Still fresh from the glow of the last season of Mad Men, the television show about postwar Madison Avenue advertising, readers may be especially receptive to Kerri P. Steinberg's Jewish Mad Men: Advertising and the Design of the American Jewish Experience. But even without the priming from popular culture, Steinberg's case for the importance of advertising as an indicator and shaper of the American Jewish experience is strong. Were the records of advertising agencies more accessible, Steinberg would have supplied scholars with good reasons to turn to advertising, for it “develops and reinforces social and cultural conventions, and has the power to redirect the public toward other options or opinions” (56). As an art historian, Steinberg might have provided more analysis of the images and designs of the advertisements. Instead, in explaining the importance of advertising in the field of American Jewish culture, Steinberg relies heavily on the facts that some Jews did become partners and copywriters in an industry that was largely closed to Jews, and that non-Jews in advertising recognized the importance of the Jewish market.
Beginning with a chapter on portraiture in American Jewish life, Steinberg examines the function of image in American Jewish culture, as portraits declared Jewish men and women participants in the colonial mercantile society. As advertisements would do in the twentieth century, these early American portraits allowed Jews to negotiate their Jewishness and American-ness, often by omitting Jewish signifiers.
The second chapter brings readers to the heart of Steinberg's story: the history of the Joseph Jacobs advertising agency. The first to contract with major US manufacturers, the Jacobs agency created the “K” symbol to designate kosher products; it created the “OU” to designate certification by the Union of Orthodox Congregations of America; and it created and published the Maxwell House Haggadah. Even before the cultural revolution of the 1960s, the Jacobs agency reassured Americans that Jewishness was desirable, and it convinced non-Jewish manufacturers of the profitability of the Jewish market.
Having gotten his start, in 1918, selling advertising space for the Jewish Daily Forward, Jacobs learned how to strike the right balance between Jewishness and American-ness in targeting Jewish readers who sought comfort and advice for pursuing their Americanizing dreams. In short, Steinberg explains that Jacobs learned “the importance of the media to the acculturation process of the Jewish community at a time when millions of Eastern European immigrants were settling into a new country.” Early advertising from the Jacobs agency aimed to inform a new population of immigrants, speaking to them in their own language.
These ethnic marketing initiatives were evident as early as a 1924 Jell-O promotional brochure that was intended for the Americanizing Jewish housewife. In the 1940s, the agency's creative department hired a non-Jewish copywriter, who was adept at communicating with multiple audiences, and who introduced prospective manufacturing clients to the Jewish market through a brochure titled, “The Lowest Cost Admission of the World's Richest Market” (70). Jews represented a sales opportunity, and the agency urged the smart businessman to learn about the Jewish market: “If you would really understand the Jew, you will go with us on the following pages into his home, look at his customs and religion and then draw your own conclusions as to why campaigns designed especially for the Jewish Market may succeed where the standard approach may fail.”
In subsequent chapters, Steinberg argues for the power of advertising to shape national culture by examining particular advertising campaigns, such as those for Levy's rye bread (“You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's”) and Hebrew National (“We answer to a higher authority”). The former suggested that Jewishness didn't really matter and made “Jewish” into a selling point—at least in New York, where the campaign was focused; the latter showed that Jewishness produced a superior product. “So comfortable had Jews become with their place in American society by the late sixties that they were able to raise their banner of ethnic difference and pride through clever advertising copy” (120). The introduction of conspicuously Jewish products into the mainstream market through these campaigns revealed shifts in how Americans thought about Jews and Jewish difference.
A new, honest style of advertising in the late 1960s, crafted by Jewish copywriters, among others, also reveals how a Jewish influence helped to deconstruct the more scripted, artificial style of advertising that had been prevalent during the first half of the twentieth century. The part-Jewish firm Doyle Dane Bernbach's commitment to straightforward copywriting expressed Bill Bernbach's belief that the process of selling a product could improve the product and that advertising should encourage clients to make better products. Founded in the aftermath of World War II, DDB introduced “a new and quirky perspective in the world of advertising—that of Jewish humor” (125).
The creation of a minority voice in post-World War II American advertising reflected new values in American culture. By the time of JDate's twenty-first century campaigns, the online dating company was able to tap into the fruits of a long history of American advertising aimed at Jewish products, services, and consumers. JDate has transcended its punch-line status, in large part, because of the success of its advertising campaigns. If Jews dating other Jews (or at least others interested in dating Jews) has helped maintain some form of Jewishness, then so too has advertising been the lifeblood behind countless ingredients of American Jewish life—be it kosher hot dogs, Passover haggadahs, or “real Jewish rye bread.” As Steinberg argues with all of her case studies, advertising has inadvertently aided Jewish continuity. One refrain of modern Jewish life has been, “It's hard to be a Jew.” Advertising has provided countless additional and more memorable refrains, allowing American Jews to believe that being Jewish is in fact easier, more enjoyable, tastier, and cooler than consumers might have realized.
