifications. Copies of layouts developed in Europe for the marketing of
Co. Archives, Duke
University, Durham, GM cars were sent to Buenos Aires with the expectation that the new office
NC. would maintain key associations between advertising images and car models.
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 2 220
.........................
7 As Lears (1994: This was considered simply a problem of appropriate translation. Each car
212) explains, the
language of
line had to be associated with a particular idea and targeted to a certain type
professional of consumer. Each model, in turn, had to be endorsed by a special
advertising was a personality. For example, ‘sportsmen, aristocrats and race drivers’ should
‘vast apparatus for
disproving and
tell of their driving experiences to potential purchasers of Cadillacs and
verifying universalist Buicks. To advertise the Oakland model, young, sporting people would
truth-claims’. contribute ‘mass testimonials’ about the car’s appearance. Similarly, ‘simple,
Though at the level
of performance,
sincere mechanics’ would help to endorse the Oldsmobile, a cheaper but
ad-makers were reliable automobile.
never able to cast In a sense, the development of overseas markets entailed sustained
aside their
carnivalesque
performances and a lot of visual trickery. As Jackson Lears (1994: 212)
tradition based upon reminds us, despite the professionalization of advertising in the twentieth
persuasion, century, the trade was never able to abandon its Barnumesque inheritance.
theatricality and
trickery. Copywriters’ endorsement of scientific modes of persuasion (particularly in
medicinal and hygienic products) co-existed with an increasing emphasis in
8 On a conversation
on the deck of a ship
the possibility of constructing reality. The emphasis of car advertisements
bound to Buenos upon ‘atmosphere’, ‘style’ and the ‘seductive joys’ of speed and power was a
Aires, Henry Flower clear example of this. Creating mental attitudes (the engineering of desire)
(the head of the
delegation and often betrayed the objectivist pretensions of managerial professionalism. In a
vice-president of similar fashion, the development of overseas markets entailed the adaptation
JWT) said: ‘Can’t we of advertisers’ universalistic perceptions to local circumstances. As John B.
assume . . . that
human beings all Watson (the leading behavioral psychologist at JWT) expressed it: ‘[T]he
over the world have most important of all [principles], the product must be merchandised with a
the same wants and sympathetic understanding of the customs and habits, requirements and
needs, but that these
may be influenced by sentiments of the people to whom the product is to be sold’ (quoted in Pierce
poverty, ignorance, 1991: 65). This principle expanded the mission of advertisers to the terrain
religious beliefs or of knowledge and culture. For their overseas advertising campaigns to be
cultural heritage?’
(Pierce 1991: 76). successful, they had to understand local consumers and national cultures.
Advice to overseas branches
The case of JWT provides interesting insights into the question of the
transmission of information (messages, images and management strategies)
within a multinational corporation. The knowledge gathered at other centers
of operation of JWT (London and New York) was rapidly synthesized and
transmitted to the Buenos Aires office in the form of business advice. This
advice included pointers about how to contact new clients; how to organize
the art department; where to find skillful local artists; how to develop a
system of market information; how to conduct personal interviews with
housewives, store managers, retailers and other key informants; how to
conduct investigations through the printed press; and how to classify
........................
221
consumers into income groups. In each of these topics, special questionnaires

and guidelines were provided for the GM account.
Whereas much of the advice about organization and procedures came
from New York, recommendations about advertising cars came from the
experience collected by the European branches of JWT. The circulation of
practical knowledge involved in this ‘advice to overseas branches’ acquired a
truly global or international dimension. In fact, the company’s claim to a
special place in the international marketplace was based on its global
experience. Local managers were instructed to explain to prospective clients
the Company’s three major strengths: its commitment to research, its close
cooperation with clients at every step of marketing process and its strategy of
combining ‘on the ground’ specialists with experience gained internationally.

JWT’s competitive edge was predicated on being the first advertising
company to accompany the overseas development of American corporations.
Setting up business in Buenos Aires
In January 1929, three Americans / Henry Flower, Russell Pierce and

