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This article discusses the interwar collaboration in the Nordic advertising industry in relation to the literature on 'Americanisation' in advertising and business history. We argue that the focus on Americanisation has caused research to overlook other important arenas for sharing knowledge in the development of advertising and commercial practices in twentieth-century Europe. We show the importance of the systematic collaboration between advertising communities in the Nordic countries through which Anglo-Saxon ideas, as well as domestic experiences, were shared. The collaboration was a crucial platform for the advertising industry to achieve increased societal clout. We also find that the Nordic advertising industry, as a collective, clearly distanced themselves from continental Europe based on a perception that Anglo-Saxon and Nordic advertising shared the same foundations. The results raise questions concerning assumptions about Americanisation and the role of alternative sources of inspiration and transnational collaboration in advertising history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate an unexplored part of advertising history; namely, the education of a large, mundane, nonelite group of advertising professionals, so-called advertising technicians and the knowledge they acquired. Examining correspondence courses in the technology of advertising, we focus particularly on the production of technified knowledge and mass personas. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on a qualitative analysis of course material from Sweden's two largest correspondence schools in the 1930s and 1940s. Two theoretical concepts guide the analysis: the concept of market devices and the notion of personas, both of which we use to show how the courses crafted a particular kind of advertising professional as well as knowledge. Findings: The study shows that courses created a template-based persona of the advertising technician, who possessed what we call bounded originality characterized by diligence, modesty and rule-governed creative imagination. Similarly, the courses created a body of knowledge that was controllable and highly practice-oriented. The advertising technician was expected to embody and internalize the advertising knowledge, thus, becoming an extension of this knowledge on the market. Originality/value: By directing the searchlight at the cadre of ordinary, middle-class advertising professionals instead of the high-profile "advertising creatives" and innovators, the paper brings to the foreground the nonelite level of the advertising industry. These practitioners went to work in the business world to produce the everyday advertising that was not necessarily groundbreaking but was needed in a growing mass-consumption society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to examine how the cartelized Swedish advertising industry contributed to the development of brands in Sweden in the early twentieth century. Specifically, a nationwide campaign for branded goods in 1925 is studied.Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a study of primary sources from the Swedish advertising agencies, manufacturers and retailers, which are analyzed using a hermeneutic method.Findings The paper shows that the unique organization of the main Swedish advertising agencies and the limited size of the market pushed the agencies into promoting and selling the idea of brands to consumers, retailers and manufacturers, which was done by exploiting established social sentiments in combination with American advertising techniques. It is also found that the Swedish advertising agencies described and conceptualized brands using widely known social ideals rather than the so-called brand personality aspect of branding.Research limitations/implications Although limited to the Swedish case, this paper suggests that research could benefit from taking different markets' unique contexts into more consideration when studying the development of brands and advertising. In this paper, especially the organization and size of the advertising market together with the specific social and cultural values available to advertising professionals when creating brands, have been highlighted.Originality/value The paper emphasizes the size of the advertising market together with the organization of the advertising industry as important factors for the historical development of brands in Sweden. It also shows how brands were conceptualized using social ideals rather than the brand personality aspect of branding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]