In the late 1950s, steel imports, labour unrest and competition from supposedly new materials, including plastics and aluminium, weren't the only challenges facing the American steel industry, led by United States Steel and the American Iron and Steel Institute, the steel trade body. A public perception as old-fashioned dogged the sector. The answer, apparently, was to employ post-war market research interpreting consumer desires. The results of these studies encouraged the normally complacent steel industry to take an unusually progressive step: with the help of established branding consultants it began vigorously and aggressively promoting the steel sector as forward-looking, and steel as a bright, light and modern material. In the subsequent institutional campaigns the language and imagery of shininess was highlighted to conjure an attractive vision of modern consumer living. This was particularly evident in the Steelmark merchandising program, the first industry-wide promotion of steel as a modern material, which employed a four-pointed star-like form, suggesting a glinting twinkle of reflected light, and the `Gleam of Stainless Steel' marketing campaign which linked informal, fashionable, lifestyles with shininess, while employing the gleaming Steelmark emblem. This article contributes to the growing field of research focusing on the relationship between market research and design.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Greene, Jeremy A.;
(2013)
The Materiality of the Brand: Form, Function, and the Pharmaceutical Trademark
(/isis/citation/CBB001320757/)
Book
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee;
(2009)
American Consumer Society, 1865--2005: From Hearth to HDTV
(/isis/citation/CBB001201132/)
Book
Gary S. Cross;
Robert N. Proctor;
(2014)
Packaged Pleasures: How Technology and Marketing Revolutionized Desire
(/isis/citation/CBB218125378/)
Article
Thoms, Ulrike;
(2013)
Standardizing Selling. Pharmaceutical Marketing, the Pharmaceutical Company and the Marketing Expert (1900--1980)
(/isis/citation/CBB001320755/)
Article
Vail, David D.;
(2012)
Toxic Fables: The Advertising and Marketing of Agricultural Chemicals in the Great Plains, 1945--1985
(/isis/citation/CBB001251551/)
Article
Quirke, Viviane;
(2014)
Targeting the American Market for Medicines, ca. 1950s–1970s: ICI and Rhône-Poulenc Compared
(/isis/citation/CBB001202354/)
Article
Herzberg, David;
(2009)
“Will Wonder Drugs Never Cease!”: A Prehistory of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising
(/isis/citation/CBB000933443/)
Thesis
Tang, Jeffrey Donald;
(2004)
Sound Decisions: Systems, Standards, and Consumers in American Audio Technology, 1945--1975
(/isis/citation/CBB001561820/)
Article
Williams, Amrys O.;
(2013)
FOOD: Transforming the American Table, 1950--2000: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
(/isis/citation/CBB001320541/)
Article
Downes, Kieran;
(2010)
“Perfect Sound Forever”: Innovation, Aesthetics, and the Re-making of Compact Disc Playback
(/isis/citation/CBB000954236/)
Article
Joris Mercelis;
(2020)
The scientist and the advertisement: Reklamegutachten in imperial Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB621920403/)
Article
Schäfer, Armin;
(2013)
The Audiovisual Field in Bruce Nauman's Videos
(/isis/citation/CBB001320387/)
Article
Ploeger, Joanna S.;
(2002)
The Art of Science at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: The Rhetoric of Aesthetics and Humanism in the National Laboratory System in the Late 1960s
(/isis/citation/CBB000200131/)
Article
Hirsh, Richard F.;
Sovacool, Benjamin K.;
(2013)
Wind Turbines and Invisible Technology: Unarticulated Reasons for Local Opposition to Wind Energy
(/isis/citation/CBB001320531/)
Book
Kerry Ross;
(2015)
Photography for Everyone: The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB755143266/)
Article
Gaudillière, Jean-Paul;
(2013)
From Propaganda to Scientific Marketing: Schering, Cortisone, and the Construction of Drug Markets
(/isis/citation/CBB001320756/)
Review
Samuel Milner;
(Summer 2018)
Review of unknown publication
(/isis/citation/CBB967744379/)
Chapter
Misa, Thomas J.;
(1994)
Steel metallurgy in the twentieth century
(/isis/citation/CBB001180676/)
Article
Sendzimir, Vanda;
(Fall 2010)
Galvanized Steel
(/isis/citation/CBB900610185/)
Article
Clayton J. Ruminski;
(2012)
From Mary Furnace to Sharon Steel: Evolution and Integration of the United States' Last Manually Filled Blast Furnace, 1845–1963
(/isis/citation/CBB967678044/)
Be the first to comment!