We’re All Backing Britain?

Abstract

Chapter 5 considers the role that Britannic loyalism played in various facets of everyday life in the UK and the Dominions, exploring developments in the fields of advertising and market research, attempts to promote Commonwealth collaboration in non-fiction film production and distribution, and the politics of post-war patriotic trade campaigns. The dismantling of import controls in the late 1950s and early 1960s led to a revival in patriotic trade campaigns. However, such campaigns increasingly came to be seen as outmoded during these years, jeopardizing trade with growing foreign markets. Moreover, changes in the advertising and marketing industries, and the growth of market research, discouraged businesses from making undifferentiated appeals to national markets. Earlier ideas that consumers across the British World had broadly similar interests and tastes were comprehensively challenged with the expansion of segmented marketing.