Rosie Riveter Workforce Campaign
Share
Sam Parr shares the story of how Rosie the Riveter marketing campaign transformed women's participation in the workforce during WWII.
"In the early 1940s, America goes to war and all the men between 18 and 35 go off to serve. There's this huge need for workers in manufacturing plants to create B-17s bombers and other supplies. They needed to get young women, who never worked before, to come work in factories.
Westinghouse created this campaign called Rosie the Riveter with the slogan 'Yes We Can.' They would do ads like 'If you can work an electric mixer, you can work a drill' to entice young women to join the workforce.
Before the war, about 2 million women worked. After that campaign went live, it jumped to about 20 million young women who got jobs. It was a women empowerment campaign that pushed America forward.
Interestingly, in the 1950s, they had a campaign called 'Back to Normalcy' showing what Rosie should do now that the war is over. The ads shifted to selling refrigerators and showing things like 'What should Rosie do with strawberries on a summer day? Make a strawberry shortcake.' The campaign was funded by both manufacturing companies and the government - it was propaganda, but good propaganda where they said 'we all have to do this together.'"
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.