What it also meant was that some products—like Filmo cameras and projectors—were completely removed from the civilian economy. But that didn't stop major companies from advertising their wares. On the contrary, firms like Bell Telephone System and General Motors published newspaper and magazine ads for many wartime products and services that Americans couldn't buy or use. Why advertise something you couldn't sell? According to Inger Stole, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, companies advertised these products to "keep their brand names in the public consciousness. They knew that once the war was over, it was very, very important that the public [not forget] the brand names." The ads also portrayed the companies' involvement in the war effort as a patriotic—rather than a profit-driven—act. This period of marketing, which began just two months after the U.S. entered WWII, was part of an unprecedented collaboration between advertisers and the U.S. government.
