Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Host: Megan Finn (Associate Professor, American University)
Guest: Caroline Jack (Associate Professor, UCSD)
Book: Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2024)
Date: November 13, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores how sponsored media—pamphlets, films, public service announcements, and more—were used by American businesses and allied organizations throughout the 20th century to “sell” capitalism to the public. Host Megan Finn speaks with author and communication scholar Caroline Jack, whose new book investigates the history, contradictions, and impacts of what was called “economic education.” The conversation delves into the aesthetics, methods, and legacies of these campaigns—often dismissed as ephemeral or silly—arguing for their significance in shaping American attitudes about capitalism, democracy, and national identity.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Caroline Jack’s Research Trajectory and Focus on Ephemeral Media

• Background: Jack teaches at UC San Diego, focusing on persuasive and promotional communication in media history.
• Definition of Promotional Culture: Drawing on Andrew Wernick’s ideas, Jack sees promotion as “communication that advances or attempts to advance some kind of self-advantaging exchange.” (03:00)
• Interest in Ephemera: Jack grew up exposed to sponsored media in the 1980s/90s—think infomercials, theme parks like EPCOT, and retro pop culture. This primed her interest in “media that prioritizes narrative tidiness and optimism over complexity or accuracy.” (05:00)
• Research Catalyst: Encountered “ephemeral” sponsored films—pamphlets, films, social guidance shorts—once considered disposable, now digitized and circulating as historical artifacts.

  “My first impression is often that they seem sort of silly or obviously self-serving. But the project of the book is to ask, what if we took them seriously?” (04:55, Jack)

2. Working with Ephemeral Media: Methodological Challenges

• Ephemeral media was “not necessarily designed to last” and was easy to dismiss due to its self-serving nature.
• Jack references Isadore Warshaw’s idea of preserving the “romance of business”—saving throwaway items as “traces of a world that their creators or supporters believed was possible.” (09:20)

3. Contradictions of Sponsored Economic Education

• What is Economic Education? Not strictly neutral; these projects were “public relations for managerial capitalism”—“selling America to Americans.”
• Contradiction: The rhetoric of “education” (neutral, open-ended) vs the reality of “selling” (self-interested persuasion).
• “Economic morality can be sold as surely as soap chips and television sets.” (12:23, quoting Fred G. Clark, founder of the American Economic Foundation, 1952)
• This logic equates support for capitalism with knowledge and frames critique as ignorance—a central tension of the genre.

4. Origins and Meanings of “Selling America to Americans”

• The story often starts in the New Deal, but Jack traces the phrase to the 1910s–1930s, emerging from patriotism, Americanization campaigns, and business promotion efforts post-WWI.
• “There's a series of meanings that are kind of ready-made so that when the New Deal arises...there's this term that already has all these kind of meanings in it.” (19:31, Jack)
• The concept of affirmative style: a celebratory, optimistic mode of messaging, refusing to engage critics, exemplified by ads like “Doomsday was a fizzle.” (23:50)

5. Promotional Nationalism: Blending Patriotism and Self-Interest

• Jack coined “promotional nationalism” to describe how businesses “used imagery and ideas on a spectrum from patriotic to nationalist to promote commercial, publicity, or policy interests.” (27:16)

6. Expertise and Scientism in Messaging

• Post-WWII, business organizations—especially the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)—framed themselves as communication experts, distributing pro-capitalism content via billboards, pamphlets, films, and radio.
• Expertise in “public opinion management” became a cornerstone for advertising’s claim to defend democracy and the free press.

  “The expertise that's being marshaled and celebrated is expertise in promotional communication.” (30:40, Jack)

• Example: NAM’s campaign had 6,000 newspapers receiving press releases weekly, 273 radio stations airing pro-business shows, and millions viewing sponsored films.

7. Reception vs. Intent: The Cold War Era & The JCEE

• Not all sponsored education efforts landed as intended.
• The Joint Council on Economic Education (JCEE) approached media with an analytical, less bombastic style, focusing on training teachers in economics rather than overt celebration of capitalism.
• The 1961 JCEE report (authored by Lee Bach, Paul Samuelson, et al.) was attacked as not “freedom minded” enough, indicating internal tensions and diverse expectations:

  “…plans laid out in this report will only teach students what they call the inadequacy of freedom because it acknowledged flaws in capitalism.” (41:39)

8. The 1970s “American Economic System” Campaign

• Led by the Ad Council during the Bicentennial, this was the largest campaign of its kind, distributing millions of materials to promote the American capitalist model.
• “Threats to the imperatives of the marketplace are framed as intertwined with threats to…freedoms, like expressive freedoms and the civic freedoms of representative democracy.” (44:44)
• Shift: From institutional explanations to promoting “market forces themselves as objective.”
• Faced congressional inquiry for potential bias; ultimately, the governmental involvement was cleared but grassroots critics remained.

