The History of Advertising

‘The History of Advertising’, is one of my fave documentaries, it’s all about what went on, in the sometimes mad world of ads. Perhaps it should be called, ‘Madvertising’ :). The video covers centuries, even touching on millennia.

It’s truly amazing to see how advertising adapted, as the available media, and the world really, changed and progressed.

This documentary, covers vast eras, from ancient Greece, Rome, the Medieval years… onto the Printing Press, Newspapers, Magazines, and then moves on to Aerial Blimps, Radio, TV… it’s fascinating to see the changes as they happened.

There are still changes in advertising going on today, and there seems to be a troubling new demographic being targeted, mainly, kids and young people. Some advertisers are trying to covert them from childhood, and turning them into consumers from almost, the cradle.

It’s not really a new idea, we’ve all been targeted with toys and stuff since we were kids. But, nowadays, with the rise of social media, this targeting seems to be growing at an alarming rate. But, that’s another topics for another time, it’s an item that deserves a discussion of its own. For now, let’s just look at the world of advertising through the ages.

McDonalds on the Moon?

Yes, the progression continues on today in modern times, where we’ve entered in to the digital realm.

The Internet, is in everybody’s back pocket these days. On our wrists with Google Watches, even Googles Glasses… at this rate, wonder when we’ll see the first McDonalds on the Moon? :).

Have a look at this wonderful video documentary, which covers all these changes.

It’s delivered in a light-hearted, but educational, informative way, a bit of a cinematographic masterpiece in itself. I love this video. If you’re into copywriting and invention, I’m pretty sure you’ll love it too.

If you want to study advertising, ‘Sell and Spin’, is a masterpiece source of information to begin with. These historical facts, can never go out of fashion. Although we may disagree with some of the principles, that’s what happened, strongly recommended.

Spin and Sell – a History of Advertising / Transcript

From ancient phrases etched in stone, to today’s cutting-edge multimedia commercials, selling, has always meant, ‘grabbing attention’.

Attention from people with chickens to trade, or money to spend. The point… moving the product. The means, tapping into desire, creating need… this is a story of exclamation, exaggeration, and even exploitation. A story that extends from roman highways, to Madison Avenue. It’s, Sell and Spin, a history of advertising.

Advertising. Dating from the 1400s… the word is derived from the Middle English, ‘advertisen’, meaning to notify… today, it means so much more. It’s a way to get to people’s subconscious, unconscious, to sort of delight their eyeballs, and motivate them into some kind of consumer behavior, by giving them images and words. This presents the 10 million thousand things we have to do every day… locate stuff, prevent osteoporosis, train dog, pet husband, save the planet, then, we still have to do the laundry, really well.

I’ve always loved advertising, because it’s always working under the illusion, that it’s directed just to me. Nothing is more narcissistic than to think that somebody really cares about you.

Media researchers estimate that each day, the average person in the United States, is exposed to upwards of 3000 ads. You’re seeing ads when you get on the bus, you’re seeing ads when you watch TV, there are ads on the floors and in supermarkets, there are ads on the shelves at the convenience store, there are ads on the sides of telephone booths, they’re are blimp ads… the real question is not how many ads do we see, the real question is, “what do we have to do to see no ads?”… and the answer is go to sleep.

At the beginning of the 20th century, manufacturers spent 450 million dollars a year, advertising their products in the United States. By centuries end, and worldwide spending on Advertising, exploded to almost 450 billion dollars.

“Is there not one among thee, who is a man”

With all of this money being spent, advertising has spread the gospel of consumption beyond the boundaries of language and nationality. There’s six billion people on Earth… the single most recognized utterance on the globe is the term, “okay”.

The second most recognized words on Earth, phrase on Earth, are Coca-Cola. Second.

Well, if I were spending billions of dollars for decades, I probably could get an icon recognized by more people around the world than anything else.

What these companies are doing, is exactly the same thing that religions did. They are moving a series of images through a culture, promising very much like religion, a kind of, not pleasure in the next world, but pleasure and acceptance in this world. And there is nothing more powerful.

Throughout the history of the art of selling, the advertising highway has been littered with successes and failures. Advertising Oracle, Leo Burnett, showed that the right icon can sell almost anything to almost anybody.

Leo Burnett is actually creating personalities AS products.

He realizes that humans can’t really make connections with Frosted Flakes…

 

…but they can with Tony the Tiger. They can’t really connect with asparagus, but they can with the Jolly Green Giant.

That they really can’t connect with cigarettes, but they can with the Marlboro Man.

The Marlborough man is considered the most successful, and the most reviled advertising icon in history.

But when he was introduced, The Macho Cowboy, was a complete departure for Marlborough.

When they were first sold in the 1920s, Marlboros were targeted to women… they came complete with a red filter tip to cover up lipstick stains, and were sold with the tagline, ‘Mild as May’.

Well after a few decades, sales were flat, and Philip Morris decided to do something bold, again, and that was to completely repackage and redesign the brand for men.

After nearly three decades, the company and its Ad Agency, had finally aimed at the right Market. With the right pitch. Specifically what it was aiming at, was that population of white collar workers, who had been in World War II, and now came back and were stuck behind desks. So Marlboro was a kind of, means of escape into a fantasy of virility and freedom.

The promise of the Marlboro Man is this, come to where the flavor is, come to Marlboro Country, it is a promise of flavor, and the iconography simply is a way to give a shorthand to do that.

When the Marlboro Man went National in 1955, annual sales of the cigarette, jumped an astounding three thousand percent from the previous year… there’s no doubt that this was a cigarette that went from very small usage, to huge consumption solely on the basis of abrand, making this object, human.

The right advertising can make even controversial products, hugely successful.

But, history has shown that not all products can be sold. Advertising budgets alone, will not overcome a bad marketing decision. Simply, you know, I don’t care how much money you put behind it, you’re not going to sell me that that product.

This is the Edsel.

Advertisers say it’s the product that matters, and sometimes the product misses the market.

Well of course, one of the biggest product failures of all time was Edsel. And, we all remember that story. This great, lemon sucking looking car, with this strange grill that the public never quite “cottoned to… unlike any other car you’ve ever seen”, which was perhaps the problem.

Ford introduced the Edsel in 1957, after spending 250 million dollars manufacturing a car with many technologically innovative features. A 30 million dollar advertising campaign, confidently predicted, the Edsel look is here to stay, instead the look practically guaranteed an early demise for this car of the future.

I think the advertising was fine, because it introduced the product and everybody became very aware of the product, but the more the advertising ran, the more people had a look at the product, and decided they didn’t want anything to do with it. And the quicker the product failed.

Advertising, good and bad, has a long Rich history.

Archaeologists have discovered numerous examples of ancient advertising, including a 3,000 year old Babylonian sign depicting wine for sale. Ad’s dating from the First Century A.D., have been found on the walls of Pompeii, hailing political candidates, theater performances, sporting contest, and even taverns.

And then, there were the criers. Walking, talking advertisements.

In the days of ancient Greece, criers were seen heralding the arrival of ships from far off shores, enticing crowds, with a list of wondrous and exciting Goods.

Often they’d be accompanied by musicians, producing the first commercials.

By the Middle Ages, a merchant class was beginning to emerge, but for the most part, people remained illiterate, limiting advertising to signs and criers.

We have residuals of this, in the three ball sign of the pawn shop, or the barber pole.

These are vestiges of advertising, which essentially turned attention toward what the product was. Getting shaved, or selling Goods.

In 1448, an invention came along that transformed society. Its impact on Advertising, would be monumental.

Enter the Gutenberg Press.

Though the Chinese had already been printing with movable type, for more than a thousand years, Johann Gutenberg’s invention set in motion, a printing revolution throughout Europe.

