History of advertising

The history of advertising can be traced to ancient civilizations. It became a major force in capitalist economies in the mid-19th century, based primarily on newspapers and magazines. In the 20th century, advertising grew rapidly with new technologies such as direct mail, radio, television, the internet and mobile devices.

Between 1919 and 2007 advertising averaged 2.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product in the United States.

Pre-modern history

Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and Arabia. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BCE.Bhatia (2000). ''Advertising in Rural India: Language, Marketing Communication, and Consumerism'', 62, 68

In ancient China, the earliest advertising known was oral, as recorded in the Classic of Poetry (11th to 7th centuries BCE) of bamboo flutes played to sell candy. Advertisement usually takes in the form of calligraphic signboards and inked papers. A copper printing plate dated back to the Song dynasty used to print posters in the form of a square sheet of paper with a rabbit logo with "Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop" and "We buy high quality steel rods and make fine quality needles, to be ready for use at home in no time" written above and below. It is considered the world's earliest identified printed advertising medium.

In Europe, as the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable to read, instead of signs that read "cobbler", "miller", "tailor", or "blacksmith" would use an image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers. The first compilation of such advertisements was gathered in ''Les Crieries de Paris'' (Street criers of Paris), a thirteenth-century poem by Guillaume de la Villeneuve.

Three major forms of advertisement existed during the pre-printing period (before the 15th-century); those forms were trademarks (moon, stars etc.), town criers and sign boards:

* Trademarks: The practice of attaching seals or marks to products was widespread in antiquity. Around 4,000 years ago, producers began by attaching simple stone seals to products which, over time, were transformed into clay seals bearing impressed images, often associated with the producer's personal identity. Some of the earliest use of maker's marks, dating to about 1,300 BCE, have been found in India. By the medieval period, hallmarks were applied to high value goods such as precious metals, and assayers were appointed by governments to administer the system and ensure product quality.

* Town criers: In ancient towns and cities, where the majority of citizens were illiterate, town-criers were appointed to call out official announcements and general news. Before long, private individuals began to employ public criers to act as an auctioneer. At the same time, itinerant hawkers developed a system of street cries to promote their goods and services. These street cries provided an essential public service before the advent of mass media.

*Sign-boards: The use of commercial signage has a very ancient history. Retail signage and promotional signs appear to have developed independently in the East and the West. In antiquity, the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks were known to use signage for shop fronts as well as to announce public events such as market days. China also exhibited a rich history of early retail signage systems. In Medieval Britain and France and much of Europe, innkeepers were compelled to erect a sign-board The practice of using signs spread to other types of commercial establishments throughout the Middle Ages. Sign-boards applied to inns and taverns have survived into contemporary times across Britain and much of Europe.

16th–18th centuries

Modern advertising began to take shape with the advent of newspapers and magazines in the 16th and 17th centuries. The very first weekly gazettes appeared in Venice in the early 16th-century. From there, the concept of a weekly publication spread to Italy, Germany and Holland. In Britain, the first weeklies appeared in the 1620s, and that country's first daily newspaper, '' The Daily Courant'', was published from 1702 to 1735. Almost from the outset, newspapers carried advertising which contributed to the cost of printing and distribution. The earliest commercial advertisements promoted books and quack medicines, but by the 1650s, the variety of products being advertised had increased markedly.

Advances in printing allowed retailers and manufacturers to print handbills and trade cards. For example, Jonathon Holder, a London haberdasher in the 1670s, gave every customer a printed list of his stock with the prices affixed. At the time, Holder's innovation was seen as a "dangerous practice" and an unnecessary expense for retailers. The earliest trade cards were not cards at all, instead, they were printed on paper and did not include illustrations. By the 18th century, however, they were printed on the more substantial card and typically bore the tradesman's name and address. Before street numbering came into common use, trade cards often included long-winded sets of directions on how to locate the store or premises. With the advent of commercial engraving and lithography, illustrations became a standard feature of even the most humble trade card. Eventually, trade cards evolved into business cards, which are still in use .

In June 1836 the Paris newspaper ''La Presse'' - edited by Émile de Girardin - became the first to rely on paid advertising to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability. This formula was soon copied by all titles.

