In “Great Times Down South,” historian Giuliano Santangeli Valenzani examines advertising materials such as brochures, booklets, advertisements, and radio and TV spots used by tourism bureaus in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina from 1976 to 1981. This period, known as the Carter era, marked “southern fashion” and economic prosperity in the Sunbelt.
Readers will find in-depth analysis of the strategies, rhetoric, images and themes that were employed by tourism bureaus domestically and internationally. The book offers a unique look into the prevailing conception of the South as marketed and perceived externally. Significant changes in southern culture and society in the late 1970s align with a noticeable shift in tourists’ image of the South.
While the era is acknowledged for altering the perception and symbolic role of the South in American culture, there is little research that explores how these changes influenced the region’s promotional image. Valenzani contends that the roots of the current, elusive image of the South can be precisely traced in advertising materials designed to attract visitors during the 1970s.