Abstract
Advertising practitioners' criticism of ad content was studied through the lens of Advertising Age's ads-we-can-do-without letters for a thirty-year period from 1962 to 1992. A content analysis of 404 complaint letters and accompanying ads found significant changes in practitioner criticism as we movefrom the 1960s to the 1970s. The 1960s produced significantly more complaints about executional errors while the 1970s was a time of heightened concern about the negative social impact of sex, violence, and vulgarity in ads. Concern about sexually- related content and vulgarity continued through the 1980s but appeared to drop off significantly in the 1990s.
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