Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business First Edition

by Roland Marchand (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0520087194

ISBN-10: 0520087194

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Over the course of the twentieth century the popular perception of America's giant corporations has undergone an astonishing change. Condemned as dangerous leviathans in the century's first decades, by 1945 major corporations had become respected, even revered, institutions. Roland Marchand's lavishly illustrated and carefully researched book tells how large companies such as AT&T and U.S. Steel created their own "souls" in order to reassure consumers and politicians that bigness posed no threat to democracy or American values.

Marchand traces this important transformation in the culture of capitalism by offering a series of case studies of such corporate giants as General Motors, General Electric, Metropolitan Life Insurance, and Du Pont Chemicals. Marchand examines the rhetorical and visual imagery developed by corporate leaders to win public approval and build their own internal corporate culture. In the "golden era" of the 1920s, companies boasted of their business statesmanship, but in the Depression years many of them turned in desperation to forms of public relations that strongly defended the capitalist system. During World War II public relations gained new prominence within corporate management as major companies linked themselves with Main-Street, small-town America. By the war's end, the corporation's image as a "good neighbor" had largely replaced that of the "soulless giant." American big business had succeeded in wrapping increasingly complex economic relationships in the comforting aura of familiarity.

Marchand, author of the widely acclaimed Advertising the American Dream (1985), provides an elegant and convincing account of the origins and effects of the corporate imagery so ubiquitous in our world today.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Around the turn of the century--long before corporations cared about such things as public image--society cowered beneath the lengthy shadows cast by monster companies. The soulless corporation, ensconced in monolithic skyscrapers and populated by army-sized staffs, was defended by smug men like J.P. Morgan, who believed he owed "the public nothing." One depression and a world war later, corporations began to realize the value of connecting with Main Street, small-town America. By recasting themselves as "good neighbors," businesses such as AT&T and U.S. Steel proved to consumers that they posed no threat to democracy or the American way. Roland Marchand's Creating the Corporate Soul provides a brilliant look at this transformation, showing how spin doctors gave these callous giants a thorough makeover. Filled with entertaining print ads and interesting case studies, the book shows us the power of public relations and corporate image. Marchand's exhaustive study may even prompt readers to take another look at modern corporations and ask them to reconsider what lies beneath their facades.

From Booklist

In a masterful display of research and perspicacity, similar to that found in his Advertising the American Dream, the late historian Marchand offers up his rendition of how the corporation gained its soul. From business image as a faceless entity under government and public siege in the late nineteenth century, he traces the evolution of spin doctoring and advertising to counteract such unfortunate utterances as Vanderbilt's "the public be damned." Examples are pulled from the (now) household-name variety of business, such as AT&T, Ford, GE, General Motors, and Heinz. Image making started with paternalistic employee welfare (e.g., cooking and sewing classes at NCR); it took shape with AT&T's human faces of telephone operators and linemen. It matured before and during World War II by way of corporate advertising, radio shows, movies, and world's fair exhibits. Surprisingly, there is no apparent indictment here of corporate communications. What's more, the author's theory about the different corporate personas is made real through extensive documentation as well as an extremely readable prose style. Barbara Jacobs

Technical Details

Publisher

‎University of California Press; First Edition (November 1, 1998)

Language

‎English

Hardcover

‎470 pages

ISBN-10

‎0520087194

ISBN-13

‎978-0520087194

Item Weight

‎4.1 pounds

Dimensions

‎7.75 x 1.75 x 10.5 inches

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Well documented history of how corporations learned to create images for public consumption

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2006

Verified Purchase

This is an interesting work in business and cultural history. Roland Marchand documents the way corporations used (and developed) public relations to develop images of themselves in the public mind. This is really about the early decades and is quite fascinating. We see this today, certainly. For example, when some huge food conglomerate shows you some master chef each portion of the food they want you to buy, you are getting the same kind of treatment. It wouldn't do to show you the huge machines and food production lines that create these food products in vast quantities. No, they want you to think in terms of some impossibly personalized image. (Although recently I saw a television commerical for a breakfast cereal showing the machines making and packaging the food with some of the folks making it talking to the viewer about how great their product is.)

While some may feel the author of the book is more hostile to corporations than is actually appropriate, I think he has done a fine job in presenting us with these historical images and insightful text that supports his thesis. I am certainly pro-business and conservative. However, I in no way want to pretend that corporations are caring and personal entities that have objects other than providing profits for their shareholders at heart. There are a great many philosophical issues that can be discussed about the duties of corporations, and I am willing to engage in those debates, but no one should mistake these entities for families or friends (or monsters or enemies, either). Corporations are artificial creations that we have created to provide goods and services efficiently and thereby returning profits to shareholders. This book documents how they create images that help them accomplish those purposes.

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BROv1

Buy.

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2018

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Very interesting look at how the powers that be manipulate.

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Ross A. Miller

Dry read, but good

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2007

This book does a nice job of taking a dry subject and presenting it in an interesting way. It is nice reading about different companies "adventures" in advertising. I specifically liked the phone companies story and its attempt to avoid being labeled a monopoly. It is worth your time if you are interested in advertising, but is a rather dense read.

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Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business First Edition

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