Matt Wilding

Free Advertising: Popular Magazines and World War II Bond Drives

Even before America’s entry into World War II, the US Treasury reorganized the nation’s savings bond program in an effort to raise money for defense and to give citizens a stake in their country.

While the Treasury Department, Office of War Information, and other government agencies worked together to develop marketing strategies for the bond program, private advertisers and editorial boards of magazines began promoting the bond program for free but on their own terms. This presentation will consider the ways in which war bond sales were encouraged in popular American magazines, particularly in regard toads’ messaging as they relate to concurrent government campaigns throughout the war.

[Recorded on 8 March 2014.]