The more people became literate, and the more they started looking for goods and services, and not just living in their own little huts, and collecting at their own food, the more need there was for advertising.

With the rise of Gutenberg and the printing press, things dramatically shift, and now what is advertised, oddly enough, first great subject of advertising, is books.

The first printed English language advertisement appeared in 1480, the brainstorm of one William Caxton.

Noticing the leftover paper from a book of religious verse he was preparing, Caxton made signs promoting the book’s availability.

Printers throughout Europe were suitably impressed with the idea. Soon, bills selling all kinds of goods, like tobacco, and tea, began appearing.

Eventually the bills became so numerous on the Streets of London, that competitors tore down each other’s ads. The practice led to the first advertising code in history, printers agreed that ads could remain posted for two weeks.

The printing press enabled advertising to conquer the streets of London. merely the first victory on its way to dominating all mass media with its message, to buy buy buy.

Coming up, newspapers and magazines, provide a new outlet for advertisers.

We now return to, ‘Sell and Spin” – a History of Advertising, here on the History Channel.

Every day on countless doorsteps, the morning paper arrives, delivering a bombardment of advertising, and not just the news.

The average consumer has come to expect, that there’ll be advertising in whatever medium he or she is turning to, to look for news or entertainment, or information.

Newspapers first regularly appeared in the 17th century, without ads. These simple one-sheet Affairs, were crowded print on scrap paper, their potential to sell was yet to be realized.

It was in 1625 that the first known newspaper ad appeared in England.

Though the idea was slow to catch on, newspapers would soon become the first medium, conquered by advertisers.

Newspapers were significant in the development of what we consider modern day advertising, because they were mass media, and what they did, was make available an endless amount of space for advertisers to sell their brands, to promote their brands.

The advertising before the late 19th Century for the most part, could be considered announcement. Local retailers or merchants, would announce the availability of their goods. They might throw in a superlative or two, to encourage people to come to shop.

Newspapers arrived on the doorstep of the new world in 1704, with the publication of the Boston newsletter.

Its third issue, was a milestone in advertising history, publishing the first ads to appear in the Americas.

The next advance in advertising, came from none other than Benjamin Franklin, who founded the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1728.

Franklin was the first to use illustrations in advertisements, to better catch the eye of the consumer.

By the middle of the 18th century, most newspapers relied on advertising for profits…While newspaper publishers, gladly accepted advertisers money, many continued to believe, that advertising was beneath them.

The Gatekeepers of print never wanted to muddy the purity of what they were doing with commercialism.

In newspapers, ads were confined to small spots, where the same kind of font was being used. Faced with these restrictions, advertisers made the jump from simple announcements, to more creative methods of attracting attention.

One thing they would do is repeat a message… this was the forerunner of early advertising slogans as we know it today.

They would take a one-line message and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it.

For, businesses that wanted to advertise outside their hometown, there was no easy path.

Volney B Palmer, the son of the newspaper publisher, filled this void, setting up his shop in Philadelphia in the early 1840s.

Palmer’s simple Plan created a whole new industry, the advertising agency.

He was an agent of newspapers. He would go out and try to recruit advertisements from businesses, and was paid a commission by the newspaper, and this was the initial role of advertising agents… that they were essentially working for the publishers.

Soon, advertising agencies were opening across the country. Some of today’s largest agencies such as, the J Walter Thompson company, can trace their roots back to this era… but these agencies were still limited to placing the ads, not writing them.

Normally the business that was advertising would scribble something on the back of an envelope, say, and have it brought down to the newspaper, or sent over to the magazine.

Magazines first opened their pages to advertisers in the post-civil War era, providing the national exposure that manufactures crave.

Beyond that, the format was very conducive to beautiful advertising and color advertising, when the advertiser could afford it.

One early magazine publisher, who eagerly pursued advertising revenue, was Cyrus Curtis.

He introduced the lady’s Home Journal, and he seemed to have the right mix of fiction, fashion, articles… that appeal to women, but also his magazine was created solely as a vehicle for advertising.

Businesses had National magazines in which to advertise their products, and a national railroad system to distribute them.

Buy, they still needed some way to make their products stand out, to make their product more desirable than all the others… the solution? Branding.

When you were selling biscuits for instance in the 19th century, you would sell the ‘biscuit in a barrel’, on the barrel. You would burn the address of where the biscuits came from.

The history of advertising, is the transformation of that burned, brand, from the package, to the product.

So that when you pick up an Oreo cookie for instance, you can actually hold it and look at the Oreo brand literally on the cookie.

The idea is not so much to attract individuals to try it, so much as to make them into selective customers, who say, I want that particular pack of cigarettes, or that particular bottle of beer or that particular bar of soap.

Some of the earliest and most proficient practitioners of branding, were the producers of patent medicines, often dubious tonics and elixirs, purporting to have enormous curative powers.

One brand in particular stands out as a triumph of advertising, Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, launched in 1875.

Lydia Pinkham, had started by brewing a folk remedy on her stove for female complaints, and it was a mixture of roots and herbs, and alcohol… the concoction was branded with Lydia’s matronly image, an image the public trusted.

This trust sold enormous amounts of the Vegetable Compound. At one point, Pinkham’s sons decided that with all their success, they no longer needed to advertise… but, when they stopped advertising, their sales automatically dropped.

Also, when they returned to advertising, their sales dramatically went up. And this was the first widely publicized advertising success story, that made the connection… is the more you advertise, the more you sell.

Convinced of advertising’s power, manufacturers of more benign products decided to jump on me branding bandwagon.

By the late 19th century, manufacturers were figuring out ways to convert generic products into packaged, labelled, and branded goods.

One of the classic examples of this was the, ‘You need a biscuit’, that the National Biscuit Company pioneered in the late1890s. The National Biscuit Company, the forerunner of Nabisco, turned to the, ‘NW Ayer and Son’ agency, for expert advice on selling its new cracker to the public.

Founded in 1869 by Francis Weyland Ayer, the agency initially just placed ads, but Ayer realized agencies needed to prepare the ads, not just place them.

He is credited with starting the first, full-service, Ad Agency. Writing copy and producing illustrations.

To sell the new cracker. The agency employed many tricks of the advertising trade. A memorable name, ‘you need a biscuit’, a humanizing icon, the Slickerboy, which highlighted the special watertight packaging, and finally a catchy slogan, ‘Do you know you Uneedabiscuit?’, and that led to what’s probably the first million dollar advertising campaign to popularize that brand.

The Uneeda brand became so popular, that in 1900, the company was selling 10 million packages a month.

By the end of the century, advertisers were leading the charge and creating the words and images that would sell everything from serial to cameras, to cars. In short, the American dream.

One technique popularized by, copywriter, ‘Claude Hopkins’, was to give consumers a reason why to buy the product.

Claude Hopkins, sold Schlitz beer, by advertising not the taste, but that Slits, steam cleaned the bottles. Everybody else steam cleaned the bottles, but when Schlitz said it, people believed that only Schlitz did it, it’s called ‘reason why advertising’.

Advertising agencies use their new tools, not only to sell popular items, but also to create a need for products. Advertising is manipulation, especially when it started… people really believed the claims, they believed the language.

A lot of advertising was aimed at an immigrantclass that was just coming to the United States, and really wanted to learn how to fit in and how to be classy, and they took it very seriously.

Advertisers created the need to be clean as a way to get ahead in life and earn respect. Nothing is more interesting from an advertising historian’s point of view, than the colonizing of the body. Every orifice in the body has been taken over by commercial interests.

100 years ago, people would bathe once a week. They must have stunk, yet advertising was able to sell the idea that germs would exist where dirtiness was. So, to a great degree, a lot of what we take as being the natural rhythms of being clean, is a result of advertisers.