Early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press; and medicines, which were increasingly sought after as modern people rejected traditional cures. However, false advertising and "quackery" became common. British newspapers in the 1850s and 1860s appealed to the increasingly affluent middle-class that sought out a variety of new products. The advertisements announced new health remedies as well as fresh foods and beverages. The latest London fashions were featured in the regional press. The availability of repeated advertising permitted manufacturers to develop nationally-known brand-names that had a much stronger appeal than generic products.

A leadership position in British advertising was held by Cope Bros & Co tobacco company, founded in Liverpool in 1848 by Thomas and George Cope. Smoking, of course, had been common for centuries, but Cope Bros innovated with brand names, heavy advertising, and market segmentation according to class. An innovative appeal was to health consciousness; the ads directed at the middle-class men promised that "smoke not only checks disease but preserves the lungs". A rugged heavy taste was pitched to working men, soldiers and sailors, while "delicately fragrant" was part of the appeal to the upper-class. The packaging was attractive, posters were omnipresent to show that smoking was a normal part of English life; lobbying was used to undercut the anti-tobacco lobby.

Advertising agencies

Great Britain

T F G Coates hailed Thomas J. Barratt as "the father of modern advertising" in London in 1908.Matt Haig, ''Brand failures: the truth about the 100 biggest branding mistakes of all time'', Kogan Page Publishers, 2005, pp. 219, 266.Nicholas Mirzoeff, ''The visual culture reader'', Routledge, 2002, p. 510. Working for the Pears Soap company, Barratt created an effective advertising campaign for the company products, which involved the use of targeted slogans, images and phrases. One of his slogans, "Good morning. Have you used Pears' soap?" was famous in its day and into the 20th century.Eric Partridge, Paul Beale, ''A Dictionary of Catch Phrases: British and American, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day'', Routledge, 1986, p. 164.

As an advertising tactic, Barratt associated the Pears brand with high culture and quality. Most famously, he used the painting ''Bubbles'' by John Everett Millais as an advertisement by adding a bar of Pears soap into the foreground. Barratt continued this theme with a series of adverts of well-groomed middle-class children, associating Pears with domestic comfort and aspirations of high society.

Barratt introduced many of the crucial ideas that lie behind successful advertising and these were widely circulated in his day. He constantly stressed the importance of a strong and exclusive brand image for Pears and of emphasizing the product's availability through saturation campaigns. He also understood the importance of constantly reevaluating the market for changing tastes and mores, stating in 1907 that "tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them. An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale, and unprofitable if presented to the public today. Not that the idea of today is always better than the older idea, but it is different – it hits the present taste."

United States

In the United States around 1840, Volney B. Palmer set up the first advertising agency in Philadelphia. In 1842 Palmer bought large amounts of space in various newspapers at a discounted rate then resold the space at higher rates to advertisers. The actual ad – the copy, layout, and artwork – was still prepared by the company wishing to advertise; in effect, Palmer operated as a space broker. The situation changed in the late-19th century when the advertising agency of N.W. Ayer & Son was founded in New York. It planned, created, and executed complete advertising campaigns for its customers. It created a number of memorable slogans for organizations such as De Beers, AT&T and the U.S. Army.

By 1900 the advertising agency had become the focal point of creative planning, and advertising was firmly established as a profession.
At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement space in newspapers. N. W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content. N.W. Ayer opened in 1869, and was located in Philadelphia.

The amount of space available in newspapers grew rapidly. The ''Boston Transcript'' published in 19,000 "agate lines" Of advertising in 1860, 87,000 in 1900, and 237,000 in 1918.

In 1893, 104 companies spent over $50,000 each on national advertising; most sold patent medicines, which faded away after the federal food-and-drug legislation of the early 20th century. Seven innovators had emerged in the big time: Quaker Oats, Armour meat, Cudahy meat, American Tobacco Company, P. Lorillard tobacco, Remington Typewriters, and Procter & Gamble soap. By 1914, two thirds of the top advertisers came from just five industries: 14 food producers, 13 in automobiles and tires, nine in soap and cosmetics, and four in tobacco.

Agencies were forever breaking up and reforming, especially when one executive would split, taking with him a major client and his team of copywriters.

