Mass Advertising as Social Forecast: A Method for Future Research

Fowles asserts that the appeals of mass advertising reflect the motivational state of the targeted audience and that these motivational states anticipate socio-cultural change. Using advertising of 1950, 1960, and 1970, Fowles determined that the unsatisfied motives of Americans do vary over time. From this data, he constructs a forecast of our socio-cultural state in 1980 and predicts an increasingly isolationist U.S.