Arthur Farlow / landed in Buenos Aires to set up JWT’s first South
9 A decade earlier, American office.9 Buenos Aires was chosen for its dominant position within
advertising expert the country and its modernity vis-á-vis other South American cities. Buenos
W.A. Aughinbaugh
(1922: 122) had
Aires had wide streets, beautiful parks, a thoroughly cosmopolitan life-style
suggested the need to and every imaginable modern urban improvement (including a subway).
establish advertising More importantly, the city was the center of an impressive mass-media
firms in Buenos Aires
industry (the printed press, in particular), a crucial instrument for the success
or Rı́o de Janeiro
and, from there, to of public relations or an advertising campaign (Pierce 1991: 61). Initially, the
cover the whole goal of the agency was to find out about the attitudes and opinions of car
South American purchasers (a consumer survey ordered by GM). Soon, however, the Buenos
market.
Aires office would be in charge of translating for American companies the
consumer propensities and preferences of ‘Argentines’ with regard to a vast
array of modern goods.
Russell Pierce’s memoirs, Gringo-Gaucho: An Advertising Odyssey , gives
us some clues about the first moments of encounter between this interna-
tional firm and local society. At first, Farlow and Pierce, following the steps
suggested in a guidebook, visited the prominent (tourist) sites of Buenos
Aires: the Pink House, Plaza de Mayo, Avenida de Mayo and the Congress
building. Though predisposed to see a Spanish city, they found that Buenos
Aires’ monumental architecture, avenues, hotels and restaurants resembled
Paris. The Plaza was neither the place for ‘celebration or revolution’ nor the
romantic space for ‘prenuptial rites’ that the guidebook asserted. Fragments
of visual evidence (men in dark business suits, elegant restaurants, ‘fair
skinned’ people, tango performers, a hybrid Spanish language and warnings
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 2 222
.........................
about social unrest) pointed to a confusing reality to be de-coded (Pierce
1991: 81 /90).
Setting up business involved a series of activities that served to consolidate
or revise preconceptions about Argentina and the Argentines. Installing and
decorating the office, hiring local personnel, approaching prospective clients
10 ‘The American and cultivating connections among the press and radio were the pressing
Club was a bastion tasks of the first months. To impress customers about the international and
or fortress where
modernist credentials of the firm, JWT decorated its offices in ‘early
American men felt
secure. They could American’ and ‘Spanish colonial’ styles. Pierce and Farlow frequented the
speak in their own American Club / the meeting place of the ‘American colony’ / as a means to
language, laugh at
expand its American clientele. This closed environment, rarely penetrated by
American jokes, and
act with an Argentines, provided social connections and cultural comfort to the ad-
informality which men.10 Soon, the Pierces found their closest friends among the managers and
Argentines often CEOs of GM, Palmolive, Goodyear and Armour. This was the second
found distasteful.
The Club was surprise: in Parisian Buenos Aires, Yankee advertisers could maintain a
‘‘American’’ in wholly ‘American’ social life.
decor, patronage, The lack of well-trained art designers and copyeditors forced American
management and
cuisine’ (Pierce 1991:
managers to teach local employees (people with bilingual skills) the new
158). techniques and materials used in the United States. To make inroads among
the press, JWT placed advertisements in the major newspapers, studied their
11 The initial political leanings and selected those that seemed more ‘neutral’11 These first
precaution among
local newspaper contacts produced a minimal contact with Argentine society: American
editors against advertisers had to deal mainly with managers of American companies, a
Americans soon reduced number of press editors and English-literate local employees. The
disappeared as the
Yankee ad-men
company’s multicultural staff (employees of British, Italian, Spanish, Ger-
understood the way man, Austrian, Argentine and Paraguayan ancestry), all members of the
newspapers Argentine middle and upper classes, served as reliable ‘native informants’
distributed
(Pierce 1991: 91 /100). In their conversations with their employees, Yankee
commissions among
small-scale ad-makers could first try propositions about cultural difference (and perhaps
operators. about the possibility of translating American styles and preferences).
First impressions: Reading ‘culture’ in a hurry
12 The first of these The first impressions narrated by Pierce were optimistic about the potential
car shows was staged for American products. Following the words of earlier prospectors of
at the Cervantes American business, Pierce found that porteños fascinated with American
Theater. Painted
scenes of Buenos cars were eager to know every new model launched in the United States.
Aires served as Indeed, immediately after arrival, Pierce saw that families in their pajamas
background for the would ride taxis in the evenings for the mere pleasure of cruising in a Buick.
two Chevrolets
placed at the center
Subsequent ‘car shows’ organized with the cooperation of GM dealers
of the stage. Visitors corroborated this first impression: the luxurious Cadillac and the sober
were enticed by the Chevrolet 6 were a sensation among porteños .12
........................
223
novelty of the cars, Buenos Aires consumer culture was much more advanced than any other
but also by the
possibility of
place in South America. Though advertising was still in a ‘primitive stage’,
winning one of them. porteños had sophisticated consumer patterns and lived under the whirlwind
Each visitor was of progress. Pierce’s early impressions of Buenos Aires and its surroundings
given a key, but only
emphasize the hybridity and confusion of culture and life-styles in the city
one of them would
start the car (Pierce and its surroundings / an overlapping of modernity and backwardness that
1991: 107 /09). puzzled many contemporary observers. The most modern city of South
America / with its dangerous street traffic, modern subways, fashion stores
13 To better
perform his job,
and obsession with imitating Parisian lifestyles / was surrounded by a
Russell Pierce felt the primitive countryside populated with dark-skinned peasants with archaic
need to understand customs and beliefs. Moreover, within the city, there was room for
the basic tenets of
Argentine culture. In
‘Victorian’, ‘modernist’ and ‘primitive’ sensibilities, making the description
an era of growing of a ‘national style’ and ‘culture’ almost impossible.
nationalism, Subsequent investigations into ‘Argentine culture’ led Pierce to conclude
understanding the
that the gaucho was an adequate representative of Argentine sensibilities,
values that
configured people’s tradition and values.13 Pierce found the ‘tradition’ he was looking for in the
national identity was works of gauchesco literature and in an occasional visit to a large estancia .14
essential for His reading of gauchos as the backbone of Argentine identity and the
marketing mass-
produced and discovery that this ‘culture’ was already highly emblematized helped him
distributed define novel advertising strategies. Pierce found that local tradition could
commodities. blend productively with modern (American) consumer desires and lifestyles.
14 Pierce bought
The modern cattle-ranching estancia had become an international produc-
copies of Sarmientos’ tive space that contained ‘tradition’ within itself. The gaucho, now
The Life of Facundo , transformed into a salaried peon of an agro-industrial complex producing
Guiraldes’ Don
Segundo Sombra , del
for the world market, guarded the memories of a bygone pastoral era. If this
Campo’s Fausto and was so, modern advertising could exploit hybridity to the benefit of
Hernández’s Martıń American firms. Tradition and patriotism could become part of the
Fierro . In these texts,
marketing of modern products, desires and sensibilities. In their visit to a
he discovered the
‘true hero of the large cattle estancia , JWT admen took photographs of ‘gaucho peons’ and
Argentine people’ recorded their stories. These photographs and stories were later used in the
(Pierce 1991: 217 / advertising campaign of a meat-packing firm.15
18).
This fast reading of ‘culture’ produced important silences and exclusions.
15 The four gaucho The question of the adaptation of immigrant culture was sidestepped for the
peons (Antonio, sake of a more essentialist view of ‘national culture’. Immigrants were so
Rogerio, Francisco
and Faustino) agreed busy saving money to return to Spain or Italy that they never considered the
to be photographed possibility of buying a car. Later, the ‘dark-skinned’ inhabitants of the
after the Yankee ad- provinces disappeared from the scene, as they were found unable to
makers explained to
them that they
participate in the market for consumer durables. In fact, media studies
wanted the Argentine determined that large parts of the nation / many of the interior provinces
people to become and lower-income groups / were outside the ‘potential market’ and,
better aware of the
consequently, the opinions of these customers mattered less than those of
meat-packing
industry (Pierce middle- and high-income groups residing in the five richest provinces. The
1991: 246 /47). nation, still a fiction, was united symbolically around the figure of the
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 2 224
.........................
gaucho . Yankee advertisers were not about to challenge that pragmatic
solution.
Knowing Argentine consumers
16 The survey about Perhaps the most enduring and intrusive intervention of JWT in Argentina
drug products were the consumer surveys commissioned by various foreign and national
included interviews
with 33 druggists in firms. Besides the extensive surveys among car and truck owners and dealers,
different sections of JWT studied consumer preferences for, among other things, cigarettes, tires,
the capital, center cameras, electric refrigerators, banking services, facial creams, toothpaste,
and suburbs (‘Drug
Investigation. toilet paper, chocolate bars, processed meat, jam and baking powder. The
Argentina, June company was, without a doubt, the first surveyor of modern consumer tastes
1929’, J. Walter and sensibilities in Argentina. The surveys were rigorous in its sampling
Thompson Co.
Archives, Duke
techniques, choice of questions and mechanisms of control.16 They
University, Durham, combined more traditional personal interviews (with dealers and house-
NC). wives) with questionnaires distributed through the printed media. Lottery
coupons, cake recipes or promises of gifts prompted newspaper readers to fill
17 The promise of a
Chinese ashtray in the various questionnaires.17 Consumer surveys set out to discover, for
published in El specific groups of manufactured goods, ‘the thinking, buying and using
Mundo produced
habits of the actual and potential consumers’.18
3,000 filled-in-
questionnaires for Specific studies of markets for consumer goods served to rectify first
the GM survey impressions, generating new knowledge about the peculiarities of Argentine
(Pierce 1991: 104). consumers. The conclusions reached by these studies showed the rapid
18 ‘Report of
adoption by urban and middling Argentines of the consumer pattern
Recommendations’, associated with (American-style) high modernity. By 1928 /1930, upper-
Frigidaire, 1929. class Argentines were already demanding automobiles, radios, photographic
cameras, cosmetics, drugs and other technology-intense goods manufactured
in the United States. Argentina, a country with 246,000 car-owners, was a
step ahead of the rest of Latin America on the road to mass-consumer
modernity. In their imitative behavior and quest for prestige goods, the
‘Argentine consumers’ were no different from American consumers. Urban
consumers were prepared to receive a variety of products for personal
hygiene and care such as toothpaste, facial cream and powder, and toilet
paper / and the advice that came with it. Argentine consumers were modern
in another sense: they were ‘brand conscious’. Advertising was crucial in
helping to sustain preferences for specific brands (particularly in items such
as perfume, face powder and chocolate).
Newer items generated some degree of ‘resistance’. The market for electric
refrigerators was still quite thin. People were accustomed to the icebox and
saw little use for the new electric appliance. Others thought they could not
19 ‘Report of
Recommendations’, afford it.19 Hence advertisers designed a marketing strategy that had proven
Frigidaire, 1929. successful in the United States. They targeted women, enticing them with the
........................
225
idea of ‘pride in the home’ and the ‘flattering approval’ of distinguished

guests. Second, the advertisements showed the practical side of a refrig-
erator: better-tasting vegetables and meat, improved sanitation for the
family. The universality of wants was at the basis of this strategy: if
Argentine upper-class housewives had similar rationality and tastes as
North-American ones, then why not run advertisemnts similar to those
published in the Lady’s Home Journal ?
The study of preferences for cars indicated that economical operation,
appearance and speed were the three main factors determining consumer
20 ‘Survey and
choices / a set of motivations no different from those expressed by European
Analysis of the consumers.20 Urban residents preferred closed sedans to cars with collapsible
Argentine Market tops. Appearance (style, paint and interior finish) and rapid acceleration
produced by the J.
were crucial aspects for Argentine consumers. And, contrary to expectations,
Walter Thompson
Company for women’s opinions strongly influenced the decision to purchase an auto-
General Motors mobile (Pierce 1991: 104 /05). Consumer surveys also showed the modernity
Argentina’, 1929, J.
of reading habits in the country. The massive distribution of newspapers and
Walter Thompson
Co. Archives, Duke magazines facilitated the penetration of new consumer patterns. The first six
University, Durham, national newspapers (including Crı́tica , La Prensa , La Razón and La
NC. Nación y La República ) had a combined circulation of over one million
21 ‘Propaganda copies a day.21 On the question of gender, Yankee advertisers discovered
Study-Argentina some local curiosities: porteño men constituted 20 to 30 per cent of the
1930’, J. Walter
demand for perfume.22
Thompson Co.
Archives, Duke Despite these modern traits, there was still ample room for improvement.
University, Durham, A significant proportion of these potential markets were reluctant to change
NC. their lifestyles: many still smoked cigars instead of cigarettes, used ice boxes
22 ‘Drug instead of electric refrigerators, and drank mate more often than coffee, tea
Investigation’, 1929. or chocolate. A special obstacle for GM truck sales was that camioneros
placed local-made bodies over their imported truck chasses. JWT analysts
found also that brand recognition and sales did not necessarily favor larger
firms. Small-scale perfumerıás were out-competing via price reductions and
more aggressive advertising the American and British giants of the drugs and
cosmetic business. Similarly, there was ample competition and easy entry
into markets for non-durable consumer goods (jams, mate, cookies,
chocolate, beer, etc.).
N e o - i m p e r i a l i n t r u s i o n s : Ve r y c l o s e e n c o u n t e r s
To find out the potential market for American cigarettes, JWT agents had to
ask a battery of questions that invaded a quite private terrain. Why did they
prefer cigars over cigarettes? How many cigars did they smoke a day? Did
they prepare their own cigars from tobacco leaves? Did they associate
smoking with a manly activity? These questions were highly intrusive of
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 2 226
.........................
people’s private interactions. Similarly, the study of the market for
refrigerators contained specific questions that must have produced embar-
rassing moments for those interrogated. Why they did not own an electric
refrigerator? To those who owned one: did they show it to impress friends?
For those who still used the old ice box: how often did they buy ice? What
23 Whereas for us items did they keep in the ice box?23 In some cases, the question-and-answer
the questions might game could proceed only if the participants shared certain basic notions of
seem ‘natural’, for
newcomers to the personal hygiene and sanitation that permitted talk in public about issues
world of consumer considered private. Contrary to expectations, Argentine consumers re-
surveys and sponded positively to medical advice printed in the media and were not
marketing, these
questions must have repelled by messages about intimate physiology.
been quite On occasions, advertising could provoke people’s active involvement in a