Advertisers convinced the public that every body part needed its own branded product to combat dirt and, even worse, odor. Most people don’t think a lot about soap. So, you first have to invent the disease, and then invent the cure for the disease, which is what BO was.

According to advertisers, the nefarious, though rarely terminal disease of BO, had many culprits. Chief among them underarm odor. Odor-Oh-No, the first nationally advertised deodorant, faced the problem of mentioning the unmentionable for polite society. The forbidden word, ‘armpit’, was artfully alluded to as, ‘within the curve of a woman’s arm’, nonetheless the campaign’s still shocked consumers.

This ad ran in the Ladies Home Journal, and it and so insulted, some 200 readers, that they cancelled their subscriptions. Yet, in the same year, the sales of Odor-Oh-No went up 112 percent.

With results like these, advertisements for hygiene products continued to play on people’s fears of being outcast, or ostracized.

Listerine mouthwash, invented the disease of halitosis, and then provided the cure right there in the bottle. Advertisements frequently would suggest that not only would you spoil an afternoon or an evening, but, that your entire life would be ruined, you wouldn’t get the job, you wouldn’t get the girl, and your life would go down the drain…

By offering solutions to our age-old problems, while cunningly creating brand new ones to worry about, advertising evolved from simple announcements, to stunningly provocative pitches, and had grown into a potent force in society by the early 20th century.

When we return, advertising conquers the Great Outdoors, with an array of promotional devices. Sell and Spin, a history of advertising will continue here on the History Channel.

We now return to Sell and Spin, a history of advertising, here on the History Channel.

From teeming Urban streets, to pastoral country lanes, advertising is never farther away than the next landmark, and sometimes the next landmark, is advertising.

The Hollywood Sign, originally said Hollywoodland, and was a sign of a building developer, and they happened to call it Hollywoodland, and the sign was put up there, the tracks were sold, over time, the ‘land’ at the end fell down, and we ended up with Hollywood.

But it was really originally, a real estate developer sign.

The name of the game, and outdoor advertising, is grabbing attention, and to do this, bigger really is better.

Think about it you’re in your car… fixing your hair, doing the radio, trying to dial honk-honk, out of my way, and through all of that, we’ve got to get your attention, and if we don’t immediately, you’re doing something else.

A poster should be to the eye, what a shout is to the ear, it’s exclamation not explanation.

The undisputed master of these shouts and exclamations, was P.T Barnum, considered by many, the father of advertising. Barnum and Bailey would come to town, and before they got there, they’d slap up a bunch of posters and say ‘hey we’re here’.

A man who understood, that before you sell a product, you have to gather a crowd.

And people like Calvin Klein, or Benetton, or all these people now who are running their fingers down the blackboard of culture to gather a crowd, all have PT Barnum as the great Puba. He knew how to get people to stop what they’re doing, and pay attention.

In their efforts to attract a crowd and sell a product, advertisers have long papered, pasted, and painted their messages on anything that didn’t move.

From city buildings, to rural barns, the quintessential structure of the American countryside… Soon after the beginning of the 20th Century, advertisers set their sights higher, much higher.

Always ready to adapt new technologies to sell their product, advertisers used the airplane to transform the wild blue yonder, into just another advertising medium.

When you do an aerial ad, it’s dominantly and dramatically alone in the sky, it’s not surrounded by hundreds of other ads. No matter how hi-tech we get, people are still fascinated by things that fly.

In 1911, Cal Rogers set out to Hopscotch across the country in a new-fangled flying machine. They did a Coast-to-Coast flight, from the east coast to the west coast, and in order to sponsor it, a fizzy grape drink called Vin Fizz was painted underneath the wings of the plane.

Vin Fizz plastered its name wherever it might be visible, but in these early days of aerial advertising, the message was most visible after one of the plane’s, less than picture-perfect landings.

Hoping to devise a more efficient way to advertise, aviators continued to experiment with gimmicks, like writing in the sky.

Skywriting came about as a result of World War One. Fighter pilots saying planes leaving trails of smoke as they sort of spiraled down as their enemy went down in flames.

In 1921, Major John Savage, of the British Royal Air Force, invented the system used for skywriting. Vapor Trails were created by injecting a wax into the plane’s exhaust. Pilots flew in the shape of letters, forming a message in the sky. Within a year, Savage and his Sky riding machines, traveled across the Atlantic to conquer the skies of America.

Pepsi Cola effectively built their empire with skywriting as their primary advertising medium, from 1939 to about 1953, they used skywriting across America.

Another mainstay of aerial advertising, has been the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Their first blimp went aloft in 1925, and the company’s airships continue to float in the sky.

A lot of outdoor advertising has its purpose, what we call, ‘reinforcement’, a reminder there’s not enough time to really tell you what the product is about, why you should buy it, what the sign really does remind you, that the product is.

Airplanes and blimps, were a boon to advertisers, but people had to look up to see the message, and with the rise of the automobile, people were spending more and more time with their eyes firmly focused on the road ahead of them.

Early on, the only way you could get that audience, because we still didn’t have radio and cars then, was to put signs out that people would pass, as they would by in their cars, and so that as the car became a common consumer product, roadside advertising developed alongside it.

In 1926, roadside advertising staked its first Landmark, courtesy of Burma shave. The Billboards were the brainchild of Alan O’Dell, son of Clinton Odell, inventor of the brushless shaving cream.

Despite expert advice that the signs wouldn’t work, the cash strapped company spent two hundred dollars installing the first set of signs to introduce the new product.

It wasn’t simply one billboard, it was a campaign that involved multiple Billboards, that would recite a poem.

These humorous signposts relied oncreating a sense of expectation in the passing motorist, building up to a punch line that always emphasized the benefits of a close shave.

Big humor and Novelty of these signs, caught the fancy of the American public turning attention to Burma shave. Its sales quickly shot up starting a decades-long trend in the company’s fortunes. Eventually the signs appeared in 45 States and as far away as Antarctica.

These became very prominent in the late 20s early 30s, and continued even into the 40s and 50s…

…it’s sort of icons of American highways. But by the 1960s, highway travel, was too fast to be able to read small signs. The Burma Shave campaign ended in 1963 after posting more than 500 rhymes. People continue to cite the Burma Shave ads, as an example of how to do Outdoor Advertising well.

Long before Burma Shaves witty Rhymes delighted the buying public, advertisers harnessed the power of electricity to transform Billboards into eye-catching, spectaculars. We take lighted signs for granted today, but in the 1880s, a lighted sign was really quite unusual, so the mere fact it was lighted would draw attention to it.

 

Ground Zero for this explosion of light, was New York City’s magical Main Street, Broadway. From Peril Square in the South, up to Longacre Square, at 42nd Street, the lighted signs of Broadway earned it its nickname. ‘The Great White way’.

In 1904, with the construction of the New York Times headquarters, Long Acre Square became Times Square, a Nexus of streets that would become the canvas for a new kind of outdoor advertising.

The original Lamplighter of Broadway, was O.J. Goud, Goud, a native New Yorker, Goud apprenticed in the city’s nascent, billboard industry and hung out his own shingle in 1889.

Noted for the artistic pride he took in his work, Times Square was resplendent with Goud’s signature creations many making use of colored light bulbs.

Included among his masterpieces, was a 1912 sign for, Corticelli Spool Silk, the enormous billboard featured a 24-foot long kitten, playing with the sewing thread.

Size matters, because it’s bigger than anything else, so you will look at it first, but it’s got to be evocative… let’s put it this way, if it’s a really big one and it’s terrible, it’ll just be a really big terrible ad, it won’t make it any better.

