The history of advertising is one that has to be psychologically understood. Sophisticated advertising elements introduced over the years have changed motivational research to define consumer behavior, media analysis to reach targeted consumers, and creative strategy to enhance selling messages. Advertising is a communications tool that functions most efficiently in combination with the centralized exchange: when goods and services are no longer sold directly between buyers and sellers but are handled by merchants as intermediaries. Advertising was needed to make potential consumers aware of the availability of goods. In an economy in which supply > demand, advertising created demand by introducing new products or suggesting how consumers can solve some problem with existing products.
The beginning of the fulfillment of democratic ideas created a more literate society. This created more of a need and support for newspapers and magazines. The Industrial revolution swept across America allowing for more efficient manufacturing of goods and mass production of newspapers and magazines. This created a bigger worker class who urbanized and needed more information. Railroads and telegraphic communication would begin to pave the way for brands to better communicate. National brands began to emerge and changed the structure of the advertisement. Products are now differentiated and consumers were gaining loyalty to one brand. The availability of branded goods, ability to provide national distribution, and a growing middle class with income to spend provided a market for more products. This supported the growth of the advertisement industry.
Advertising’s modern era would arise in research and responsibility. In early advertising, they were a lack of an ethical framework for creating a promotional message and reliable research to measure advertising effects. Used to be that people are responsible for discerning truth from falsehood themselves so little need for regulation of information. The public called for greater consumer protection by the late 19th century (mainly in medicines). Research at this time often provided unreliable information and sometimes spread false fear of the power of subliminal advertising and motivational research.
The earliest known evidence of Advertising can be found on Babylonian clay tablets from 3000 B.B. Inns in England were the first to use hoarding-first printed outdoor signs, the forerunner of modern outdoor advertising. The foundations of modern advertising can be divided into 4 parts:
- The premarketing era: from the start of product exchange to the 18th century. During this time, buyers and sellers communicated very primitively. They used clay tablets, town criers, tavern signs, or primitive printing.
- Mass communication era: from the 1700s to the early 20th century, advertisers were increasingly able to reach large segments of the population through mass media. Used mass newspapers and national magazines, radios, and brands began to differentiate.
- Research era: in recent years, from the 1920s to now, advertisers increasingly have been able to identify narrowly defined audience segments through sophisticated research methods. Early research emphasizes info on broad demographics such as age, sex, and geography. Now it takes lifestyles and motivation into account.
- Interactive era: communication will increasingly become controlled by consumers who will determine when and where they can be reached with promotional messages.
People no longer have to watch commercials. Advertisers have to become more sensitive to feedback. Advertisers have to be more focused on keeping people’s trust to have successful advertising. In today’s world, there is now the move to creativity in advertising. Originally, ad companies were media space brokers (buy bulk space from newspapers and reselling small space allotments to advertisers). By the end of the 20th century, persuasive advertising became important because serious brand competition began to take place. The shift in commodity goods to branded goods pushed strong promotional offers accompanying product advertising (this introduces the emotional appeal).
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John Wanamaker of Wanamaker Department Stores began to sell products based on style and luxury rather than by utility. He hired the “first” true copy-writer, John Powers, and this began the move towards full-service advertising. John Watson from Johns Hopkins, the father of behavioral research, was hired to perform market research that attempts to determine underlying reasons for purchase behavior. Advertisers began to understand the needs and want of consumers. Then, Alfred Sloan Jr. issued in his teachings of planned obsolescence where products are discarded not because of lost utility but lost of status. By the 1950s, almost all national companies had accepted that it was the position of a brand in consumers’ mind that sells the product rather than the superiority of utility. The brand could last forever whereas products have a life cycle and will die.
The development of print media would create a symbiotic relationship with advertising. The newspaper as an advertising medium. It would become the forerunner of modern want ads were sequins, handwritten posters in 16th and 17th century England, that sought people to fill positions. With the introduction of the rotary press, the era of the penny press began in the US, the forerunner of the mass newspaper in the US. Newspapers established a model for financial support from advertising that continues for the majority of media today.
At first, magazines weren’t as successful as newspapers but when they did become successful, they could reach more people beyond the borders of a particular city. Modern consumer magazine didn’t begin until the latter part of the 19th century. Many magazines were about health, fashion, and good, but later about problems in social reforms and medicine advertisement. At the time, advertising support for magazines came from already successful brands that had a national following. Magazines would become the preeminent medium for national advertisers because they offered national circulation, both editorial and advertising credibility, color availability, and an extremely low-cost means of reaching millions of readers. Magazines got money from advertisers to make up for the cost of production.
Mass production, a manufacturing technique using specialization and interchangeable parts to achieve production efficiencies- began to take over America, beginning in textiles and furniture, and reached a peak with automobiles. Henry Ford adopted a successful formula where mass production was based on high volume, affordability, and mass selling through advertising. Mass production made products readily available; this improved the lifestyles and standards of living for almost all Americans. Consumption had to keep these mass producing factories fueling; to encourage such consumption, the advertising industry grew to create demand. Hence, cue advertising agencies.
Volney Palmer is generally credited with starting the first advertising agency in 1841, buying bulk newspaper space at a discount and selling it to individual advertisers for profit). In 1869, George Rowell published newspaper’s circulation estimates and started the movement toward published rate cards and verified circulation. This made it harder for space brokers to make a profit. By the end of the 19th century, major companies were providing creative services, media placement, and basic research as well as developing the functions of the full-service ad agencies of the future. In 1917, the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) founded 111 charter members. Today, they have more than 5,000 members that make approximately 75 % of all advertising dollars.
By the 1930s, some companies had begun to expand overseas and began the movement of global advertising. During the rise of America, especially during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the excesses of big businesses and the advertising that contributed to the environment of immorality (think Mad Men) forced the public and Congress to demand stricter regulation of advertising and other business practices. The pure food and drug act of 1906 was issued to protect consumers from fraudulent food producers and advertisers. did not address the problems of faulty food labels. This was not strictly enforced by the FDA either.
The federal trade commission act of 1914 came to act. The agency of the federal government empowered to prevent unfair competition and to prevent fraudulent, misleading, or deceptive advertising in interstate commerce. Today, the FTC primarily ensures that advertising claims and sales practices meet reasonable standards of honesty and truthfulness.