The Fifties

by David Halberstam

dramatically different from its competitors (when in fact the difference was often negligible). At the heart of USP was finding one feature about the product that was allegedly unique and pummeling the public with it. “The prince of hard sell,” he was called. Advertising without illusion, his campaigns might have been called. They were simple and repetitive: If the claims were not always true, they were never exactly untrue, either. In an age in which advertising in general prospered from the growing affluence of the society, Reeves prospered more; he took Ted Bates from $16 million in billings in 1945, and no place among the top ten firms, to number five, with $130 million in billings in 1960. Reeves often depicted products the way heroes and villains were depicted in Hollywood in B movies: His product would be, in effect, in the white hat, and the other product, lesser medicinal strength or cleaning capacity, wore the black; on occasion it would be known to the entire nation only as brand X. Reeves’s commercials for over-the-counter medical items generally featured pseudomedical testimony delivered by someone wearing a white jacket, playing the role of the doctor. Some competitors, not so amused, spoke of his fondness for “the uncheckable claim.” For the 1948 campaign, Reeves had proposed a series of radio spots to Tom Dewey, who had turned them down, saying he felt they would not be dignified. His decision not to use them had left Reeves convinced that if Dewey had been...