Analyzing historical advertisements is fundamentally the same as analyzing historical media, as advertising is media. However what makes this advertisement historical is the perspective of the time it was made. Racism was very normalized and acceptable during this time as you can see from the tagline simply stating that black people are dirty, unsanitary and that you should use this soap to fix it. This ad used a lot of pathos with giving people the feeling of power for being white, another technique I found are the “unique” and the “name-calling” claims, for example stating that this soap is so good it can ‘clean someone’s skin colour’ and they’re making fun of black people for being black. The techniques gave the racist consumers a feeling of being correct in their belief and to support them. The reason this wouldn’t work in today’s society is that as social media has become so popular and vocal people can speak out about injustice safer and easier than in the past. I found this ad in an article saying “25 ads that would be banned today” implying how obvious it is that these ads are incorrect. The media took advantage of this most likely because powerful people were racist and would support and promote this ad, who was going to stop them? When media sees easy money they take it. Media has defiantly changed over the decades from people seeing the text as ‘this product is so powerful’ to ‘we are racist’ don’t mostly on the consumers speaking out and even having the abilities to speak out.
https://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-ads/