embarrassing and, in publicity game. This was the case when JWT invited Argentine children to
many cases,
intolerable. Consider propose a new name for Noel’s chocolate bar or when thousands of
a housewife being Argentine housewives wrote to the company asking for the cooking recipes
asked about the promised in the inside wrapping. To promote new Chevrolet models, JWT
sensations and
benefits generated by distributed jigsaw puzzles among prospective customers. Those who put the
the use of facial puzzle together and mailed it in, participated in the draw for a car. Involving
cream or facial people in games and contests, the American advertising company established
powder. Or consider
those family a close and direct connection with consumers. Like in the United States, the
members been Kodak Co. invited Argentine amateur photographers to take snapshots of
interrogated about their children and enter a competition (on the promotional games created by
the reasons why they
prefer a particular Kodak Co in the United States, see West 2000). Also, the Yankee ad-men
dentifrice paste or discovered, they could establish important affinities with local customers by
even toilet paper. appealing to their musical taste. In the mid-1930s, JWT organized radio
programs (sponsored by GM and Standard Oil) playing live jazz and
classical music (Pierce 1991: 203 /04). They proved extremely popular with
the public and got the approval of influential critics. Through their interest in
‘culture’, ad-men were disarming a powerful stereotype: that materialistic
Americans were only interested in making money.
Another type of intrusion was the attempt of Yankee ad-makers to know
all about Argentine modern gauchos . They took photographs of them,
entered their adobe houses (ranchos ), listened to their stories and drunk
mate with them. Curiously, ranch peons had an assembly of traditional
things (old pieces of cloth and riding apparel belonging to ‘their ancestors’)
to show foreign visitors (Pierce 1991: 252 /53). They were also quite willing
to share with American ad-men stories about the Indian wars, knife fights in
rural taverns (pulperıás ), and their encounters with modern technology and
foreigners. Riding in a Ford A or in Chevrolet across the pampas (after
traveling in punctual British trains), the Yankee went to the heart of the
pampas in the search of tradition. This speedy ethnography produced a series
of stereotypes that, in the world of advertising, served as a close substitute
........................
227
for ‘culture’. Rather than a potential market, the countryside was to them a
reservoir of images that condensed the Argentine past.
While preoccupied with the Americanization of sub-soil resources,
transportation and finances, nationalists did not realize that American
companies were entering a whole new terrain of persuasion / Argentine
24 Income groups homes / with significant success. Through a skillful use of the mass media
were classified with (assisted by new developments in public relations and consumer persuasion),
letters, according to
income: A (over
American advertisers were able to ‘conquer’ a new sphere of intervention.
15,000 pesos), B This sort of imperial intrusion established a conversation between American
(from 5,000 to companies and Argentine housewives about quite sensitive topics (toilet
15,000 pesos), C
paper, patent medicine, female hygiene or kitchen appliances). From this
(from 2,000 to 5,000
pesos), and (D under ‘interior’ position, Yankee advertisers could later challenge the very foreign-
2,000 pesos). ness of American companies.
Embedded exclusions
Consumer surveys, to the extent that they assumed society to be divided into
‘income groups’ (A, B, C and D) with presumably distinct tastes, engendered
certain exclusions.24 Some of these surveys were exclusively addressed to
high-income groups. The market study for electric refrigerators, for instance,
made explicit that the two lower-income groups (C and D) were not
25 ‘At the present
time, considering the considered part of the market / at least for the foreseeable future.25 Skilled
cost of the products workers, taxi drivers, train and tram conductors, clerks, small farmers and
conjointly with the
federal employees / not to mention servants and peons / were nowhere near
habits and ways of
thinking of the the possibility of owning a refrigerator. Only groups A and B (estimated to
people, it seems constitute 24 per cent of the population) were conceived as the ‘potential
logical to eliminate market’. Not surprisingly, these income groups coincided with car-owners,
as a possible market,
the C and D groups ’ the main bearers of American modernity.26
(‘Report of In cases of cheap consumer goods such as chocolate bars, baking powder
Recommendations’, or toothpaste, the potential market was more inclusive. Researchers assumed
Frigidaire, Buenos
Aires, 1929. J.
that almost all income groups (all those with basic literacy) could become
Walter Thompson purchasers of these products. However, this was not the case for the
Co. Archives, Duke products that represented the latest in American consumer culture: the
University, Durham,
automobile, the radio, the refrigerator, the phonograph, the typewriter and
NC).
the photographic camera. For these products, advertising men had as targets
26 In order to the middling and upper groups in Argentine society.
estimate the spatial
In the same fashion, consumer surveys had to assume that the boundaries
dispersion of the
potential market for of the ‘national market’ were given in practice by the reach of the mass
refrigerators, JWT media. In this way, only 35 to 37 per cent of the families / those who
ad-men used purchased and read newspapers and magazines in 1929 /1930 / were
statistics on car
ownership as a included as potential purchasers of mass-produced goods. And, because of
proxy. the low cost-effectiveness of provincial papers, the actual ‘national market’
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 2 228
.........................
27 A notable rarely included the poor part of the Argentine territory. Most provinces
exception to this rule
was the study of anti-
outside of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Rios and Mendoza were
American public left for future market development. The business of advertising mass
opinion in the products was circumscribed in practice to the five wealthiest provinces of
interior provinces.
On the ‘oil question’,
the nation, to those that were already well advanced on the path to
for instance, market modernization. Thus, the transformation of consumer preferences was
analysts examined imagined for only a part of the Argentine nation: its wealthy provinces
newspapers from
Jujuy, Santiago del and its upper-income groups. The Northwest, the Northeast and Patagonia
Estero and Salta to were simply not part of the picture of mass consumer modernity.27
Gauging nationalist sentiments
gauge the level of In addition to studying consumer preferences and attitudes, the JWT office in
anti-American Buenos Aires assumed the responsibility of gauging the degree of anti-
sentiments.
American feeling in Argentina. In a systematic study of major magazines and
newspapers (61 in all) undertaken in 1929 to 1930, researchers discovered
that an intense and widespread reaction against American foreign policies
28 ‘Propaganda
prevail in the Argentine press.28 Of 194 newspaper articles published in
Study-Argentina
1930’, J. Walter January 1928, 123 (63 per cent) were considered ‘hostile’ to the United
Thompson Co. States. Even newspapers considered politically neutral and addressed to
Archives, Duke
middle-class readers printed news that were detrimental to American
University, Durham,
NC. prestige and credibility. The study found that hostility was generalized
when articles addressed particular issues: the American intervention in
Nicaragua, the disputes about land and subsoil rights in Mexico, the recent
protectionist tariff in the United States, the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, and the
Standard Oil dispute with the government of Salta. Argentine nationalism
grew strongest whenever the ‘oil question’ was raised. Against the preten-
sions of Standard Oil, the national company (YPF) found defenders among a
vast array of textual producers.
At the same time, the study showed that consumer attitudes / in
particular, the fascination of upper-class Argentines with American con-
sumer culture / were not affected by this political type of anti-Americanism.
Indeed, the Argentine media showed a great deal of admiration and curiosity
for American technology and popular culture. American aviation pioneers,
movie stars, practical innovators, achieving women and millionaires received
good ratings across the board. The media study also showed that Argentine
newspapers were divided into two: some of them were radical (hence, they
attacked the United States on an ideological basis); and the rest were
‘bourgeois’. Whether liberal, nationalist or conservative, the latter agreed
upon the basic principles and values that sustained American capitalism. If
this was so, these ‘bourgeois’ media (which controlled the majority of the
........................
229
publications) could be used to disseminate messages favorable to American

