exchanging chores for play

Leach maps the history of advertising from ‘cold text’ of the 1890s dry goods catalogues to ‘halftone color images’ seen in Modern Housekeeping and Food News, which signifies the paradigm shift in merchant consumer relationship. Good Christian values initially dictated the protocol for merchants and as desire for capital increased the merchants’ drive to augment there profit margin this protocol changed. Now retailers were more concerned with seducing the consumer versus serving the consumer in an effort to expand their profit margin. What is interesting are the visual techniques used by the retailers to seduce the consumer such as the early colored cards dispensed at front doors or by mail. —“most important each attempted to associate its business with games, luxury, pleasure, fantasy, or faraway mystery.” (p44) Retailers are clever; they marketed a lifestyle of consumption versus showcasing the actual goods for sale. This technique plays out in the aggressive billboard industry, magazines, etc. that followed the cards. Prior to aggressive advertising exchange of goods was a necessary chore, versus now exchange of goods is programmed as a specific space and time for play.