Advertising with a Socially Responsible Twist:The War Advertising Council 1942-1945

• In Event: Scholarship in Business Communication

Abstract

This paper traces the early origins of corporate social responsibility to World War II. It explores the role of the newly created Advertising Council in assisting the government’s home-front campaigns through product advertising. Most campaigns were non-controversial and successful but a campaign to prevent the spread of venereal disease threatened to unravel the advertising industry’s work by pitching social commitment against commercial concerns; a concern that business struggle with till this day.
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Author

• Inger Stole, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign