A love-affair with 50s adverts sparks a question: If these ads launched us into our state of consumerist over-dose, can marketing wield its magic to cure us of our addiction?

I love 50s adverts, even if I don’t buy in to what they were selling. They capture the wonderfully naive hope of the new post-war world when men went out to work to be able to buy stuff, and more stuff, in order to make their homes and their wives look prosperous and pretty. It was a world where people were in charge, could beat any odds, not to mention the Nazis and the Japanese, and invent their way out of any problem presented by man or nature.