media by changing the preferred creator and sub-
ject from street vendors and soft drinks to promi-
nent clothing designers.
Advertising for Its Own Sake The 1990’s also wit-
nessed the beginning of an unusual trend toward
the creation of advertisements intended to be
viewed as a form of art or entertainment. Taster’s
Choice introduced a kind of miniature teledrama
in the 1990’s that starred British actors Sharon
Maughan and Anthony Head as new neighbors
whose romantic encounters encouraged viewers to
watch succeeding commercials more so than to
drink the coffee. Commercials created specifically
for broadcast during the half-time show of the Super
Bowl vied for position in a televised vote by viewers
for “Favorite Commercial.”
Many advertisers regarded their work as art. Tele-
vision commercial creators had their own awards for
the best and most popular advertisements in a vari-
ety of categories. The long-standing Clio Award was
joined in the 1990’s by the Golden Drum Award and
an Emmy created in 1997 for “Outstanding Com-
mercial,” won by Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn
for “Chimps (HBO).”
Impact The impact of 1990’s intrusive advertising
cannot be overrated. The developing trend in adver-
tising to inundate the population with requests to
purchase brand-name products seemed to have de-
sensitized individuals to the presence of commer-
cials. Television and film viewers made use of tech-
nology to allow them to remove commercials from a
recording of a favorite film or television show. Adver-
tisers, in response, instituted embedded advertising
to make consumer removal impossible.
By the 1990’s, advertising had become so ubiqui-
tous through daily life that—even should one es-
chew television, cinema, and broadcast radio—one
could not escape the implicit messaging of mobile
billboards, sandwich signs, T-shirt slogans, and
“word-of-mouth” advertising that associates a brand
name with a specific product (such as Kleenex in-
stead of “facial tissue,” Xerox in place of “photo-
copy,” and Coke in place of “soda”). This quality
of omnipresence was fully intentional on the part of
advertisers. Ironically, many ads became either mere
background noise or the subject of debate more for
their plots and characters than for their commercial
content.
Further Reading
Lobrano, Alexander. “In the Serious, Anxious ’90’s,
Statement Becomes Message: Wear It, but Please
Don’t Call It Fashion.”The International Herald-
Tribune, October, 1992. Lobrano provides an in-
teresting commentary on the changing uses of
the T-shirt slogan to reflect the changing tastes of
1990’s fashion enthusiasts. He comments wryly
on the T-shirt’s shift from the pop culture icon of
the 1960’s to the fashionable trademark of the
1990’s designer.
O’Guinn, Allen. Advertising and Integrated Brand
Promotion. New York: Thomson South-Western,- This work, technically a textbook for com-
mercial classes by South-Western, is an entertain-
ing and well-designed analysis of the history and
methodology behind advertising.
Rutherford, David.Excellence in Brand Communica-
tion. Toronto: Institute of Communications & Ad-
vertising, 2002. A prominent work analyzing the
history of advertising. Scholarly in tone and has
impeccable research that clearly outlines how ad-
vertising has evolved over the decades. The list of
additional sources seems particularly thorough.
Tharp, Marye, and Dilara Moran. “A Snapshot of
Global Trends in Advertising: The 1990’s.”AAA
Annual Conference Review, January, 1997. Tharp
and Moran focus on trends in advertising specifi-
cally in the 1990’s, such as the expansion of Inter-
net advertising and the social implications for the
rise in computer-altered advertising.
Julia M. Meyers
See also Amazon.com; America Online; Business
and the economy in the United States; Children’s
television; Dot-coms; Drug advertising; E-mail; In-
ternet; Joe Camel campaign; Pharmaceutical indus-
try;Sex and the City; Slang and slogans; Talk radio;
Television; Viagra. Africa and the United States
Definition The interactions of the U.S.
government with African nationsWith the end of the Cold War, the United States attempted to
adjust to the opportunities and challenges presented by
countries on the world’s poorest continent and to define ap-
propriate U.S. responses.The Nineties in America Africa and the United States 7