Neon arrived on the advertising scene in the 1920s, adding an evocative dose of razzle to the dazzle of lighted and signs. Flexible tubes in an array of vibrant colors, infused billboards with an extra dimension of personality, the colorful gas was used across the country, to sell everything from Studebakers, to baked goods.

Naturally, Times Square was the epicenter of this new advertising medium, turning it into an art form. The Talk of the Town was the Wrigley’s billboard, erected in 1936, called a skyscraper of color. The enchanting sign towered eight stories high.

Taking Outdoor Advertising forward, another step was legendary idea man, Douglas Lee.

He moved to New York in 1931 from his native Alabama, with big ideas about big signs. The man with a natural flair for selling, the charismatic Lee, convinced many companies that a simple billboard was simply not good enough.

One of his early marvels, was the Camel cigarettes billboard.

Unveiled in 1941, the sign became a mainstay in Times Square, blowing 10 foot wide smoke rings every four seconds.

One way you might get people’s attention, is to have the sign do something unusual, so perhaps you have a sign that blows smoke. That really grabs people’s attention, causes people to talk to one another about the sign, and ultimately about the product.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Times Square continued to be the location of mesmerizing Billboards, including the memorable neon sign for Coca-Cola.

By the 1970s however, Times Square became better known for selling sex than sodapop. For the next 20 years, it lost its luster with mainstream advertisers.

Recent efforts however to make it safer and restore it as an advertising Mecca have made Times Square a destination for more than 20 million tourists a year.

From the humble barn, to the exotic flying machine, advertisers have put their messages anywhere the buying public just might look, continuously employing images that captivate, motivate, and sell.

Coming up, advertising invades the home, as radios are welcomed into our living rooms.

Sell and Spin – a history of advertising will be back here on the History Channel…

We now return to, Sell and Spin – a history of advertising, here on the History Channel.

The sounds of radio… this talking box first started chattering on November 2nd 1920.

“This is KB Ka of the Westinghouse electric and Manufacturing Company in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania”.

“We shall now broadcast the election returns”

It was the results of the Harding Cox campaign, um and as we all know, Harding was the victor, people found out that night, they didn’t have to wait until the newspaper came out.

For the first time, presidential election results were quickly available to radio listeners, but nobody really knew who, if anyone, was actually listening.

“We’d appreciate it, if any anyone hearing this broadcast would communicate with us, as we are very anxious to know how far the broadcast is reaching”.

Apparently, somebody out there was listening, within two years over 400 radio stations had sprung up around the country.

In these early days, radio programming was presented without commercial interruption.

It never occurred to the first owners of the radio business, by which I basically mean Westinghouse and General Electric, to make radio an Advertising based business.

They thought, back in 1920, that their main aim ought to be to sell radio sets, so it wasn’t advertising they were trying to sell, it was radios themselves.

However, Radio broadcasters were soon in a quandary.

They were starved for programming, with no way to pay for it. The sales of the radio sets didn’t provide a sufficient stream of income, and there was no practical method for charging the listeners.

In many countries, governments eventually assumed the role of both broadcaster and producer of programming, but this was anathema to capitalist America.

In this country, because of our tradition of what’s what’s called ‘free enterprise’… the decision was made that these businesses should be allowed to compete in the marketplace, and be as commercial as the other media have traditionally been. …”To hear another concert with the NBC Symphony Orchestra”.

Following the path forged by newspapers and magazines, radio stations turned to those willing to pay for access to the audience, ‘advertisers’.

In August 1922, the first radio commercial ever, was broadcast by Station, WEAF, in New York City. It was a 10-minute advertisement, for a real estate company…

And, they did 10 of these, cost them 500 bucks… and, at the end of a few months, they had sold $127,000 worth of property, that’s quite a return on a pretty modest investment, that was the beginning of the commercialization of radio.

It was kind of like a train leaving the station, once it started, the effectiveness of it in reaching the American people, was well understood, and the train just kept getting momentum and momentum.

Manufacturers understood the benefits of having an advertising medium right in the consumer’s living rooms.

Certainly you could send a printed magazine in, but the consumer usually had to do something. With radio, all the consumer had to do was to turn the dial on, and whatever came through the airwaves, they then heard.

Radio, has been called, ‘the Theater of the Mind’, where imaginations are set free by evocative narrative, and the artful use of sound.

“There’s someone coming, quick kiss me, don’t be stupid kiss me, they won’t suspect anything…”.

These same techniques were used by advertisers, who believed that hearing the commercial message increased retention of the product.

The presence of sound, the ability to add on certain kinds of dramatic features, gave I think, an entirely new dimension to publicity, to promotional activities, to efforts of persuasion…

“Mushroom flavor fills every spoonful, why not try Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, tomorrow”.

As a means to sell their product, advertisers started producing and paying for entire radio shows… “Renfell presents Greg’s Sister”.

What they wanted to do was develop radio shows that were enormously popular, which were mentioning the sponsor as often as possible, in the same breath with the name of the show, so people would associate a show that they liked with a particular advertiser. “Yes, there’s the clock in Glen Falls Town Hall, telling us it’s time for Rinso’s story of big sister”.

By the end of the 1920s, most national radio shows, were the property of a single sponsor. And the first really successful radio program, was Amos and Andy…

The transplant from Vaudeville. The show was the creative offspring of Freeman Gosden, who played Amos, and Charles Carrell, who is Andy. In these less sensitive times, the white duo portrayed a variety of African-American characters, speaking in dialect.

Lever Brothers pegged it as the perfect advertising vehicle for its pepsident toothpaste, successfully marrying its name to the show, which premiered in August 1929.

And, within seven months the Lever Brothers stock, had gone up 300 percent.

With limited entertainment choices in the 20s and 30s, the humor of Amos and Andy, captivated the audience, the buyers,..

Everything would stop. Elevators would stop running, phones would stop ringing, toilets would stop flushing… in the summertime, if it was warm, someone could walk down the street, the windows of all the homes were open, you could hear the whole show.

That kind of thing doesn’t go on anymore, there’s so much stuff out there now, there’s so many shows, and so many things to watch, that you don’t see that kind of mass attention to one product like that anymore.

One night on the show, Andy complained on air, that he needed a pencil, and in about 10 days, he was sent three and a half million pencils by listeners. You can imagine what would happen five nights a week, if you told everybody to go down, and use Pepsident, so everybody was very happy about that, especially Lever Brothers.

Advertisers continued to develop ways to reach audiences, and one important audience they targeted, was kids.

When I was a kid growing up in the middle of Indiana, I used to listen to the Jack Armstrong program on radio, and the singers singing, The Great Wheaties jingle. [Wheaties jingle]

Wheaties was the first company to use a jingle on the radio, combining the poetry of advertising with music, the jingle echoed its way into the consciousness of kids everywhere… have you tried Wheaties, they’re wholewheat with all of the brand, and you can remember it years and years later.

While advertisers did well with the kids, their main goal was to hit the motherlode of buying power, the housewife.

Advertisers knew her main concern was of course, getting the clothes clean… “For a wash that’s deep clean, use deep cleaning Oxydol, Oxidol is deep cleaning, deep cleaning deep cleaning…

Their technique for getting to these women? The soap opera.

We call them soap operas today, because of the Procter and Gambles, and the Oxydols, and people like that, that were using this medium to get to the American housewife, and say… “if you use our soap, your clothes are going to be cleaner ladies, you’ve heard a lot of interesting promises about wash day products recently, but today I promise you, the wash day surprise of your life a wash so dazzling clean, you’ll have to rub your eyes to believe it”.

In 1938, radio overtook magazines as the number one advertising medium. By the end of the decade, radio’s share of advertising expenditures, reached 130 million dollars. But, radio’s place at the advertising trough would not be secure forever.