France

In the late 19th century in France, Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize.

Since 1900: Global

Advertising in the developing world was dominated by agencies in the imperial powers, especially from London and Paris. J. Walter Thompson became the first American agency to expand internationally with the opening of J. Walter Thompson London in 1899. It expanded across the globe, becoming one of the first American agencies in Egypt, South Africa and Asia. Much of the pressure to expand came from General Motors, which wanted to export its automobiles worldwide. Ford turned to N.W. Ayer, which began its expansion in Europe and Latin America in the 1930s. The typical policy was to put an American manager in charge, and hire a staff drawn from locals who had a better understanding of the language and the culture. In 1941–42, however, Ayer closed its foreign offices and decided to concentrate on the American market.

In 2011, spending on advertising reached $143 billion in the United States and $467 billion worldwide.

Today, internationally, the largest ("big four") advertising conglomerates are Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP.

Since 1900: United States and Canada

Advertising increased dramatically in the United States after 1870 as industrialization expanded the supply of manufactured products to a very large market. In order to profit from this higher rate of production, industry needed to recruit workers as consumers of factory products. It did so through the invention of mass marketing designed to influence the population's economic behavior on a larger scale. Total advertising volume in the United States grew from about $200 million in 1880 to nearly $3 billion in 1920.

In the 1910s and 1920s, many ad men believed that human instincts could be targeted and harnessed – " sublimated" into the desire to purchase commodities. Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, promoted the approach making him a pioneer of modern cigarette advertising. Glantz argues, "it was really the tobacco industry, from the beginning, that was at the forefront of the development of modern, innovative, advertising techniques."Stanton Glantz in ''Mad Men Season 3 Extra – Clearing the Air – The History of Cigarette Advertising'', part 1, min 3:38

In the 1920s, under Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the American government promoted advertising. Hoover himself delivered an address to the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World in 1925 called 'Advertising Is a Vital Force in Our National Life." In October 1929, the head of the U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Julius Klein, stated "Advertising is the key to world prosperity." This was part of the "unparalleled" collaboration between business and government in the 1920s, according to a 1933 European economic journal.

Advertising was a vehicle for cultural assimilation, encouraging immigrants to exchange their traditional habits and tastes in favor of a modern American lifestyle. An important tool for influencing immigrant workers was the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers (AAFLN). The AAFLN was primarily an advertising agency but also gained heavily centralized control over much of the immigrant press.

Canadian media market

In 1900, most Canadian newspapers were local affairs, designed primarily to inform local partisans about the provincial and national political scene. The publishers depended on loyal partisan subscribers, as well as contracts for public printing controlled by the political parties. With the rise of national advertising agencies after 1900, a major transformation was underway. The advertisers wanted them to reach the maximum possible circulation, regardless of partisanship. The result was a series of consolidations yielding much larger, largely nonpartisan newspapers, which depended more heavily on advertising revenue than on subscriptions from loyal party members. By 1900, three-fourths of the revenue of Toronto newspapers came from advertising. About two thirds of the newspapers' editorial pages loyally supported either the Conservative or the Liberal party, while the remainder were more independent. Across the board, the news pages increasingly featured more objectivity and bipartisanship, and the publishers were mostly focused on advertising revenues that were proportionate to overall circulation. A newspaper that appealed only to one party cut its potential audience in half. Simultaneously, the rapid growth of industry in Ontario and Quebec, coupled with the rapid settlement of the prairies, produced a large more affluent newspaper-reading population. The result was a golden age for Canadian newspapers peaking about 1911. Many papers failed during the war era. Advertising agencies in 1915 gained a major advantage with the arrival of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which for the first-time provided reliable data on circulation, as opposed to the partisan boasting and exaggeration that had been the norm. the agencies now had a stronger hand in bargaining for lower advertising rates. The 1920s became a time of consolidation, budget-cutting and dropping of traditional party affiliation. By 1930 only 24% of Canada's dailies were partisan, 17% were "independent" partisan, and the majority, 50%, had become fully independent.

Sex and psychology

At the turn of the 20th century, there were few career choices for women in business; however, advertising was one of the few. Since women were responsible for most of the purchasing done in their household, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women's insight during the creative process. Helen Lansdowne Resor at J. Walter Thompson Agency, was one of the pioneers.

