Two Cents

(bright music) - You might think Halloween has gotten too commercial.

Americans spend over $13 billion on it a year, mostly on costumes, candy, and decorations, including almost a billion on pet costumes alone.

It can seem like the holiday is less about the spirit of Halloween and more about Spirit Halloween.

But you might prefer the modern Halloween to what it was like before the companies got involved.

(upbeat music) (air whooshing) (pig grunting) (air whooshing) (upbeat music ends) (bright music) - On Halloween night 100 years ago, you were less likely to see an adorable eight-year-old dressed up like a cowboy than a 16-year-old starting a fire in your front yard.

Teenagers used the holiday's association with mischief as an excuse to commit pranks on neighbors and authority figures.

And as families increasingly moved into urban environments, these pranks often verged into outright vandalism, theft, and arson.

Things got so bad that communities resorted to desperate measures, like deputizing the most problematic kids as junior policemen for the night or giving out awards to the schools with the least vandalism.

(horn sounding) The Chicago City Council voted to abolish Halloween outright, while the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended renaming it to National Youth Honor Day, which did not work.

- So what did?

Bribery.

(spring boinging) Houses that handed out goodies to prospective vandals (bright music) were spared the worst of the destruction.

And food companies saw a potential market.

They offered beleaguered homeowners prepackaged candies specifically for the night, helping to popularize our current tradition of trick-or-treating.

By the 1960s, Halloween had been transformed from a night of adolescent rampage to a family-friendly holiday.

- A couple decades later, another company would try to do the same thing for adults.

At the time, most of the major drinking holidays, like St.

Patrick's and Fourth of July, were already dominated by the major beer brands.

So a lesser known brewery called Coors set their sights on October 31st.

They hired TV goth bombshell Elvira to sell the idea that Halloween wasn't just for kids.

Today, that ad campaign is considered a major step in the evolution of the holiday.

Costume sales for adults currently outstripped those for kids by over half a billion dollars.

- The history of Halloween is a perfect example of how companies and consumers collaborate in the shaping of American traditions.

- There's not many examples of businesses inventing famous customs, but it's undeniable that our shared culture would look very different without the pervasive influence of marketing.

(bright music) - As long as we're discussing holidays, let's debunk the theory that Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus or at least the version of Santa we all know and love today.

Big and round, white beard, rosy cheeks, and a red suit with white trim.

All those elements existed before Coca-Cola hired artist Haddon Sundblom to paint an image of Santa for their 1931 ad campaign.

However, the campaign was so successful that it should get some credit for making this the primary version of Santa.

Before that, St.

Nick had a number of different manifestations, like this or this or even this.

Coke put their preferred version of Santa in front of so many people for so many years that it became pretty much the only way we imagine him today.

- Another holiday marketing myth is that Mother's Day and Valentine's Day were invented either by Hallmark or some shadowy cartel of florists.

In fact, the tradition of exchanging letters and flowers on February 14th goes back to 18th century England, though it was popularized in the US in the mid 1800s by a young entrepreneur named Esther Howland, whose father conveniently happened to own a stationary store.

- The observance of Mother's Day has its roots in a tribute to peace activist Ann Jarvis, who organized mothers group to tend to wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

After her death, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, began a letter-writing campaign to promote a National Mother's Day, which eventually led to President Woodrow Wilson declaring it a federal holiday in 1914.

She changed her tune about 20 years later, petitioning to have it rescinded because she was so disgusted with how it got commercialized by greeting card and flower companies.

Luckily for our mothers and Hallmark, that didn't happen.

- Fourth of July may not have been invented by fireworks companies, but the popularity of grilling in the backyard was certainly helped along by marketers, especially its perception as a man's job.

In the 1950s, suburban sprawl offered many families the space to enjoy outdoor leisure activities in their own yards.

At the same time, fathers were expected to spend more time at home with the kids.

Portable grill marketers like Weber saw an opportunity, a way for men to participate in household duties without feeling emasculated.

Their ad campaigns explicitly associated grilling meat over an open flame with danger, virility, and manliness, even though for most of human history, women have been perfectly capable of cooking outside over an open flame.

But I guess it worked, because today, you're still more likely to see men manning the grill.

- Let's move from dinner to breakfast.

(bright music) Breakfast cereals owe their popularity in part to the weird health fads of the early 20th century.

Many of their creators, like John Kellogg and C.W.

Post, were very religious men who claimed that bland foods could cure people of both indigestion and sexy thoughts.

Chex was even invented for the followers of a racist cult who believed that walking in a straight line could cause your vital fluids to leak out.

Safe to say that none of these guys would've liked to see their brainchilds evolve into Froot Loops and Count Chocula.

But for a time, they did succeed in convincing Americans to eat a light, healthy breakfast.

- That all changed in the 1920s when the Beech Nut Packing Company hired PR expert and Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays to help them reverse the decline in bacon sales.

He managed to get thousands of doctors to agree that Americans would benefit from heartier breakfasts, specifically ones that included bacon and eggs.

The findings were published in magazines and newspapers across the country, and according to Bernays, the campaign successfully branded bacon as a breakfast staple.

- Even with a big breakfast, factory workers during World War II often needed a little midday pick-me-up.

And the Pan American Coffee Bureau wanted to cement that into a national tradition.

In 1952, they launched an ad campaign that's credited with coining the term coffee-break and spread the idea from factories to offices, hospitals, even churches.

Within the year, 80% of polled firms had made coffee-breaks an official practice.

Maybe some of you are watching this on a coffee-break right now.

- Most of these examples are things you might do regularly or at least once a year, but there is one tradition popularized by a corporation that most people only do once or twice in a lifetime or never at all: propose with a diamond engagement ring.

In 1938, the British mining company De Beers hired a New York ad agency called N.W.

Ayer to boost the prestige of diamonds in America.

At the time, engagement rings came in many different styles, and only 10% of first-time brides received a diamond.

- Ayers' marketing campaign tried to make diamonds the official gem of love and commitment, with the size of the diamond directly proportional to the seriousness of the commitment.

In addition to traditional advertising, they recruited movie stars and socialites to wear diamond rings and flaunt them for photographers.

Maybe influencers aren't really a new phenomenon.

(laughing) They even sent lecturers to high schools to convince teenage girls that a proper marriage proposal should include a diamond.

Within 50 years, the percentage of fiances receiving diamonds went from 10 to 80%.

And the idea that diamonds equal love, invented by ad men 75 years ago, still with us today.

- If there's one thing I've learned from this history lesson, it's that the most successful marketers didn't try to invent new traditions and force them on people.

Instead, they found customs and pastimes that were already gaining traction and figured out how to profit off them.

– This usually involved two strategies: homogenization and propagation.

You want as many people as possible participating in the same tradition.

We may have lost some variety in the process, but it's allowed Americans to share a remarkably consistent culture across an entire continent.

- That's why whether you're in California or the Carolinas, we all probably give out candy on Halloween night, fire up the barbecue on the Fourth of July, and see the same guy when we picture Santa Claus.

- [Julia And Philip] And that's our two cents.

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