This campaign won the Harvard Advertising Award in 1926. Alex Osborn supervised all the process of this campaign. Here is an appraisal. This campaign of the General Electric Company is unusually meritorious. Each advertisement is vivid and releasing to the imagination; there is extraordinary coordination between the illustrations and display lines, which is themselves are excellent; the arguments, simply presented, not only are interesting but bear an evident logic and authenticity. The whole campaign, with the broadness of its conception and the excellence of its execution, was well designed to represent a great industry.
Briefly stated, the function of the campaign was to increase the public consciousness of the achievements and potentialities of electricity. Five distinct series of advertisements were included. One series was devoted to progress through electricity and is illustrated by the advertisement entitled "Wages and Slaves." The four other series were devoted respectively to electricity in the home, in public service, in industry, and on the farm. The advertisement bearing the caption "Any woman who does anything which a little electric motor can do is working for 3 cents an hour!," belonging to the electricity-in-the-home series, excited much interest throughout the electrical industry and was widely used in displays by central stations and by manufacturers of electrical
appliances.
The "Magic Sack" advertisement, typical of the industrial series, paints a picture of
the part electricity has had in the tremendous growth of the cement industry. This
advertisement not only helped build goodwill but also proved to be a direct factor
in securing business from that industry.