The winds of the coming television age, would eventually cool the quite hot medium of radio.

When we return, television mesmerizes the masses, and a new generation of advertisers transforms the art of the pitch.

“Well, the fortunes of the family, have never been lower”.

When we return, television, mesmerises the masses… and, a new generation of advertisers, masters the pitch.

Sell and Spin – a history of advertising will continue here on the History Channel

We now return to Sell and Spin – a history of advertising, here on the History Channel

Television; no other medium has contributed more to the explosive growth of advertising. TV’s impact as a salesman, is both cheered… and bemoaned. If you’re selling a product which you can draw attention to by emotion, then television, nothing can beat it.

“Want my Coke?” – it’s so immediate, it’s so powerful, and it is so close to human response, you don’t think about it, you see it, you associate what you see near it, and you say I want it…

“Have a Coke, and a Smile”

Although television was invented in 1927, and made a guest appearance at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, America would have to wait until after World War II to invite this new, ‘guest’, into its living room.

In 1946 there were fewer than 10,000 television sets in the United States, and virtually none elsewhere in the world. Five years later, nearly 10 million TVs had been sold.

Having emerged victorious from the battle over the commercialization of radio, advertising supported television from the start.

“I’d like a package of those delicious mild Camel cigarettes, unquestionably she’s being paid by the sponsor” [laughs]

Advertisers realized that they already had program content from radio, and they’d simply pick it up, put it in pictures, and now transmit it to a cathode tube. You’d have a soap opera over here in radio, and you simply fill it in with real people on TV.

Song/ad; “America is asking you to come”.

As in radio, advertisers own television programs, associating their names with popular shows and stars.

In those early days, advertisers had enormous influence on the television industry.

During the McCarthy era, the fear of being soft on communism led advertisers to create a blacklist. Lives were ruined.

Certain individuals were rightly or wrongly identified, as sympathizers, or members of the Communist party, and were forbidden to work. The advertisers pay the bills, and so if an Advertiser chooses to exercise influence, they can tell the networks who can work and who can’t work.

The influence also extended into, who the winning contestants should be, or in some quiz shows that aired in the 1950s.

Some of the most popular quiz shows, it turned out, were fixed as many people know, most people don’t know they were fixed, because of the pressures exerted on the production company by the advertiser of those shows.

The more charismatic good-looking contestants were secretly provided with the answers, ensuring their success. The dividends were, increased, viewership and wider exposure for the sponsor’s project.

When the scandal was revealed in 1959, the very nature of the way television was produced and presented, changed forever.

After the quiz show scandals, the networks took over from the advertisers, they took charge of all the TV time, and doled it out, sold it minute by minute to advertisers.

Driven by a profit-oriented businessman. Early tv ads were full of simplistic repetitious boasts…

“dip dab dip dab dip” – the most common technique? the ‘Hard Sell’.

“A remarkable new Hotpoint super automatic, it not only bakes automatically, it even boils automatically, fries automatically”

It’s advertising that was very direct, and strident and repeated the same phraseology, over and over and over again.

“you can even barbecue automatically… that automatic barbecue is marvelous, it so that he or she could go to the store and robot like reach out for that product, and pick it up off the shelf… “Mr Clean Mr Clean Mr Clean” .

And, advertising’s undisputed master of the Hard Sell, was Rosser Reeves, of the Ted Bates Agency.

Rosser Reeves developed that advertising in a period when you couldn’t avoid the advertising, and by that I mean, we didn’t have remote controls. We had a few magazines, we had three television networks. Rosser Reeves developed advertising when you could literally irritate your way into people’s consciousness…

“poor Marge, she’ll never hold a man until she does something about her breath, until she does something about her breath, does something about her breath”

Reeves devised a concept which he called, ‘the unique selling proposition’, a method reminiscent of the advertising done at the beginning of the 20th century.

Unique selling proposition is very close to, ‘reason why’, once again, it’s an attempt to take machine made objects, and to say, that this machine made object, is different from another exactly similar machine made object.

Reeve’s strategy was to repeat the unique selling proposition endlessly, proving that countless exposures to a catchline, increases retention.

“Wonder Bread builds up strong bodies 12 ways, the drip drip drip of stomach acid, Anacin brings fast fast fast relief”

The Anacin campaign remains one of Rosser Reeve’s most memorable and most effective. Combined on TV, the strong words and unpleasant images, had a very powerful effect… “Mommy, Mommy… Jimmy please not now, I’m too busy”…

He had hammers hitting on the head for a headache, and they would show the sort of chemistry of a headache, they were lightning bolts, and all sorts of other gruesome devices, and those were as opposed to dramatize pain and tension, and all these other horrible horrible things that befell the poor human beings.

Anacin could cure the headache the way no other formulation could, and the hammers really hit home.

Within just six months of the initial airing of the campaign, sales of Anacin tripled from 17 million, to 54 million dollars.

It was the kind of commercial that people could not possibly like. Reeves understood, that that was the whole point… you know, it associated the product in a positive way with the pain of a headache, so that when you went to the store, you think, ‘you know, how can I get rid of a really annoying headache like this, I’ll buy Anacin’.

In the late 1950s and early 60s, a new America was watching TV. “Cool it baby”. The viewers had become more sophisticated, the advertising reflected this change back at them. A new breed of ad men, and women, were forging a creative revolution.

“New Hai Karate Aftershave”… HI-YA!

They came up with a new way of communicating, that sort of acknowledged, that you had a brain, and that you could look at these images differently, and that you didn’t need to hear it 100 times, you’d like it better.

“Nope you can’t make Burlington’s new mid-length sock fall down”.

For the first time in the business, the creative people really began to control the product, more than the business people, and so everything changed.

Leading the charge in their creative revolution, was Bill Bernbach, creative director of the Madison Avenue powerhouse, Doyle, Dane, Burnback.

Burnback, was the Picasso of our business. I mean he destroyed all the rules, and then created a new kind of advertising, which inspired a whole generation of creative people, and transformed the business forever.

Bill Bernbach, sits atop the list of the most influential ad people of the 20th century as compiled by the trade magazine, ‘Advertising Age’. And his work for Volkswagen was cited as the best advertising campaign ever.

The Volkswagen ads began in print in 1959, and later hit the airwaves. With charm, and a sly sense of humor, Burnback turned car advertising on a dime, encouraging America to think small.

That proved how creativity and art could truly blend with with marketing and commerce.

How hard is it to sell a car designed by Adolf Hitler, to the United States of America, who was driving cars that are 15/18 feet long, and and have wings on the back.

He riveted attention toward the small car, and showed that you could sell, by being cool, by being distant, by being ironic, by winking, he essentially broke the wall between the viewer of the ad, and the thing.

“Have you ever wondered how the man who drives a snow plow drives to the snow plough?… this one drives a Volkswagen”.

By the time Volkswagen stopped selling the original Beetle in 1979, Burnback’s advertising had helped spread over 21 million of the bugs all over the world.

Another figure who emerged from the creative revolution in the 1950s, was British import, David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy and Mather, who understood that selling, is really about emotion.

Big ideas, now that’s what the advertising business is really all about.

The consumer really does want meaning, doesn’t want the object, he wants what the object means.

David Ogilvy the great ad guy said, you know, when selling Dove soap, I could have sold it as a woman soap, or a man soap, I just chose arbitrarily, to choose it as a woman soap.

The ads created by Ogilvy and Mather for Maxwell House, still evoke an immediate and powerful response in viewers.

It’s called the perking pot sound. As soon as they hear the Perking Pot cue, they know in a minute that its Maxwell House. People will start to talk about drinking coffee, in their, at their grandmother’s kitchen table, and they remember the aroma, and the steam coming up into their face, and it’s extremely evocative… really strong advertising, really strong brand based advertising, will do that.