companies and products.
In addition to measuring anti-American sentiments, the study laid the
foundations for JWT’s future market development. By analyzing the style,
content and impact of each magazine and newspaper, JWT was able to
advise its customers about the best media available for each particular
advertising campaign. Having found the great divide that separated
consumer culture from political culture, American advertisers could also
find the ways of using the Argentine admiration for American technology
and culture as a means of dismantling or minimizing anti-Imperialist
sentiments. As American advertisers soon discovered, ‘the national’ was a
good location from which to operate this important reconfiguration of

meanings.
Yankee advertisers learned that the ‘national’ was a malleable good.
Nationalism was a force much stronger than JWT had anticipated. Argentine
children responded to advertising references and names that spoke of the
country’s history, but were totally oblivious to the history and customs of
other Latin American countries. In fact, the attempt to associate a milk
chocolate drink with ‘the royal beverage of Aztec kings’ proved a royal
failure (Pierce 1991: 129 /30). This was the other side of nationalism: the
negation of any commonality of culture among Latin Americans.
Nationalizing American business activities
For a limited group of products, Pierce recommended that patriotism and

tradition be effectively re-appropriated for the selling of mass consumer
goods. Several of the institutional advertising campaigns in which JWT was
involved in Buenos Aires reveal this novel approach to marketing. In a
context laden with nationalist sentiments, foreign companies in the areas of
oil, meat-packing or railroads could become a ‘national asset’ and its
activities part of the ‘national’ enterprise of economic progress with the aid
of an intelligent advertising campaign. Personality and patriotism proved
very productive in improving the public image of foreign-owned companies
in Argentina. Advertising campaigns for WICO (the Standard Oil subsidi-
ary), Swift and Co (one of the major meat-packers within the American meat
trust) and the Central Argentine Railway (a British-owned company)
presented the technological modernity of foreign enterprise as a contribution
to the aspirations and traditions of Argentine people.
How could one make Argentines think of the Standard Oil Co. as their
own? This was the type of challenge JWT admen faced. In addition to the
quality gasoline produced by Shell, Standard Oil had to compete with YPF,
which advertised its product as ‘Argentine gasoline’. In 1934, JWT and
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 7: 2 230
.........................
/
Standard Oil representatives launched a press campaign that changed the

