Design Stories: Exploring Everyday Things

Marketing of Electric Utilities In Canada

Analyzing the Torcan fan by looking at how electric utilities were marketed in Canada at the time through print media reveals significant societal values.

1920s

In the 1920s, sales for electricity increased as a result of decreasing power rates and people’s perception of electricity. This was greatly influenced by advertisements which marketed electricity as efficient, emphasizing the potential for saving costs and making more time for leisure. Such advertisements suggest that these electric utilities would enable intimacy between husbands and wives by reducing the household labour often taken on by women. Thus, not only are the advertisements mediators, but the fans are represented as mediating relationships between people as well.

1930s-1940s

These themes continued into advertisements in the 1930s to 1940s, with a greater emphasis on the idea of progress in technological advances. Convenience, comfort, and reduced fatigue were highlighted in advertisements, shifting people’s perception of daily life from constant labour to the ability to enjoy family life with electric utilities.

During and after the war, the role of women in the household and their involvement in consumer organizations likely influenced advertisements of household appliances and vice versa. In the 1940s, the Wartime Prices and Trade Board created the Consumers Branch which was established and run by Canadian women voluntarily. Housewives would report violations of price ceilings to the Women‘s Regional Advisory Committees, which also conducted surveys with such housewives about the stocks of household appliances. Based on their needs, the committees pushed for metals housewives deemed as urgent to be produced. Their purchases also reflected their role as homemakers and responsibility to find “suitable” household goods that balanced the needs of family members. These housewives are described to make purchases that “further the relationships of the household” over the “publicly acknowledged qualities”. With their involvement in the market and in households, the marketing of household products was likely geared towards women’s needs pertaining to cost and stability.

1950s-1970s

During the 1950s to 1970s after the war, the marketing of electric utilities shifted to the promotion of larger homes. By increasing the scale of the use of electric utilities, advertisements suggested that the scale of leisure and happiness within families would also increase. These advertisements shaped the image of family and people’s consumption practices and ideas regarding leisure time as they provided images of what typical family and social activities could look like with electric utilities. Apart from advertisements, other media channels mediated the perception of the typical home. This is exemplified in a campaign called the Hydro-Québec’s Medallion Home Program, which detailed the optimal temperature for each room in a typical house.

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