I think that, the body of David’s work isn’t just those rare and wonderful ads he did, though they stand up in scrutiny over time, but, what he left, was his, his way of thinking, his ability to articulate the values of an advertising agency, to give people something to aspire to…

“blaze new trails, try to make advertising history”. -Ogilvy

The creative revolution also saw the founding of the first agency headed by a woman, Mary Wells, later of Wells, Rich and Green.

“I can’t believe I ate that whole thing, you ate it Ralph”.

Mary Wells really fit into this whole late 60s feeling, which was super sophisticated…

“Well, you really did it to yourself this time, at least you remembered the Alka-Seltzer”.

“Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh, what a relief it is”.

Wells’ humor, and catchy Jingles, not only sold Alka-Seltzer, they made it cool.

The creative revolution of the late 50s and 60s, opened the industry’s eyes and the consumer’s awareness, to a new form of advertising, ads that entertain with a wink and a nudge, that laughed at themselves, and made us laugh along.

Coming up, just how do these memorable ads come to life ? Sell and Spin – a history of advertising will be back here on the History Channel

“I wash and dry your clothes, play your radios”… We now return to Sell and Spin – a history of advertising, here on the History Channel

Successful advertising campaigns, do not just appear out of thin air, they are worked… “pizza cut cut cut cut”, and reworked, “delivery delivery pizza pizza”… They’re molded, and perfected… “what’s that?” “A terradactyl”… They are inspired yes.. “it’s a miracle”… but first they are researched.

People think of us as like, crazy, you know, creative people, sit around and wait for a bolt of lightning to come down and hit us… “One banana, or two bananas”…, but there’s a system and a way of working that, that isn’t, you know, just a guy walking down the street and getting hit by this impulse.

We’re very research oriented, “he seems to prefer two”…

If a client’s gonna spend 100 million dollars running a piece of advertising, then, to do as much as we can to make sure it’s going to work in the way we believe it’s going to work, is a valuable thing. Now, that’s where research comes in.

“Would you choose Hamburger A, a Wendy’s hamburger made fresh, or Hamburger B, made in advance”.

Madison Avenue, has long depended on the insight of specialists, to tap into the psyche of buyers.

Opinion research started, in the United States of America, and really around the world, in 1932, when George Gallup took a job with Young and Rubicon, in New York, as head of their copy and media research department. And it was Gallup, who used empirical marketing, as the basis for advertising… it’s factually based, it goes beyond intuition.

Gallup and other researchers sought to create a science of persuasion, testing various pitches on consumers to determine which were the most likely to open their wallets.

Back in the days when advertising was considered to be a science, there were many formula produced to try and guarantee that advertising would be effective.

Advertisers relied on studies showing the color print ads, using short concise headlines, were the most likely to be read. Research also indicated that repetition was a key to success, that’s right, repetition was a key to success.

People believed very much in that time, in terms of stimulus and response, and it was probably a reasonable thing to believe at that time, because the products had genuine product differences, which you could build into the advertising, and people would react in a predictable way… “down go the mean old germs”.

As a 20th century progressed, the scientific nature of this research was called into doubt.

Advertising research is not rocket science, and that research is certainly not as scientifically accurate as others, and that’s because it relies on human behavior. Self-reported attitudes and beliefs, and opinions, and sometimes people, are not that predictable.

“How many of you would like more cheese on your pizza”.

Though no longer seen as infallible, advertising agencies still regard research as a necessary step.

What they have to do, is to go to their client, and show the client, that there’s some powerful reason for him to spend millions of dollars… so, research, and advertising, is very often ‘the, lamp post to the drunk’. It’s what you hang on to, when you’re trying to make your case, present your reasons to the person who’s putting their money up. “well that’s every man woman and child”.

Almost every modern day advertising campaign, starts its research by going directly to carefully selected groups of consumers.

Focus groups are assemblies of about 10 to 12 consumers, and it’s led by a moderator, who follows an agenda of questions, having to do with the product category.

We spend a lot of money and a lot of time on research, finding out what makes the consumer tick. What turns him on, what turns her off, why does she behave as she does, what values does he have, what opinions and attitudes, not only in this country, but around the world.

McDonald’s first national advertising campaign in 1970, was an example of how the feedback from consumer research could lead to a winning campaign.

We did focus groups… why do you go to McDonald’s, what’s special about going to McDonald’s. It was seen by consumers, as an escape.

McDonald’s admin, code the research to find the best words to sell this escape to the public. And we noticed that, in describing this escape, lot of the women, and men for that matter, were saying, ‘it’s like a little break’, and so we came up with, “you deserve a break today”.

[McDonalds Ad / Jingle] “You deserve a break today”.

The research led to a memorable pitch, and a profitable one too. During the four years the campaign aired, McDonald’s sales more than tripled.

But, research doesn’t always rule. Instead, advertisers sometimes just go with gut instinct, as McDonald’s did when it decided to teach the world the ingredients of the Big Mac… and we said, but look at the research, people don’t care what’s in a Big Mac, lettuce and onion Sesame, all seedbun… it has its own mystique. Pickles, cheese… we shouldn’t break it down into its separate parts, and they smiled and very firmly said, ‘but we want to tell people what’s in a Big Mac’.

“to all beef fatty Special SauceCheese onions pickles onions”… and we came up with the idea, we said, what we will do, we will teach people the ingredients of a Big Mac, the same way we teach our kids the ABCs, with a dumb tuneless chant.

“All right late one night we said for saying to all, beef Special Sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun”, and we go out to McDonald’s the next day, and they say yes that’s it.

“to all these Patty Special Sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun.”

In 1997 after years of uninspiring commercials, Taco Bell switched advertising agencies, to TBWA\Chiat\Day, to search for a memorable ad campaign of their own.

We really wanted to humanize this brand, and to devise a symbol that would really read clearly and quickly, with consumers around what this brand was all about.

Research showed, that young people, primarily 18 to 24 year old men, were the core consumers of Taco Bell.

Now what was needed, was a burst of creative inspiration.

My partner, Chuck Bennett and I, came up with the idea for the original Chihuahua spot, sitting at a Mexican restaurant on a Sunday afternoon… there was some kind of salsa music that was playing…

We both just saw this little Chihuahua cruising down the street, he looked like he was just on some kind of a serious mission to get something, so it was that was just kind of the little spark, that launched a thousand commercials. “Yo quiro Taco Bell”.

Taco Bell, and Chiat\Day, found that this snarky little dog spoke to their target audience.

It’s well known in advertising circles, that if you want people’s attention, use dogs or babies. It’s the type of creative that causes people to want to watch it. What’s the dog going to do now, we treat it kind of like a sitcom, that has, as its lead character, the Chihuahua… but also involves other ancillary characters, like his girlfriend, and other people that the dog may meet… in this kind of pseudo-mexican salsa-powered world that we’ve created.

The trick is, to use the continuing story of the Chihuahua, to serve the client’s needs. Account people at Shayad Day, those who conduct the research, and act as liaisons with the client, honed in on how best to use the dog.

We’re working on a spot right now for late night, so, we’ve done a lot of work with the target, with guys kind of understanding their relationship to late night at Taco Bell… is there anything synergistic between the Chihuahua, and what he represents to these kids, and the way they use Late Night.

And then, we would take it to the creative people, and we would let them know our strategy, and our rationale, and what we’re looking for out of the ad.

The team of creatives, a copywriter and an art director, brainstorm to come up with the next great idea. I’m just trying to imagine like what what goes here, if you have all the stuff right, 75% of the work, is us sitting down with our books, and figuring out what’s the big idea… yeah partners may vary, but I think between us, it’s very collaborative… the idea that I had for this one… was you know, just gorgeous women, they should just look like the type that you would never turn away…

All ideas are first pitched to the creative director of the account. The tag we came up with this was, “it’s great late”.