9. Advertising Industry Maneuvers and Claims of Democratic Vitality

• WWII collaboration allowed advertising to rebuild public image and political power, gaining control over public messaging infrastructures.
• The industry positioned itself as both an expert in reaching publics and as a bulwark for democracy, arguing:

  “Advertising supports a free press…simply by existing as an industry, it is…intrinsically supportive of a free society because it funds a free press.” (50:10, Jack)

• The concept of “folk expertness” arises—advertising’s claim to expertise mirrors economists’ role as knowledge brokers.

10. Resistances and Failures: When Sponsored Media Backfires

• Coalition campaigns (e.g., Ad Council + JCEE’s 1969 anti-inflation effort) exposed rifts: public-facing ads urged individuals to “be less piggy” (don’t overspend), while the expert pamphlet contextualized inflation as a systemic, institutional issue.

  “The ads featuring these images of people as pigs, as tasteless and downright stupid…ultimately unsuccessful.” (57:00, Jack)

• This tension revealed how audiences and participants didn’t always agree on message or method.

11. Conclusions and Implications

• For supporters, economic education media offered a self-image of public service, expertise, and optimism; they resolved the contradiction between education and selling by redefining their advocacy as necessary for a free society.
• The “affirmative style” may have functioned as “soothing amid critique and the threat of regulation.” (65:00)
• Jack’s ongoing work will continue exploring promotional culture, focusing on the legitimacy debates around public service announcements and the balance of voices in public discourse.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “My first impression is often that they seem sort of silly or obviously self-serving. But the project of the book is to ask, what if we took them seriously?”
  — Caroline Jack (04:55)

• “Economic morality can be sold as surely as soap chips and television sets.”
  — Fred G. Clark, quoted by Jack (12:23)

• “[W]hen the New Deal arises as something to sort of be organizing focus for resistance from business interests, there's this term [‘selling America to Americans’] that already has all these kind of meanings in it.”
  — Jack (19:31)

• “Advertising supports a free press…simply by existing as an industry, it is…intrinsically supportive of a free society because it funds a free press.”
  — Jack (50:10)

• “The ads featuring these images of people as pigs, as tasteless and downright stupid…ultimately unsuccessful.”
  — Jack (57:00)

• “For the people who supported economic education media, I think that we can read these as imaginings of a world where optimism about a society organized around private enterprise is kind of a matter of neutral fact. And that in this setting, the supporters of economic education media could see themselves as public service minded experts.”
  — Jack (63:21)

Key Timestamps

• 03:00 – Jack’s background and the definition of promotional culture
• 04:55 – Why take silly, ephemeral media seriously?
• 09:20 – The value of business ephemera as cultural traces
• 12:23 – Contradictions between education and selling
• 16:50 – Defining “economic education”; equating knowledge with pro-capitalism sentiment
• 19:31 – Early uses of “selling America to Americans” (1910s–1930s)
• 23:50 – Emergence of the “affirmative style” in promotional media
• 27:16 – Defining “promotional nationalism”
• 30:40 – Expertise in persuasion as the new business credential
• 41:39 – JCEE’s analytical approach and its critics
• 44:44 – The Ad Council’s 1970s “American Economic System” campaign
• 50:10 – Advertising as defender of the free press and democracy
• 57:00 – Public backlash to the failed “be less piggy” anti-inflation campaign
• 63:21 – How economic education media offered supportive self-narratives
• 65:00 – The soothing “affirmative style” amid criticism

Conclusion

This episode presents a rich, multifaceted history of how American business interests used media to shape public attitudes about capitalism—tracing the interplay of national identity, communication expertise, and the enduring tension between self-interest and public service. Caroline Jack’s scholarly deep-dive, peppered with vivid examples and critical insight, brings into focus the overlooked but deeply influential world of sponsored economic education.

Further Reading and Research

• Caroline Jack, Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2024)
• Works cited/discussed: Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Kim Phillips-Fein, Inger Stole, Charles Ackland & Heidi Wasson, Lawrence Glickman, Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway