Harold Forster, The Art of Advertising 1920's Radio. The Marconi Hero

 

Today the real success of an advertising campaign can be reflected in how memorable their campaign was. Coca – Cola’s musical ads, ‘I’d like to Teach the World’, their reappropriation of Santa Claus from his original green out fit to the Coke colours of red and white are instantly identifiable, ‘For Mash get Smash’ or ‘It’s Martini’ are still fondly remembered. In the 1920’s the print media was the main weapon of the advertisers to reach the public but in the early part of the roaring Twenties, a new pretender to the advertising crown was making it way to market, radio.

 

The Marconi company led the way with innovation in both transmitting and receiving, producing the most popular ‘listening-in’ devices for the wireless. To deliver their message, the Marconi Company used the newspapers and trade publications. In order that their products stood out from the crowd, in 1923 they commissioned a series of drawings used in newspaper ads encouraging purchases of their radios sets. They showed how valuable they were to enrich the lives of those who invested in the new medium.

 

They contracted an illustrator and artist to capture the ‘joy’ of radio listening and his work created a sensation in the newspapers and for their readers. Radio became a must have. The graphic illustrations, portrayed in an art deco style were stylish, appealed to the emotions and illustrated how radio could make like better. Advertisers were selling a dream; the world of radio was elegant no matter where you were or what you did. Many of the Marconi portrayals were of upper class people in decorative, modernist settings, creating a utopia often far from the lives of working class post war Britons. The purchase of a radio set was far beyond the financial reach of many of those who were still recovering from the First World War. Homemade crystal sets were extremely popular with working class listeners. Marconi’s advertisements exuded luxury and created a theme that the new medium of radio would offer everything including music, weather forecasting and information talks.

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The illustrations displayed a modern affluent Britain. The surroundings are plush set in drawing rooms, with quality furniture and fittings. The men are smartly dressed, with nearly all of them smoking a pipe or a cigar. The women are drawn in elegant dresses and crafted hairstyles. The ballroom scenes exude affluence and a rich lifestyle and spell the end of the live music era replaced by music through the wireless. Radio is a unifier of the family unit as the drawings feature parents and their children, even the children enjoying the radio broadcasts with their grandparents. One depicts what appears to be a teacher and her children outdoors being educated by the radio broadcasts. In one scene a couple have gone to the country to have a picnic in their automobile listening to the radio while the enjoyed their moment yet if you look closely, they are not alone as another man watches on from the tree line. The radio set is shown as the perfect accompaniment indoors or outdoors.  The reality however for many living in the UK in the early twenties, all of this high-brow living was aspirational.

 

 

By 1923, the British Broadcasting Company had just been formed and had taken over the running of the various stations around Britain operated by wireless set manufacturers. On 18 October 1922 the British Broadcasting Company Ltd was incorporated with a share capital of £60,006, with cumulative ordinary shares valued at £1 each and six major shareholders,

The shares were equally held by six companies:

·        Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company

·        Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company

·        Radio Communication Company

·        The British Thomson-Houston Company

·        The General Electric Company

·        Western Electric Company

Marconi was at the heart of transmitting and manufacturers radio sets. They wanted to cement their position at the forefront of radio, in a crowded field of manufacturers. Harold Forster was employed to produce a set of illustrations that would be used in the newspaper campaign for their premier product ‘The Two Value Marconiphone’. The campaign, which was broadcast at a national and local level, helped the Marconi Company maintain its lead as the main seller of ‘listening-in’ sets in the UK. The illustrations used in the advertisements had two different styles often used deliberately in the publication they were placed in to appeal to various classes. The more elaborate drawings appeared in national newspapers and trade publications, and often as half page advertisements while the darker, less crowded portraits appeared in regional newspapers.

 

Forster, in his late twenties in 1923, would have an illustrious career as an illustrator and an artist. He did not confine himself to the Marconi work, illustrating many products and brands. He was responsible for pre-war Black Magic chocolate illustrations. He produced a number of the famous World War Two posters commissioned by the British Government including the ‘Keep Mum, She’s Not So Dumb’ and ‘Forward to Victory’ posters. He would also produce iconic movie posters including for the Jack Hawkins action film, ‘Angels One Five’.