Successful marketers will always recognize opportunity in national sentiments, especially in times of crisis. The marketers who seized the day very successfully in the 1950’s were those who campaigned for the necessity of fallout shelters during the height of the Cold War. It wasn’t a hard sell considering the United States government was caught up in the Cold War and threat of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. In 1950, under the instruction of President Harry S. Truman, the Civil Defense Administration was created. It pushed numerous programs urging suburban Americans to prepare themselves for imminent disaster by building bomb shelters for their families.
In the 1950’s, Americans were enjoying post WWII prosperity in record numbers. The suburbs were growing larger everyday, as people bought homes in pursuit of the American Dream. Unlike the generations of the past who had no choice but to be frugal due to years of hard economic times, the younger generation was a nation of consumers. They bought anything and everything they could to make their nests cozy.
It was a natural extension to want to protect these new found assets along with one’s family against the dreaded Soviet Union which could at any day unleash a nuclear holocaust upon the western world. Despite their picturesque pursuit of the American Dream in the 1950’s, Americans were familiar with the term, “ground zero”. The cloud of fear hovered over everything. Marketers knew that post WWII America could afford to build fallout shelters and aggressively went after their piece of the pie. Other companies successfully marketed all kinds of fallout shelter necessities like flashlights, first-aid kits, water, and fallout rations.
Fallout shelter marketing strategies were so successful because “paranoia” was the operative word of the American psyche. People even became paranoid that during a nuclear attack, their friends and neighbors would try to force themselves into the shelters. Many had their shelters built in the dead of night, or otherwise clandestinely, so that no one else would know of them.
There were fallout shelters for every budget-from adaptations that could be made to one’s own home to portable, self-contained shelters with all the amenities of a five day trip away from home. It is estimated that 1 in 20 Americans built some type of shelter in their basement or on their property.
The most luxurious and self-contained fallout shelter was conceived for the 1999 movie, Blast from the Past. Christopher Walken plays an overly paranoid inventor who becomes convinced that a nuclear bomb has been dropped. He quarantines his family for 35 years in a self-contained fallout shelter he designed and built underground in the1950’s. His shelter was fitted with all the amenities of home-right down to the wallpaper and funky 1950’s kitchen. There was even a high tech growing bed where they could grow their own vegetables.
In reality, most bomb shelters marketed to suburban home owners in the 1950’s were not quite so elaborate. For $3000, you could buy your family an eight by fourteen foot steel shelter complete with enough food and water for five days. It also came with a radio and generator, and protective suits for venturing outside in the aftermath of an attack. The advertisements of the time showed mothers passing the time reading to their children, etc. while sitting in the comfort of the shelter.
People continued to build fallout shelters until the mid 1960’s when proactive nuclear weapon testing bans and nuclear disarmament campaigns became preferred over the defensive strategy of building fallout shelters. Considering the fallout shelter marketers had a good decade or so run, I would consider theirs to be one of the more successful marketing campaigns of the 20th century.
Sources: 1. Internet Movie Database, “Blast from the Past” (1999), imdb.com
2. “Fallout Shelters”, u-s-history.com
3. Pat Zacharias, “When Bomb Shelters were all the Rage”, (1999), apps.detnews.com
4. Time-Life Books, The American Dream. The 50’s, 1998.
