At last sex is helping to sell a gas appliance
On modernity and desire in the marketing of gas central heating.
In the early 1960s Gas was still trying to shake off a reputation as a stuffy Victorian relic. The post-war sensation of electric power, and particularly atomic power, had made the invisible wire-born energy a far more exciting and ‘modern’ prospect in the public eye. Kenneth Hutchinson, one of the original members of the post-war gas council, the body that governed the newly nationalised industry, was instrumental in turning around the fortunes of gas.
In a speech to the Executive Association of Great Britain in 1963 he heralded the achievements of the Gas council in reviving the fortunes of the fuel thus:
“We have taken two themes where we know gas is superior, speed and flexibility, and are building round them a picture of a far smarter, far more “with it” fuel than anyone ever thought gas could be… You’ve not only got to be good, you’ve got to look good. We think we’ve learnt that lesson.”1
In the 1960s this message was clearly getting across, in a rather breathless article in The Hampshire Magazine in 1962 a reporter announces that “the gas industry is grasping its opportunities with both hands and has virtually become a new industry in the course of the last few years”. This article, which I read in a file of clippings at the National Gas Archive, is illustrated with heroif images of a gas plant in Hilsea, a ‘streamlined, mechanised’ accounting HQ at Southampton and a newly modernised showroom in Winchester. The article is titled “Gas-all systems really go” with the subtitle “SPACE-AGE LOOK FOR VETERAN INDUSTRY”.
The article reports that the industry was looking enviously towards those with Natural Gas fields in other parts of the world, and anticipating the arrival of the first natural gas supplies transported by sea, it would arrive in liquid form cooled to minus 260 F in a high tech ship called The Methane Pioneer. The article finishes looking forward to new technological advances and the continued overhaul of the gas showrooms into more modern retail locations.
In a 1966 article in the industry magazine Gas Showroom, from the same file of clippings, a reporter celebrates the constant upgrading of showrooms in the southern region. Apparently the approach was to tailor the showroom to its area – a busy high footfall area deserves a more energetic approach than a more peaceful neighbourhood. In the more relaxed Portswood area, where the customers are “the A-B class of property owners” the aim is something rather sophisticated:
“One wall and three quarters of the ceiling are panelled in dark wood, and the large pendant fittings are made of copper. Another sophistication is the live water heater display which forms a perpetual waterfall through a series of overflowing copper bowls. Half of the window slides back to bring the appliance closer to the pavement and behind the counter is the pictorial story of the modern gas industry, so that people who have to wait have something to look at”
The most interesting section of this article is headed “Selling comfort” it reflects on the still novel technology of central heating, and the creation of “heating centres” within each of the showrooms.
“The home heating section is warmly carpeted and well furnished to exemplify the luxury of whole house heating […] Whole house heating is made easy to understand by illuminated displays and photographs and there is a lot of emphasis placed on control systems.”
The aim is to bring to life not only the technology but the atmosphere that will be created by gas central heating. These showrooms are designed to simultaneously educate and sell to customers the advantages of domestic gas.
The concept of ‘High Speed Gas’ came before the introduction of Natural Gas, it was introduced by Hutchinson (who even named his autobiography High Speed Gas) in order to denote a new level of infrastructural and technological efficiency. There are two transitions that take place in the 60s and 70s, first to central heating and then to natural gas. All of this was communicated with an enormous sense of urgency.
In an undated photo of a window display in Bury in the 1960s large cartoon images of a young couple referred to as “Home Lovers” accompany signs saying “Go High Speed Gas” and encouraging customers to update their boilers, gas fires and cookers. The target audience appears to be young couples, the use of the word ‘lover’ presumably implying a level of progressiveness, I wonder if we are even to assume that these young home lovers are unmarried. The bright graphics and bold type are designed to speak to a new kind of householder freed from the conservative values of their parents’s generation.
Gas Showroom magazine had a rather peculiar column written by an anonymous salesman called Canute. Adopting the name of the king who tried to bring the forces of the sea to his will this character offers what is presumably intended to be a humorous sideways glance at the gas marketing business. In a 1962 column titled “Canute considers SEX and other important topics” he speaks enthusiastically about the power of sex to sell gas appliances. He is celebrating a photoshoot made to advertise a gas heater which features “a really smashing brunette on a tiger skin warming herself in front of somebody or other’s room heater.” He continues “But who cares about that! She ignites automatically, has warmth I can control and is cheap to run. She doesn’t look it”.
Canute’s misogynistic approach to marketing feels like it aligns with his pride in the modernising industry. Describing the construction of new gas bulk carriers, such as the Methane Pioneer mentioned above, he reflects on the health of the gas business at large.
“After all those years we see not an aged weary industry, hard pressed to struggle on under a burden of out-dated behaviours, but a new gas industry full of vitality, hurrying ahead toward spectacular new achievements.”
Canute’s own enthusiasm for the “smashing brunette” is a microcosm of the health and virility of the national industry’s “150 years of service to British homes, British factories and British hotels”.
At the top of the column he wrote “At last sex is helping to sell a gas appliance, and I hope this has come to stay”. As far as I can tell the gas appliance industry did not take up such base methods, at least not to the extent that Canute seems to have hoped. But it did maintain an emphasis on desire. Whether for wealthy suburbans, young couples, or older customers there was an effort to provide products and services which fulfilled a need, even if the person had not yet recognised that need. An infrastructural and technological transition was sold as a promise of a better household, not a sacrifice or inconvenience but something genuinely hopeful. Something that people wanted as soon as they stepped on the carpet of the luxuriously appointed heating centre in their local showroom.
Kenneth Hutchison, ‘Public Image and Private Eye’, speech to the Executive Association of Great Britain, 28 November 1963 (HTSN B.39) https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/news/archives-centre/papers-sir-kenneth-high/