Truth Half Told: Finding the Perfect Pitch for Advertising and Marketing in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1950-1991

Beginning in the 1950s, advertising and marketing specialistsin Yugoslavia campaigned aggressively to change public and officialperceptions of their work. By casting commercial promotion interms of categories already established as legitimate in theideology of Yugoslav socialism, the industry gradually naturalizedadvertising and marketing, transforming them from suspect capitalistpractices into apparent necessities of progressive, rationalproduction and distribution. Although the rhetoric used in thiscampaign consistently appealed to socialist values, in practiceYugoslav advertising and marketing were largely based on Westernmodels. Yugoslav commercial promotion was only superficially"socialist advertising"; practitioners' arguments tended toobscure the true qualities of the industry.