Advertising Pinochet: The Cold War Limits to a Neoliberal Crusade

In July of 1974, the J. Walter Thompson advertising company signed a contract with the Chilean junta to improve the international image of the dictatorship. Around two months later the agreement was made public, first in the United States and then around the world. Over the next few days, European and American JWT managers began to complain about the agreement. By the end of September, 1974, it was clear that the collaboration would have to be severed, which finally happened in October. In this paper, I show that both the efforts made to sign the contract and its sudden cancellation testify to the early makings of neoliberalism and its contingency. Pinochet's Chile was an early neoliberal experiment; therefore this paper sheds new light on reconstructing the rising of neoliberalism within a Cold War framework. Most of the new historiography on neoliberalism focuses on ideas and public policy. I build on this recent historiography but change the scope. Here, I tell the story of a contract that provides a glimpse into this fundamental turn in the history of capitalism from the point of view of a multinational company facing the limits imposed by the negative reputation of the junta.