As the people, who kind of came up with the campaign originally, we try and kind of continue the vision of what the character of the dog is all about, and control what type of ideas go forward, and make the work as good as it can be…

In addition to talking about the food, you’re talking about, ‘late is great’, and all the fun stuff that’s going on there, like you know dancing, partying…

Only a small percentage of ideas actually make it through the process.

I wish it’s great late, or cooler, it feels like should be a little bit stranger, and a little bit maybe funnier, sometimes you know you go up to them and they, you present and they don’t like anything, so you kind of start all over again…

The ideas are then reconceptualized, polished, studied, and then pitched again…

Maybe his motive is always to be in the coolest place, with the coolest people, and, to get them to get him, some food,

When the agency has a concept they like, presentations are made to the client.

It’s got a fairly long gauntlet, that an idea has to walk in order to make it from original Inception of an idea, to something that you end up seeing on television, or reading in a magazine…

The formula for a successful advertising campaign, seems deceptively simple. Start with voluminous research, add creativity, and then, most importantly, cross your fingers.

One does not get to provocative advertising, one doesn’t get to breakthrough work, work that basically is the talk of the country, without taking risks. “Yo quiro Taco Bell”.

Advertisers may not know what precisely makes an ad work. “Mamma Mia, thats a some spicy… take 28”.

But, when it does work we know it.

“they keep going and going and going”

When we return, is it the end of the world, or just morning again in America?

Advertising enters the voting booth; Sell and Spin – a history of advertising will continue here on the History Channel

We now return to Sell and Spin – the history of advertising, here on the History Channel

Political victory in the United States, has long been achieved through shaking hands, Whistle Stop tours, conventions and advertising.

With the advent of television, advertising has come to the forefront of the political process.

“No man, that knows any about war, is going to be reckless,let’s look at the record of the dark shadow of voting frauds, justice and his connections in highplaces, it’s amazing how many things there are in television that you don’t see, which quoted himself a huge pay rate, that decided to raise taxes, reduce the penalty for the crime of rape, don’t see television, voting personal fortune, it just doesn’t add up… Gee Dad, is all that true? yes son, every bit of it”

Political advertising is a disaster. Our political discourse, is dominated by, you know, snide, insinuating, uh baseless and trivial, 15 and 30 second pitches…

Political ads on TV, didn’t start out ugly, indeed they were rather benign. The first American political campaign to make extensive use of television, was Dwight Eisenhower’s ,1952 run for the Oval Office. Mike’s ad campaign was overseen by Rosser Reeves, the noted, Madison Avenue Master, of the Hard Sell. The commercials made use of standard advertising techniques like repetition, testimonials, and jingles..

IKE AD.

Rosser Reeves, was the first, sort of, professional ad person brought in to run campaigns, and his view was, you could sell candidates, just like you could sell toothpaste and, indeed, I think his view has been borne out by history.

IKE AD.

In the early years of political commercials, the ads remained positive, focusing on selling the candidate, as someone who could be trusted.

“Do you like a man who answered straight, a man who’s always fair, will measure him against the others, and when you compare, you cast your vote for Kennedy and the change that’s overdue” (IKE AD.)

But, an ad for Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign against Barry Goldwater, exploited a different technique, ‘fear’.

The commercial called ‘Daisy’, was created by Tony Schwartz. When they came to me on the Johnson campaign, to do sound for various spots, I said, you just take a child picking the petals off a daisy, …eight nine, and then went on the eye, and uh then have the countdown… and the west, and we could put words of President Johnson’s over it… “these are the stakes, we must either love each other, or we must die”.

The ad arrived at the right time, a deepening conflict in Vietnam, and a heightened concern about the Cold War, left Americans uneasy about the future. The commercials dealt with the deepest feelings and fears, that humanity has ever had, the fear of nuclear war.

Even though this provocative commercial aired only once, it resonated with voters, forever, Brandon Goldwater as a warmonger.

There’s no mention of Gold Water, yet the image was so powerful, that people put all the pieces together, outside of the ad, and realized, whoops this guy was much too dangerous, and voted for a guy who, in retrospect, might have been equally as dangerous, namely LBJ.

Johnson’s landslide Victory helped usher in, a new phase in political advertising.

We’ve gone from advertising, in which the sponsor of the ad says nice things about himself, or herself, to so-called attack ads, meaning there’s my opponent and he’s a disaster.

Political advertising on television, good and bad, has remained a contentious issue.

The negative ad gets all the Press, and when we see it, we quickly decode it, in some ways the dangerous political ad is the positive one.

It’s the Reagan ‘morning again’ in America ad, which passes by our radar system with very little interpretation.

“It’s morning again, in America”

The advertising for Reagan’s re-election campaign, was an exception in the trend toward increasing vitriol… offering instead, a feel-good vision of American Life.

They said it was the best advertising that had ever been done in politics, and they said that it would change the future of political advertising. And, they were totally wrong, as political advertising got a lot worse after that.

Dukakis, not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison.

It wouldn’t be long before the infamous, ‘Willie Horton’, arrived on the political scene. A series of ads, courtesy of the forces, promoting the candidacy of George Bush, portrayed Michael Dukakis as soft on crime.

The revolving door ad in 1988, says, you elect Michael Dukakis, and you’ll have all these prisoners being let out on weekend passes, and God knows what will happen to you and your family, if you live near a prison.

The ads pushed the right buttons, with the electorate helping to propel Bush to a convincing victory. Negative advertising has since become the mainstay of political campaigns.

“While they’ve been discrediting each other, I’ve been issuing my 82-point plan, to eliminate the federal deficit”.

Politicians are not likely to abandon negative ads anytime soon, because of their proven ability to work.

It’s much easier to get people to withdraw, than to convert them from one candidate to another, so the principal effect of negative ad campaigns, is to increase the number of people who say, ‘hell with it, I’m just not going to vote’.

And, ‘not vote’ they have, the rate of voter turnout in the United States, has decreased by nearly 15 percent since1960, four years before Johnson’s Daisy commercial. Getting all of these people not to vote, is expensive. During the 1996 elections, candidates for federal office, spent a combined total of 400 million dollars, airing commercials on television.

The cost of advertising is something that precludes, almost to you know, 99.9 percent of the population, from ever thinking about running for office.

But, for that other, point one percent of the population, PV can play the role of King maker, anyone with a deep pocket has a huge built-in Advantage, you can just go in there and saturate advertising, simply by investing his own money.

If we decide to take this level of business, creating capability Nationwide, we’ll all be plucking chickens for a living, while these wealthy political, neophytes, may not always emerge victorious, their constant television presence does affect the debate, and perhaps even the outcome.

Potential fixes to the problems of political campaigns relying on television, have run smack into the U.S Constitution, it’s very difficult to turn on a political placement, because of First Amendment issues, candidates have the right to to speak, political speech is protected.

Television allows politicians to speak to the masses, but it’s not a two-way street.

Back in 1956 presidential candidate, Edley Stevenson, foresaw the serious short comings of a political dialogue, based entirely on television commercials.

“I can talk to you, yet, but I can’t listen to you, I can’t hear about your problems, about your hopes, and your fears, to do that, I’ve got to go out and see you in person”.

A nice sentiment for 1956, but even less likely today.

Coming up, commercials take center stage, as a modern form of entertainment.

Sell and Spin – a history of advertising will return here, on the History Channel

“Snap, Crackle, and Pop” Ad

We now return to Sell and Spin – a historyof advertising, here on the History Channel.

