Selling Gleam: Making Steel Modern in Post-war America

Abstract

In the late 1950s, steel imports, labour unrest and competition from supposedly new materials, including plastics and aluminium, weren’t the only challenges facing the American steel industry, led by United States Steel and the American Iron and Steel Institute, the steel trade body. A public perception as old-fashioned dogged the sector. The answer, apparently, was to employ post-war market research interpreting consumer desires. The results of these studies encouraged the normally complacent steel industry to take an unusually progressive step: with the help of established branding consultants it began vigorously and aggressively promoting the steel sector as forward-looking, and steel as a bright, light and modern material. In the subsequent institutional campaigns the language and imagery of shininess was highlighted to conjure an attractive vision of modern consumer living. This was particularly evident in the Steelmark merchandising program, the first industry-wide promotion of steel as a modern material, which employed a four-pointed star-like form, suggesting a glinting twinkle of reflected light, and the ‘Gleam of Stainless Steel’ marketing campaign which linked informal, fashionable, lifestyles with shininess, while employing the gleaming Steelmark emblem. This article contributes to the growing field of research focusing on the relationship between market research and design.