“The Biggest Scoop in Advertising History”: Personality Marketing, G.B.S., and the Near-Testimonial

Abstract

The author uses two influential advertising campaigns from the late 1920s as case studies that illustrate how the advertising industry and Shaw are using “collaboration” to further articulate professional identities and produce novel strategies for the promotion of personality and product. Illustrating what is at stake in the proximity between advertising and literature, a Harrods campaign that featured Shaw garnered considerable transatlantic fanfare for crafting “near-testimonials” from literary authors as a way to ward off the specter of impropriety and maintain the integrity of stakeholders, each pursuing their respective aims. Another American campaign (for Simmons mattresses) took the “near testimonial” in a new direction and situated Shaw at the center of a controversy over the efficacy of a tried and true marketing technique. Despite the taint, the continued turn towards “personality marketing” provoked innovation in form, the professionalizing of writers within the industry, and the delineation of modern advertising. For Shaw, the author argues, the ad space presented another opportunity to act on the prophet motive, marketing the Shavian lifestyle.