In today’s, scatter shot television landscape, with hundreds of channels competing for our attention, and the remote control at the ready, it is harder than ever to get people to watch ads, much less remember them.

I’m sure that if advertisers had one wish right now, they would wish that the remote control could be removed. To make a commercial that will stop somebody from moving their finger, you’ve got to waste a huge amount of time, on all kinds of pyrotechnics, or extraordinary measures, just to keep that finger quiet.

The remote control clicker, is sort of the the cross, to the vampire of advertising, somebody forget his Ray-Ban sunglasses…

To, reel in today’s more sophisticated, and restless audience, Advertising, has to do more than inform, it has to entertain. Capturing our imagination, or tickling our collective funny bone.

I always believe that, through entertainment, of a really high level, it made people laugh, or that move them, you can sell better.

When people watch our work you know, 30 seconds later they’re happy, they’re smiling, they’re feeling good, so they feel good about the brand.

Having a choice is better than none. Freedom of Choice, from Big Brother IBM, was the theme of the groundbreaking 1984 commercial, for the launch of Apple Computers, Macintosh.

We were applying this, ‘hey, these people are an audience out there, how can we go captivate, and capture their imaginations, and their attention.

With George Orwell’s, 1984, his inspiration, and film maker, Ridley Scott as director, the minute long ad cost four hundred thousand dollars to produce, and another half a million dollars to air during the Super Bowl.

We use more dramatic film making, and entertainment style story telling, than has ever been used in marketing a product. The company couldn’t afford any additional National airings of the commercial, but its captivating story telling, still paid off beyond anyone’s expectation.

Within a hundred days of its broadcast, 72,000 Macintosh computers were sold. The kind of acting like an audience would rather, than like a consumer would ultimately, if they applaud you a couple of times, they may actually go buy something that you make.

By the 1990s, computers around the world, were being connected to one another by the internet. Fertile new ground for advertisers.

Advertising follows people where they congregate, and what they read, and what they look at, and the underlying power of the internet, is we’re spending more time, looking at the computer screen, and less time looking at the TV screen.

It’s going to drain advertising out of Television onto the screen of the computer, because that’s where people are.

[Yahoo]

Advertisers quickly logged on, but they are still trying to find their way in the brave new world of cyberspace.

The internet is like the early days of radio. In the early days of Television. So, nobody quite knows how to use it effectively, and I think that’s the exciting part about it, how do you turn it into a major advertising medium?

The first step, banner ads, which appeared in 1994. Within a year, agencies were spending 37 million dollars on Internet advertising. By 1998, that figure had increased 52 times to nearly 2 billion dollars for advertisers.

For advertisers, one of the advantages of the internet, is the information it can provide on potential consumers.

Each time a web surfer visits a site… electronic information, called a cookie, is created. Information from these cookies, can be used to track the preferences of Internet users… what types of books she reads, how often he buys clothes, what sites they visit…

You look at the ability, to really narrowcast into a market, that you want, a target that you want to hit you, you have a live audience 24 hours a day.

You know exactly who’s on the internet, you know where to find them.

“it’s like having the NFL on Fox online”…

Madison Avenue may know where the people are, but the people don’t seem to care where the ads are.

Studies show that over 90 percent of visitors to a typical website, never click on the advertising, so, advertisers are trying new approaches to grab consumers.

Cyber Gold, actually pays you to read an ad on the internet, will pay you dollars… it can be 50 cents, up to ten dollars, so we’ve gone from irritating people, to actually paying them money to engage in our advertising, is how far it’s gone.

Despite its long history, and its forays into the future, the overall effectiveness of advertising, has long been open to debate.

As John Wanamaker, of Wannamaker Department Stores, knew as far back as the 1880s, he said ‘I know that half my advertising budget is wasted, I just don’t know what half’…

And, you’ve got to remember back in those days, in the late 1800s, he didn’t have as many media choices, and have far more complex advertising environment… what percentage of advertising was wasted, today that’s the question that advertisers are struggling with.

If it didn’t work, people wouldn’t be spending millions and billions of dollars, if they’re not getting any return on their money, they would stop doing that kind of advertising.

To me, the simplest equation is, if you spend ten dollars and you get 20 back, that’s good, it’s been proven that if you spend the money, especially if you spend the money well, and you advertise well, the results will be enormous.

Advertising, CAN, sell products, but the more vexing question is, whether ads can make us buy stuff we don’t need.

I refuse to accept that people are being led around by the nose, and told what to buy, to the extent that we have disposable incomes, and that we define ourselves by what we buy, and we do, then advertising facilitates that.

Basically, what you see, is ads telling you that you’re cool, your hip, you’re all right, you’re the center of attention, or you should be, you’re irresistible, or you should be…

And, in order to have that power of course, you have to buy the product, and of course, that never works.

The ad that can cause people to buy a product they don’t want, has never been written, and never will.

I mean, advertising can tell people about things, and when they learn about it, they may want it… but if people fundamentally don’t want a product, no amount of advertising will cause them to buy it,

While the debate continues over the extent of advertising’s effectiveness, one thing is clear, advertising has become an inescapable part of our lives.

[ADS]

There are not many things that get that much universal exposure, as television commercials, and that’s one of the reasons that they’re such a part of our culture.

We don’t all go to the same movies, but we see all the same commercials, so they are a common element in between us.

[ADS]

If you and I were meeting a hundred years ago, and we had never spoken to each other, I would be able to have a conversation with you, maybe by quoting the Bible.

If you and I are meeting now, and I’ve never met you, I can say, ‘Hey you deserve a, what today’, and instantaneously around the world you know what the word is, ‘deserve a break today at McDonald’s’.

The most gratifying uh part of this whole business, is that what you do, if you get it right, once in a while we do, becomes a part of the popular culture.

People love to watch entertaining commercials, they get a laugh, they love to sing our jingles, and they love to to repeat the humor in many of our commercials.

I don’t know how important it is, but advertising is the eh, art of the masses, it has been said, and I like to think that we provide enjoyment for everyone.

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Advertising Through the Ages – Infographic

Here’s a breakdown in Infographic format… think in terms of thousands of years of advertising, covered in one relatively small image! Courtesy of our sister-site, Vidadz.

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Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed this video, infographic, and article. I enjoyed doing the research for it, and putting it all together. It’s just a fascinating topic. The world is reflected in advertising when you think about it.

 

The History of Advertising

‘The History of Advertising’, is one of my fave documentaries, all about what went on in the sometimes mad world of ads. Perhaps it should be called, ‘Madvertising’ :). The video covers centuries, even touching on millennia.

It’s truly amazing to see how advertising adapted, as the available media, and the world really, changed and progressed.

This documentary, covers vast eras, from ancient Greece, Rome, the Medieval years… onto the Printing Press, Newspapers, Magazines, and then moves on to Aerial Blimps, Radio, TV… it’s fascinating to see the changes as they happened.

McDonalds on the Moon?

The progression continues on today in modern times, where we’ve entered in to the digital realm.

The Internet, is in everybody’s back pocket these days. On our wrists with Google Watches, even Googles Glasses… at this rate, wonder when we’ll see the first McDonalds on the Moon? :).

Have a look at this wonderful video documentary, which covers all these changes.

It’s delivered in a light-hearted, but educational, informative way, a bit of a cinematographic masterpiece in itself. I love this video. If you’re into copywriting and invention, I’m pretty sure you’ll love it too.

Advertising Through the Ages – Infographic

Here’s a breakdown in Infographic format… think in terms of thousands of years of advertising, covered in one relatively small image! Courtesy of our sister-site, Vidadz.

***

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed this video, infographic, and article. I enjoyed doing the research for it, and putting it all together. It’s just a fascinating topic. The world is reflected in advertising when you think about it.