CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Competition may be inherent in the field of advertising, but for one small group of men and women, the name of the game will be collaboration.
This weekend, and for the first time, a new breed of advertising professionals — advertising historians — will get together to meet and to exchange ideas on their burgeoning field.
The venue is the Sandage Symposium, to be held Friday to Sunday (Sept. 8-10) at Allerton Park, the University of Illinois conference center near Monticello, Ill.
According to advertising historian Linda Scott, who also is the head of the UI advertising department and the coordinator of the symposium, the meeting is “designed to stimulate a sense of community and foster collaborative exchange” among this emerging group of scholars.
Scott feels that such a meeting could spark the creation of “an invisible college” of professionals dedicated to the work of preserving advertising’s history.
Thirty-five advertising historians from around the country – all authors and representing such disciplines as history, economics, pop culture, English and psychology – will attend the meeting, which is sponsored by the UI advertising department.
The keynote speakers are historians Kathy Peiss, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Richard Pells, University of Texas-Austin. Peiss is the author of “Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture.” Pells is the author of “Not Like Us: Europe’s Response to America’s Culture in the Second Half of the 20th Century.”
The UI is a logical place in which to plant the seed of advertising history. The UI Library is home to one of the largest advertising archives in the world. Together, the Woodward Advertising Collection and the D’Arcy Advertising Collection contain some 5 million ads. The UI also is home to the Ad Council Archives.
