Wednesday’s ad is for is by the U.S. Brewers Foundation, from 1959. Beginning during World War II, the USBIF began a series of positive ads under the name “Morale is a Lot of Little Things” followed by an unnumbered series of illustrated ads that were a precursor to the numbered “Home Life in America,” the crown jewel of ads which ran from 1945 to 1956, also known as the Beer Belongs series. But they didn’t end there, and for a short time afterward, beginning in 1956, several more similar ads were created but without the numbering or the “Home Life in America” association. Shortly thereafter, the ads continued to use thematic elements from the earlier ads, but they became more conventional, using photographs instead of art.
In this ad, the ad copy is about the huge amount of payroll paid to its workers by the brewing industry, enough to build 44,760 homes. That amount, in 1959, was $470 million (or $4,030,597,251 in today’s dollars). And that amount doesn’t include employees of distributors, retailers (presumably also not including bartenders and waitstaff at restaurants and/or bars) or allied industry workers, meaning there could be many more houses, too, thanks to the brewing industry.
