Boosterism on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Boosterism is the act of promoting ("boosting") a town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it. Boosting can be as simple as talking up the entity at a party or as elaborate as establishing a visitors' bureau. It has been somewhat associated with American small towns.
Babbitt
' by Sinclair Lewis *
The Untold Delights of Duluth
', a speech by a US congressman in 1871, introduced by David McCullough Promotion and marketing communications History of United States expansionism Community development Political science terminology {{polisci-stub
Boosterism is the act of promoting ("boosting") a town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it. Boosting can be as simple as talking up the entity at a party or as elaborate as establishing a visitors' bureau. It has been somewhat associated with American small towns.
History
During the expansion of the American and Canadian West, boosterism became epidemic as the leaders and owners of small towns made extravagant predictions for their settlement, in the hope of attracting more residents and, not coincidentally, inflating the prices of local real estate. During the nineteenth century, competition for economic success among newly founded cities led to overflow of booster literature that listed the visible signs of growth, cited statistics on population and trade and looked to local geography for town success reasons. The 1871 humorous speech ''The Untold Delights of Duluth'', delivered by Democratic U.S. RepresentativeJ. Proctor Knott
James Proctor Knott (August 29, 1830 – June 18, 1911) was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky and served as the 29th Governor of Kentucky from 1883 to 1887. Born in Kentucky, he moved to Missouri in 1850 and began his political career the ...
, lampooned boosterism. Boosterism is also a major theme of two novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
s by Sinclair Lewis—'' Main Street'' (published 1920) and '' Babbitt'' (1922). As indicated by an editorial that Lewis wrote in 1908 entitled "The Needful Knocker", boosting was the opposite of knocking. The editorial explained:
The short story "Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg
"Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, and features the young gentleman Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves. The story was published in the ''Saturday Evening Post
''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American ...
" (1917) by P.G. Wodehouse includes an encounter with a convention visiting from the fictional town of Birdsburg, Missouri who talk up their town:
Boosting is also done in political settings, especially in regard to disputed policies or controversial events. The former UK prime minister Boris Johnson is strongly associated with such behaviour.
See also
* Advertising * Potemkin Village *Promotion (marketing)
In marketing, promotion refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or issue, most of the time persuasive in nature. It helps marketers to create a distinctive pl ...
* Puffery
References
External links
*''The Promised Land'', by Pierre Berton *Babbitt
' by Sinclair Lewis *
The Untold Delights of Duluth
', a speech by a US congressman in 1871, introduced by David McCullough Promotion and marketing communications History of United States expansionism Community development Political science terminology {{polisci-stub