strategy from selling the product to selling the company. If people were
purchasing gasoline out of patriotism, then it was time to present the
Standard Oil Co. as ‘Argentine’. So, they hired Juan J. Soiza-Reilly, an
Argentine journalist and writer, to present realistic portraits of the
contributions of Standard Oil to Argentine progress. Soiza-Reilly went to
Tartagal (in Northwest Argentina, where Standard Oil had its most
important drilling operation) and reported about ‘progress’ (Pierce 1991:
164 /85).
He told how the company had cleared away the bristling shrubs, drained the
swamps, explored for water as well as for petroleum, built over 100 miles of gravel
road, provided modern sanitation, cleaned up dirt, torn down rotting structures,
sprayed pests, constructed clean modern houses with plumbing, built a school and
commissary, and crowned the modernized community with a 50-bed hospital.
(Pierce 1991: 182)
Rather than siphoning off natural resources from Argentine soil, Standard
Oil was bringing economic progress, health, security and education to this
remote corner of the country. Disseminated through full-page advertisements
in major newspapers, these reports help readers associate Standard Oil with
the ‘national’. If the oil was drilled by Argentine workers and the company’s
investments benefited the Argentine community, then the oil extracted was
‘Argentine’. Due to the success of this campaign (sales increased 35 per cent),
JWT contracted Soiza-Reilly to do radio speeches on a weekly basis. After
telling amusing local stories, the journalist reminded listeners that Standard
Oil gasoline and lubricants were ‘Argentine’.
The advertisements emphasized the progress brought about by American
companies to Argentina in terms of technology, modern industrial relations
and workers’ welfare benefits. In addition, they presented local operations of
American firms as part of the ‘Argentine’ enterprise of progress. In fact,
images and stories of gauchos proved crucial in establishing the continuity
between the past and the present, between tradition and modernity, between
purely national (and archaic) production and ‘national’ production aided by
foreign technology and capital. The campaign JWT run for Swift and Co (the
meat-packers from Chicago) in the mid-1930s was based on the appeal of
gaucho imagery. The ‘delicious beef tenderloin’ enjoyed by world consumers
was a one of Argentina’s greatest national resources, rooted in gaucho
traditions. The campaign presented meat-packing technology as the modern
(fresh and sanitary) way of producing beef, the ultimate step of a long-run
evolution that started back in the colonial era with gauchos chasing wild
cattle (the so-called ‘vaquerı́as ’) (Pierce 1991: 232 /57). The history of
gauchos, recounted by a descendant of the rancher elite (now on JWT’s
........................
231
29 In 1930, Swift La payroll), became instrumental in the process of ‘nationalizing’ the image of
Plata launched a new the Chicago-based firm.29
inexpensive soap
When JWT took the account of the Great Central Argentine Railroad, it
called ‘El Gaucho’.
tried to connect current national progress with the vision of a great national
leaders (Bartolomé Mitre, Vélez Sársfield), hiding the foreign condition of
the British-owned company. The advertising campaign emphasized the
30 ‘Plan of punctuality of service, the company’s continued investment in the country,
Institutional in spite of the economic crisis, and the fact that the trains were run by
Advertising, Great Argentine personnel.30 Clock-like punctuality (associated in the popular
Central Argentine
Railroad, November mentality with British railroads) was now part of local modernity.
1932. J. Walter Argentines had to feel proud of this service, simply because it was the
Thompson Co. most accurate and the fastest train service in South America. Nowhere in the
Archives, Duke
University, Durham,
copy was it alluded to that the train was ever owned or managed by a British
NC. company.
Reflections upon ‘Americanization’
In an internationalizing company such as JWT, the transmission of

information, experience and know-how was already a ‘global’ process.
Even if we consider the modern automobile and its surrounding culture as an
‘American’ creation, the know-how of promoting and selling cars trans-
mitted to the Buenos Aires office of JWT combined elements of the American
and the European experience. The designs of advertising campaigns staged at
Buenos Aires contained practical truths developed in the encounter with car-
purchasers in Kansas, Chicago, Copenhagen or London. Perhaps, what was
truly ‘American’ was the ‘consumer engineering technology’ developed in the
1920s in the United States. Advertising was one of its key ingredients. New
forms of consumer research and new developments in the art of consumer
persuasion seemed to have reached Buenos Aires earlier than at any other
point of the American informal empire. This validated pre-existing notions
(construed by travelers, journalists, promoters of Pan-Americanism, religious
observers and others) that Buenos Aires was a cosmopolitan city, populated
by European immigrants, and enjoying the benefits of a late-nineteenth-
century European modernity. In a sense, it was not part of ‘Latin America’, a
space associated with Indian and mestizo populations, the heritage of
Spanish colonialism and Catholic popular religiosity. Yankee advertisers
came to discover how this modern city and its hinterland would respond to
the challenge of absorbing American modernity.
The American informal empire deployed its new technologies of persua-
sion (modern advertising, in particular) to develop more ample markets for
its manufactures in Argentina. Whether these new commercial technologies
produced an approximation of Argentine consumers to attitudes and values
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 7: 2 232
.........................
/
prevailing in the United States demands further examination. Porteño