In 1911, the Woodbury Soap Company became the first to use images of sexual contact to sell a product. Their ad slogan, created by Helen Lansdowne, claimed that women who used the soap would have "Skin You Love To Touch". Her copy promised the soap would increase the beauty of one's skin; it offered a color print and a week's supply of the soap for 10 cents. The slogan became so popular that Woodbury used it until the 1940s. Albert Lasker said the ad's use of sex appeal made it one of three great landmarks in advertising history. It was ranked 31st on ''Advertising Age's'' list of the top 100 campaigns of the 20th century.

Nudity

In 1936, Woodbury was one of the first companies to use nudity in its advertisements. The ad, known as "The Sun Bath", was photographed by Edward Steichen and showed a nude woman lying on stairs on her side with her back to the camera. The text advertised that Woodbury Soap was now enriched with "filter sunshine". Many celebrities appeared in advertisements for Woodbury Soap.

In international perspective, a 2008 comparison of nudity in advertising in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, South Korea, Thailand, and the United States reveals that China and the United States have the most demure ads, while Germany and Thailand exposed more of the female body. There is little variation in male undress.

Psychology

In the early 20th century, psychologists Walter D. Scott and John B. Watson contributed applied psychological theory to the field of advertising. Scott said, "Man has been called the reasoning animal but he could with greater truthfulness be called the creature of suggestion. He is reasonable, but he is to a greater extent suggestible". He demonstrated this through his advertising technique of a direct command to the consumer. The former chair at Johns Hopkins University, John B. Watson was a highly recognized psychologist in the 1920s. After leaving the field of academia he turned his attention towards advertising where he implemented the concepts of behaviorism into advertising. This focused on appealing to the basic emotions of the consumer: love, hate, and fear. This type of advertising proved to be extremely effective as it suited the changing social context which led to heavy influence of future advertising strategy and cemented the place of psychology in advertising.

Albert Lasker: Salesmanship in print

Chicago, along with New York, was the center of the nation's advertising industry. Albert Lasker, known as the "father of modern advertising," made Chicago his base 1898–1942. As head of the Lord and Thomas agency, Lasker devised a copywriting technique that appealed directly to the psychology of the consumer. Women seldom smoked cigarettes; he told them if they smoked Lucky Strikes they could stay slender. Lasker's use of radio, particularly with his campaigns for Palmolive soap, Pepsodent toothpaste, Kotex products, and Lucky Strike cigarettes, not only revolutionized the advertising industry but also significantly changed popular culture.

Lasker had an inquiring mind about what advertising was and how it worked. Lasker believed that advertising consisted of news and information was news, He changed his mind when a colleague Johnny Kennedy told him, "News is a technique of presentation, but advertising is a very simple thing. I can give it to you in three words, it is 'salesmanship in print'". Lasker and Kennedy used this concept with the 1900 Washer Co. (later Whirlpool). Their campaign was so successful that, within four months of running the first ad, they attracted additional clients and their "advertising spend" went from $15,000 a year to $30,000 a month. Within six months, their firm was one of the three or four largest advertisers in the nation.

In 1908 Lasker recruited Claude C. Hopkins to the firm, specifically to work on the Van Camp Packaging Company (Van Camp's) account. The relationship lasted for 17 years. Lasker helped create America's infatuation with orange juice. Lord & Thomas acquired the Sunkist Growers, Incorporated account in 1908, when the citrus industry was in a slump. Lasker created campaigns that not only encouraged consumers to eat oranges, but also to drink orange juice.

Among Lasker's pioneering contributions was the introduction into public schools of classes that explained to young girls about puberty and menstruation (done to promote Kotex tampons). He is also credited as the creator of the soap opera genre, and using radio and television as media driven by advertising. Lasker took time off from business to help the presidential campaign of Republican Warren Harding in 1920, using high-powered advertising techniques that helped produce a massive landslide.

On the radio from the 1920s

In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers. Madison Avenue early on recognized the importance of radio as a new advertising medium. Advertising provided the major funding for most stations in the United States, which never had a licensing fee for set users. Great Britain used the mandatory fee on set owners to fund the British Broadcasting Corporation
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