"An Industrial Epic:" Ford Motor Company's Institutional Message Advertising Campaign
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Marc Greuther is vice president, historical resources, and chief curator at The Henry Ford.
Saige Jedele is a former associate curator, digital content, for The Henry Ford
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In 1924-25, Ford Motor Company ran a series of sixteen dramatic advertisements in the Saturday Evening Post and Country Gentleman magazines. More in the vein of public relations statements than advertising, the campaign was designed to increase public awareness of the company's wide-ranging activities and explain its overall mission, rather than promote the Model T specifically.
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Ford Industries, 1924
The effectiveness of the ads was due in large part to the specially commissioned artwork that accompanied the descriptive text. This painting pulls together a variety of Ford locations and activities: a gritty panorama designed to convey the breadth of Ford's industrial capabilities.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "An Industrial Epic"
The first ad in the series set the tone of the campaign, which aimed to convey Ford's scale and philosophy. It features a broad sampling of the equipment, activities, and skills deployed within the Ford organization.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "A Nation's Institution Pledged to the Nation's Service"
Here the distinctive Highland Park plant power house dwarfs teeming workers on Woodward Avenue.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Monumental Enterprise"
In this ad, the Rouge plant's power house and blast furnaces serve as backdrop to the massive storage bins alongside the plant's boat slip.
View ArtifactPowerhouse, River, and Dam, 1924
The restricted palette employed in the original artwork, noticeable in this painting, was imposed by the "duotone" process used for color reproduction in the magazine ads.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Vital Resources that Cannot Fail"
This ad is a reminder that Henry Ford pursued many technologies and production methods that we would now recognize as renewable or sustainable.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Mountains of Raw Material"
Here a desolate landscape of iron ore stored at the Rouge plant underscores the company's commitment to basic manufacturing processes.
View ArtifactCoal Train on the Curve, 1924
The imbalance in this painting's composition is a reminder that the artwork was intended to be part of a published whole.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "From Source to Service"
This ad makes the company's vast reach even more apparent: Ford-owned railroads, rail equipment, and mines all extended the company's independence.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "For the People and Posterity"
At the heart of this ad is a notion dear to modern environmentalists — and long valued by farmers — a denial of the very idea of "waste."
A Huge Dynamo, 1924
The artwork for the eighth ad is quite minimal: sculptural mass in a sketchy setting, awaiting its accompanying text.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Prodigies of Power"
Here the sculptural bulk of a steam turbine — Ford-designed and Ford-built — makes a convincing case for the company's energy independence.
Ford Rouge Glass Plant, 1924
This painting was not used in the published campaign: an alternate view appeared in the ninth ad in the series.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Pushing Aside Precedent"
When this ad appeared, the Rouge glass plant with its pioneering processes had been in operation a little over a year.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Saving Millions by Robbing Smoke of its Waste"
By combining an apocalyptic industrial scene and orderly flowchart this ad suggests the extreme range of activities fundamental to the Rouge plant.
View ArtifactBlast Furnace, 1924
This painting, one of two created for the eleventh ad, conveys the heat and scale of the Rouge blast furnace operation.
View ArtifactFord Foundry, 1924
In this painting, one of two scenes used in the eleventh ad, a foundry worker, obscured by a large ladle, directs molten iron into moving molds.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Iron for Unparalleled Production"
This ad emphasizes the never-ceasing, ever-flowing nature of the processes intertwined at the Rouge.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "The Spirit of Progress"
Here the company proudly describes its new experimental engineering facility. Designed by Albert Kahn, its frontage incorporated the names of inventors and scientists Henry Ford considered noteworthy.
View Artifact1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Organized Economies"
By this, the fourteenth installment of the series, readers would understand the Model T in the context of the enormity and complexity of the Ford operation.
View ArtifactFamily Time at Home, 1924
This painting appeared as two segments — losing some of its content in the process — when reproduced as part of the fifteenth ad.
Visions of Tomorrow, 1924
This, the painting used in the final ad, is the most memorable and inspiring — a vision of family, mobility, vast distance, and the lofty possibilities offered by Ford's industrial prowess.
1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Opening the Highways to All Mankind"
The final ad of the series emphasizes that the company is a transformative, service oriented, and mission-based organization — optimistic and future-focused.