middle- and upper-class consumers were already informed (some of them
fascinated with) about American popular culture and technology before the
arrival of JWT. What market surveys and media studies ‘discovered’ was the
modernity of the consumer preferences and attitudes of a cluster of
Argentine society (the upper 25 per cent). The potential expansion of this
market depended on the validity of the assumptions of advertisers: the
universality of wants, the imitative behavior among social classes and the
efficacy of certain advertising techniques (personality advice, institutional
advertising, coupon surveys) across cultures. To an extent, JWT was
extending to Argentina not just a set of modern techniques for creating
consumer desire, but the very theories that reassured businessmen of the
replicability of mass-consumer culture.
The tension between the universalistic view of consumer wants and the
search for the national peculiarities of Argentine consumers underscored
much of the company’s operations in Buenos Aires. While the former tended
to homogenize the Argentine consumer with other modern subjects in
Europe and the United States, the latter oriented the inquiry in the direction
of tradition and national culture. In the end, consumer research found few
and banal differences about the national consumer /‘Argentines’ drank
mate, ate quince jam, loved perfume more than dentrifices, had ice-boxes
instead of refrigerators, and preferred local-made bodies for their trucks.
These local peculiarities could not undermine the march of American-type
modernization. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Argentine upper
classes were rapidly adopting modern consumer goods and entering into an
imaginary conversation with companies (through the advertisements) about
questions of hygiene, convenience, speed, elegance and family decor. To
their vast repertoire of idioms of persuasion, JWT agents added a new one.
The great discovery was that tradition and patriotism could be successfully
geared towards the promotion of mass-consumer goods. In the communica-
tion created by advertising, American and British firms could become objects
of national pride and their products appear as the continuity of local
traditions.
This article has presented some evidence about business impressions and
market studies that go beyond a literary reading of the question of Othering
and Imperial Knowledge. Initial impressionistic views about Argentina and
Argentine emphasizing hybridity and confusion soon surrendered to the logic
of market studies and opinion polls. Russell Pierce’s book, although useful
for depicting the social world of Yankee advertisers, shows the limitations of
the attempt to represent the ‘Argentine consumer’ through a first-narrative
memoir. In this narrative, the encounter with the native consumer appears as
a series of visual and language games that, to the extent that they were
successful, increased the treasure of knowledge about ‘modern advertising’.
........................
233
Yet it was the consumer surveys that gave credibility and legitimacy to the
assessments of market potential. These more ‘scientific’ views narrowed the
focus of the inquiry, replicated questions posed to other consumers
elsewhere, and eliminated from the inquiry problematic areas such as
inequality, power, class or ethnicity. Market studies demarcated the ‘real
interior market’, leaving outside a vast proportion of the country’s
population. Perhaps more than other imperial interventions, market studies
were quite intrusive, invading the terrain of family and privacy. Significantly,
expert consumer research blended well with a fast ethnography that sought
and processed ‘the creole’ or ‘the national’. Later, in the frame of the
advertising copy, both scientific consumer research and impressionist views
on the ‘essence’ of national culture interacted to produce an engineering of

desire suited to Argentine society.
The process of ‘Americanization’ of Argentine preferences required a prior
dismantling of anti-American sentiments (a sediment left, according to
American businessmen, from years of German propaganda during the First
World War). At this point, politics and marketing overlapped. JWT experts
provided a key service to American firms. They collected intelligence about
anti-American feelings and tried to measure the implication of these
preconceptions for the development of markets for American products.
Gauging nationalist reactions through the press was an objective way of
penetrating a modern mass market. The scope of this market was defined by
the power of the mass media and by the hidden limits imposed by nationalist
reactions. As an ambassador of a modern informal empire, JWT had to
perform both functions: create consumer enthusiasm for the technologically
advanced products from ‘America’ and, at the same time, undermine the
foundations of anti-Americanism. To fulfill this mission, JWT introduced
novel forms of ‘institutional advertising’ linking national traditions to
American modernity, a strategy that proved effective in improving the
image of foreign capital in Argentina.
The attempt by JWT to nationalize the image of American (foreign)
corporations was an experiment in public relations that should warn us
about employing too narrow a conception of ‘Americanization’. If American
advertising companies found it convenient to promote patriotism and
tradition for the sake of improving the local reception of American capital,
then the concept of ‘Americanization’ should not be circumscribed to the
transmission of ‘American’ values. In fact, one could argue that the signifier
‘American’ has a greater potential to absorb or incorporate what is alien to it
than we have previously granted. More inclusive and productive would be to
think of ‘Americanization’ in terms of problem-solving packages produced at
the conjuncture of business and science. Advertisers believed that consumer
resistance to a product could be overcome with an effective promotional
campaign, but the effectiveness of the campaign was predicated on the
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 7: 2 234
.........................
/
knowledge their surveyors gathered on the field / a knowledge that was

