Tide Context

1950’s audience

• brand name of soap powder made by Proctor and Gamble ( very trusted brand)

• Advertising agency created coca-cola’s santa image

• Tide campaign included radio and television adverts featuring 2 housewives endorsing the product

1950’s historical context

• 1950s- a decade moved from rationing to a consumer boom (transitional decade)

• UK, 1954- End of rationing ,encouraging economic growth

• low inflation= more disposable income to spend on consumer durables e.g fridges, vacuum cleaners, steam irons and washing machines

• post war economic boom made consumer durbles available to affluent and lower middle class women

Social and cultural context

• consumer durables were considered desirable products-status symbol in Europe and America ( sign of the US dream)

• sales of these products increased by 70% in the 1950s

• encouraged by advertising

  Gender roles

• after ww2, women were expected to give up their wartime work to return to a domestic role

• advertising reflected this cultural and social expectations-domestic products was targeted mainly at women

• these products were advertised in slots in serial melodrama’s targeted at women- ‘soap operas’

• World represented in adverts may not match the reality-many women stayed in payed work but were still expected to keep up the domestics