Ad Council Case Study

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Pages: 3

I wasn’t surprised by the role special interest had on the Ad Council. However, regarding the level of influence, yes, I was a bit shocked. I'm aware that the public associates special interests with lobbying. Would it be safe to say that they are one in the same? In any case, to read how these men move in and out of said issue, peddling their agenda and influencing government officials, was fascinating. For example, the propaganda war that was the atomic energy campaign. After the Second World War, American found itself in an arms race with the world, most notably Russia. As the scientists later quibbled over the best way to galvanize the public to convince Truman to re-open talks with Russia, William Higinbotham’s letter to Theodore Repplier of the War Ad Council marked the politicization of the agency. The message that “the advertising business can render a great public service [by framing an argument where] its primary objective [is] the establishment of international controls of atomic armament…so that great peaceful potentialities of nuclear energies can be realized …and the world may enjoy an …unhampered cultural and commercial interchange between nations...” (p.70) felt a bit shady with good intention. Later in 1953, the Ad Council merged with the American …show more content…
The ‘pork’ argument attached to legislation points to ‘special interests,’ and is always a source of controversy. The only difference is that we aren’t inundated with PSA’s or full page advertisements in local and national newspapers or other forms of traditional advertising as a method to convince the public like Professor Melillo detailed in How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America. We have soundbites and the 24-hour news cycle for