based upon methodologies developed by experts in social research in the
United States.
In the context of growing nationalist sentiments, the expansion of
American business enterprise in South America required the production of
a hybrid: gringo-gaucho / an assertion that in the world of advertising it was
possible to present the ‘foreign’ as the ‘national’, suspending or minimizing
local criticism to the growing hegemony of American capital and products.
JWT ad-men found in Buenos Aires (city and countryside) a ‘gaucho
tradition’ already processed into a marketable idea. Browsing through
gauchesco literature, talking to local historians, visiting cattle-ranches,
Yankee advertising men were able to rescue ‘national tradition’ and place
it at the service of international capital. This was the way in which
international North American capital confronted, on the representational
terrain, the growing force of anti-imperialism. In the age of mass consump-
tion, legitimacy for the presence of North American capital and commodities
could no longer be sought in the existence of empty lands or underutilized
resources. The expansionist logic had now incorporated within itself the
claims of cultural nationalism. North American capital thus presented itself
as the natural extension of national traditions and culture.
What representations can we counterpose to these surveys and memoirs to
capture the perceptions of the national, or the subaltern? It is difficult to say.
Two decades before the arrival of JWT, a group of cultural nationalists tried
to re-build the cultural connections between Argentina and its madre patria ,
Spain. ‘Hispanismo’ was an attempt to counter the growing hegemony of the
United States, perceived as a menacing force to the political and cultural
autonomy of Latin American countries. Others viewed the American arrival
of capital (in meat-packing and banking) as a refreshing force that could
moderate the overwhelming influence exercised by British capital on
Argentine life. Still others (Arielismo) advocated a more traditional and
spiritual Latin culture in opposition to the materialist empire. Working-class
representatives saw the United States as one of the main centers of capitalism
and, hence, presented them as the ‘exploiters’ in the classical Marxist
duality. Upper-class Argentines, who considered Central American nations
as mere republiquetas , were concerned with ‘Yankee expansionism’ and
expressed this position in the various Pan-American conferences. In 1913,
they were reassured by the visit of Theodore Roosevelt that they were a
‘sister nation’ to the United States and, because of its European blood and
institutional modernity, it could monitor other smaller, child-like republics
in the continent.
Perhaps, as suggested by Mark Berger (1995), the whole project of an
informal empire in Latin America rested on the expansion of knowledge and,
ultimately, on the creation of a specialized field of study in the United States.
........................
235
What animated ultimately the project of Americanization in Argentina? The

perpetual will to know South America more intimately, more scientifically.
The determination to separate fact from prejudice and truly understand each
national culture. The set of practices and representations emanating from the
imperial center to constitute an ‘accurate’ picture of the Other is what I have
called ‘the enterprise of knowledge’ (Salvatore 1998). Doing business in
South America entailed a vast enterprise of knowledge. To understand
consumers, identify the life-styles of different social groups, disarm anti-
American pre-conceptions, connect the ‘American’ to the ‘national’,
businessmen needed the cooperation of researchers and experts. Yankee
advertising men were part of this great machinery of knowledge.
R e f e ren c e s
Aughinbaugh, W. A. (1922) Advertising for Lears, Jackson (1994) Fables of Abundance: A

Trade in Latin-America , New York: Cultural History of Advertising in America ,
Century Co. New York: Basic Books.
Berger, Mark T. (1995) Under Northern Eyes: O’Brien, Thomas (1999) The Century of US
Latin American Studies and US Hegemony in the Capitalism in Latin America , Albuquerque,
Americas, 1898 /1990 , Bloomington, IN: NM: University of New Mexico Press.
Indiana University Press. Pierce, Russell (1991) Gringo-Gaucho: An
Cresswell, Tim and Hoskin, Brian (1999) ‘The kind Advertising Odyssey , New York: Southern
of beat which is currently popular: American Cross.
popular music in Britain’, in David Slater and Salvatore, Ricardo D. (1998) ‘The enterprise of
Peter J. Taylor (eds) The American Century: knowledge: Representational machines of
Consensus and Coercion in the Projection informal empire’, in G. Joseph, C. LeGrand and R.
of American Power , Oxford: Blackwell, pp. Salvatore (eds) Close Encounters of Empire ,
273 /83. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp.
González Casanova, Pabo (1999) ‘The 69 /104.
Americanization of the world’, in David ** / / (2001) ‘Primeiras Visoes Americanas de um
Slater and Peter J. Taylor (eds) The American Mercado Hemisférico na América do Sul’, in Sonia
Century: Consensus and Coercion in the Torres (ed.) Raı́zes e Rumos. Perspectivas
Projection of American Power , Oxford: Blackwell, interdisciplinares en estudos americanos , Rı́o de
pp. 317 /37. Janeiro: Letras.
Hoggart, Richard (1957) The uses of literacy’s West, Nancy M. (2000) Kodak and the Lens of
changing patterns of English mass culture , Fair Nostalgia , Charlottesville, VA: University Press
Lawn, NJ: Essential Books. of Virginia.
Leach, William (1993) Land of Desire: Merchants,
Power and the Rise of a New American Culture ,
New York: Vintage.

Salvatore Yankee Advertising in Buenos Aires

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carried some dose of anti-American rhetoric. Yankee advertising men came to

American center and the South American periphery revolved around

Advertising in the age of the automobile

Advice to overseas branches

consumers into income groups. In each of these topics, special questionnaires

combining ‘on the ground’ specialists with experience gained internationally.

Setting up business in Buenos Aires

In January 1929, three Americans / Henry Flower, Russell Pierce and

First impressions: Reading ‘culture’ in a hurry

Knowing Argentine consumers

idea of ‘pride in the home’ and the ‘flattering approval’ of distinguished

been quite On occasions, advertising could provoke people’s active involvement in a

Gauging nationalist sentiments

publications) could be used to disseminate messages favorable to American

good location from which to operate this important reconfiguration of

Nationalizing American business activities

For a limited group of products, Pierce recommended that patriotism and

Standard Oil representatives launched a press campaign that changed the

Reflections upon ‘Americanization’

In an internationalizing company such as JWT, the transmission of

prevailing in the United States demands further examination. Porteño

on the ‘essence’ of national culture interacted to produce an engineering of

knowledge their surveyors gathered on the field / a knowledge that was

What animated ultimately the project of Americanization in Argentina? The

Aughinbaugh, W. A. (1922) Advertising for Lears, Jackson (1994) Fables of Abundance: A

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