{"id":972,"date":"2024-04-22T21:48:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T01:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/?p=972"},"modified":"2024-04-22T22:00:20","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T02:00:20","slug":"what-makes-babies-tick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/uncategorized\/what-makes-babies-tick\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes babies tick?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Who doesn’t love babies, let alone ones witha silly expression? This happy baby caught my eye when I was flipping through stacks of old magazines looking for the perfect image to use in this assignment. If an advertisement draws my attention almost eight decades after it was published it must have been quite effective in its day. The chortling baby, focused doctor, and onlooking mother all beg the question: what makes babies tick?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March of 1946 the United States was fresh off the heels of the most devestating conflict of all of human history. While the American mainland was never attacked by enemy forces, the World War II had a tremendous impact on civilian life. The government implemented strict rationing in order to conserve raw materials for the war effort which severely limited consumption of non-essential products. After four years of American involvement the fight was over, and the US began to return to normalcy. It it in this recovery period that The New Yorker published this advertisement with the headline “What makes babies tick?,” paid for by the National Dairy Products Corporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With such an attention grabbing image and tagline I found myself diving into the paragraphs below eager to learn some new fun fact about babies, just as New Yorker readers had done 80 years ago; after all, we all were babies once. What followed was praise for modern medicine, education, and nutrition, all keys for a baby’s healthy development. Then there was some more specific praise centered around dairy and establishing a link between milk and health. That reminds me, milk is full of nutrients perfect for a refreshing break from work…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes this ad so effective is the combination of a catchy image and a product plug that is not so in-your-face. The happy baby and open-ended question draw magazine readers in, while the caption avoids turning them away by making a general product association rather than a direct “Buy this brand” punch. Just as Walt Disney associated Disney with happiness or Carl Fischer did with Florida and leisure, the National Dairy Products Corporation wants viewers to think of milk when they think of health. This supposition is further affirmed by the ad’s image, eveything about it screams out “healthy baby.” They are at the doctor’s office, the mother looks amused rather than worried, and the baby itself seems rather content and is not crying as they are so prone to do. Furthermore, what more perfect a vehicle to build an association between milk and health than a baby whose sole source of nutrition is milk? We all have naturally link babies to milk, so by establishing a visual association between babies and health, the captions claims are strenghtened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This advertisement accomplishes exactly what Walter Benjamin describes on page 25 of his work “A short history of photography.” He wrote “the camera becomes… ever readier… to shock the associative mechanism of the observer to a standstill… the caption must step in, thereby creating a photography which literarises the relationships of life.” In the dairy advertisement, the image jumps off the page, attracting the reader and establishing an unconcious mental relation between babies and health, which builds onto our underlying connection of milk with babies. This is the shocking of the associative mechanism described by Benjamin. Then the caption cements this three-sided association (babies, health, milk), thus leaving the reader with a new mental association: milk and health. It is through this combination of visual association and verbal association that the advertisement finds success in building product association. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Products linked to health always have and always will sell well, who doesn’t wish for good health? Consider all the gimmicky vitamins, detoxes, and diet plans people invest in, health sells. It was only obvious for dairy producers to want in on the health action, and they did so with this ad. Even today, advertisements for milk utilize this same association, take for example the ubiquitous “Got Milk?” campaign which often feature professional athletes. The National Dairy Products Corporation produced a winner with this ad, and readers everywhere now know, milk makes babies tick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrzejewski, A. (2023, April 28). <\/span>The hidden history of resort elephants at Miami Beach<\/i>. Edge Effects. https:\/\/edgeeffects.net\/miami-beach-elephants\/ <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin, Walter. A Short History of Photography,\u00a0Screen<\/em>, Volume 13, Issue 1. Spring 1972. Pages 5\u201326.\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/screen\/13.1.5<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schwartz, Vanessa R. Jet Age Aesthetic. Chapter 2: \u201cDisneyland and the Art of People-Moving,\u201d pp. 57-98.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Yorker, March 9th, 1946 Issue. “What makes babies tick?” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who doesn’t love babies, let alone ones witha silly expression? This happy baby caught my eye when I was flipping through stacks of old magazines looking for the perfect image to use in this assignment. If an advertisement draws my attention almost eight decades after it was published it must have been quite effective in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":982,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions\/982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arth.hamiltonlits.org\/fa-23-110\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}