Starting a Family: Brand Journalism and Ford Times, 1908-1917

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Paper Session: Communication History Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This article closely examines an early example of brand journalism by telling the “birth story” of Ford Times, a company magazine created by the Ford Motor Company from 1908 to 1917 for dealers and consumers. This study describes why the publication emerged in 1908 amid an era of reform and improvement, examines content found in the magazine’s first issues, and discusses how the magazine circulated narratives about the ‘corporate family’ among dealers and then consumers. The magazine detailed more than new models for sale; it combined narratives about automobile use, food, farming, rural life, nationhood, and family with the Ford brand in order to build a reader community, interest in travel, and inspire loyalty to a brand that secured the automobile’s place in American culture and shaped Ford’s corporate communication for most of the twentieth century.

Author

• Rebecca Dean Swenson, U of Minnesota