Shortly after the end of World War II, on 11 December 1945, James Webb
Young, Chairman of the Advertising Council and Director of the J.
Walter Thompson Company, spoke to the annual meeting of the
American Association of Advertising Agencies at the Continental Hotel
in Chicago. The title of his speech was, “What Advertising Learned From
the War,” and in it Young talked about an immediate post-war period
that was, by most accounts, an exuberant time for an America flushed by
a victory that finally marked it as a true global power. The American
government proclaimed it, the American people believed it, and American
business stood ready to sell it through an advertising industry that itself
had come of age during, and because of, the war.