Advertising in Signal (1940–1945), Between Commercial Promotion and Political Propaganda: Quantitative Tools for a Qualitative Analysis
Les publicités dans le magazine Signal (1940-1945) entre promotion commerciale et propagande politique : apports d’une analyse quantitative
Résumé
In recent years, scholarly interest in advertising has grown, and the heuristic potential of these sources is regularly highlighted. In the magazine Signal, which was published by the National Socialist authorities for use abroad during the Second World War, the boun- daries between commercial promotion (Produktwerbung) and political propaganda – for the Nazi regime, but also for the “Germany brand” (Imagewerbung, Nation Branding) – seem to be blurred. Based on an exhaustive study of all the texts and images of the advertisements that appeared in the magazine during its entire period of publication, this article aims to show the contribution of quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods to the study of advertisers’ communication strategies in the specific context of the war. Although these strategies were generally consistent with political objectives (and their evolution between 1940 and 1945), advertisers, as private actors obeying official directives, nevertheless defended their own objectives in part. Thus, there were discre- pancies, even divergences, between the messages of the advertisements and those of the magazine that hosted them. Is this inconsistency in the discourse or a deliberate strategy of an apparent “plurality of messages” aimed at foreigners?