Outdoor advertising was based on hoardings (billboards): England 1835, by John Orlando Parry
The history of advertising in Britain has been a major part of the history of its capitalist economy for three centuries. It became a major force as agencies were organized in the mid-19th century, using primarily newspapers and magazines. In the 20th century, It grew rapidly with new technologies, such as direct mail, radio, television. In the late 19th century, home-based British agencies were swallowed up and became branches of international firms, but London remains one of the world's most important advertising centers. Radical changes have come recently because of the new roles for the Internet and smart phones. For current conditions see Advertising.
The three main forms of advertising in the 18th century were the trade card, posters that were fastened to the side of buildings, and, to a lesser extent, small display advertisements in newspapers.[1]
A trade card for chairs, 1730s
A favourite advertising medium was the trade card. It was a small printed illustrated card that shops and tradesmen handed to customers; it described a single product. The hope was they would pass it around to their friends and family.[2]
Newspaper copywriters in Scotland in the mid-18th century were the first to realize the function of the advertisement was not so much to provide information about the seller, but to excite the imagination of the purchaser and the boost the value of owning the particular product. They targeted upscale readers and manipulated the advertisement's language and tone to create a bond of trust linking the manufacturer, the product itself, and the consumers. One popular trope was to applaud Scottish nationalism. Another trope was to appeal to authority by emphasizing products that had the royal seal of approval, or providing written testimony from prominent local physicians and other local notables.[3]
In the 18th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These 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 disease ravaged Europe. In 18th-century Britain newspaper advertisements were the primary means of publishing accounts of troublesome people and requesting further information about them. Runaway convicts, servants, apprentices, soldiers, and spouses are all described in great detail.[4]
19th century
Women became targets in the late Georgian era, as magazine and newspaper ads introduced emphasized beauty products using nationwide product distribution, brand-name marketing, and the targeting of specific audiences. Upscale women were encouraged to move further up through more expensive fashions and cosmetics. Women were flattered to learn that Pears's Liquid Bloom of Roses and White Imperial Powder beautifully tints their cheeks and lips, bestowing a delicacy to the countenance. Men, by contrast, were given an ugly warning in the ad for John Gowland's spot cream, in the Sussex Weekly Advertiser in 1791:[5]
To THE GENTLEMEN: THIS LOTION is an EFFECTUAL REMEDY for all SCORBUTIC and HERPETIC eruptions of the FACE and SKIN, from the most trivial to the most DISFIGURING and INVETERATE; from the smallest PIMPLE or TETTER to the most universally SPREADING Eruptions or Ulcerations. For redness of the NOSE, ARMS, or other part, and in short for every train and species of EVIL to which the Skin is liable, whether vivid and INFLAMED, or LANGUID and OBDURATE.[6]
In the early 19th century, Edinburgh businessman and civic leader Nahum Ward purchased farmlands near Marietta, Ohio on the American frontier and resold them to farmers in Scotland. Advertise heavily using magazine hands and broadsides In small towns, extolling the high productivity, and low-cost of the fresh lands. Throughout the century and into the early 20th century, American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand railroads and land agents advertised heavily across Britain.[7][8][9]
A 1900 British ad for Pears soap
In London in the late 19th century Thomas J. Barratt was hailed as "the father of modern advertising".[10][11][12] 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. This budget reached £80,000 per year. One of his slogans, "Good morning. Have you used Pears' soap?" was famous in its day and into the 20th century.[13]
An advertising tactic that he used was to associate 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. (Millais protested at this alteration of his work, but in vain as Barratt had bought the copyright.[14][15]) Barratt continued this theme with a series of adverts of well groomed middle-class children, associating Pears with domestic comfort and aspirations of modern cleanliness.
Barratt established Pears Annual in 1891 as a spin-off magazine which promoted contemporary illustration and colour printing and in 1897 added the Pears Cyclopedia a one-volume encyclopedia.[16] From the early 20th century Pears was famous for the annual "Miss Pears" competition in which parents entered their children into the high-profile hunt for a young brand ambassador to be used on packaging and in consumer promotions. He recruited scientists and the celebrities of the day to publicly endorse the product. Lillie Langtry, a British music hall singer and stage actress with a famous ivory complexion, received income as the first woman to endorse a commercial product, advertising Pears Soap. 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."[17]
20th century
Environmentalism
A sensibility for the environment became a mainstream feature of advertising after 1970, but Shell Oil was a pioneer in the 1930s. Its advertising seldom visualized Shell's petrol or oil, let alone its drilling rigs, refineries or ocean tankers. Instead its artists were called on to depict bucolic country scenes, rural townscapes, and historic structures.[18]Greenwashing is when a company or organization spends more time and money on marketing themselves as environmentally friendly than on minimizing their environmental impact. It is a deceitful advertising gimmick intended to mislead consumers who prefer to buy goods and services from environmentally conscious brands.[19]
Second World War
Thomas Lipton (1848-1931) engaged in extensive advertising for his chain of grocery stores and his brand of Lipton teas. He boasted that his secret for success was selling the best goods at the cheapest prices, harnessing the power of advertising, and always being optimistic.[20]
As millions of American soldiers passed through Britain during the Second World War, there were fearsof an "Americanization" of British commerce and culture. The Marshall Plan explicitly required and upgrading of the marketing and organizational skills of British industry. There were fears among the leaders of the London advertising world of what the brash, rich Americans would do to them. Radio and television was off limits to advertising, because BBC relied on fees paid by owners of radio receivers. The question was whether the heavily funded American methods would prove irresistible. JWT London was an American owned advertising agency controlled by J. Walter Thompson in New York City. JWT London avoided being the bold apostle of the American style. Instead it relied on soft persuasion, shedding its Americanness to adapt to the British understated style.[21]
Tobacco
By the 1950s, fears of cancer from tobacco smoking cause consternation in the tobacco industry, which turned to advertisers for help in avoiding falling consumer demand and increased regulation. British and American agencies separately arrived at similar solutions. The Tobacco Manufacturers' Standing Committee in Britain assuaged public anxieties and encouraged the misperception that the cigarette makers were resolving the issues through filters and low tar formulations. The public relations approach was successful in the short run, but the accumulation of medical evidence led to a fall in smoking, heavier taxation, and increased regulation. The agencies responded with sophisticated advertising strategies designed to encourage adolescent smokers as well as to recruit new smokers in less-developed foreign markets.[22] Government anti-smoking programs were developed that used standard advertising techniques to degrade the prestige of cigarette smoking and warn of its dangers.[23]
American rivals
New York agencies opened branches in London primarily to serve American-based multinational clients, such as General Motors and General Electric. Their much deeper financial base allowed them to grow rapidly from 1945 until the late 1970s, by which time they dominated the top end of the British advertising market. The British staged a major counter-challenge in the early 1980s, however, with considerable success, thanks to their improved access to capital. The British firms expanded through acquisition of American agencies, rather than the servicing of British-based multinational companies.[24] Artistically, the critical moment came in the 1960s as Americans approaches impacted the British agencies. Britons were already deep into experimentation in music, fashion, photography, and graphic design, so they snatched at the American models of advertising. The first D&AD (Design and Art Direction) awards came in 1963, and helped define the standards of excellence. The trade magazine Campaign launched in 1968. "What happened in New York led to what is now regarded as the golden age of British advertising," said Alfredo Marcantonio."[25]
↑ Terence R. Nevett, Advertising in Britain: a history (1982) ch 1
↑ Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, "Selling Consumption in the Eighteenth Century: Advertising and the Trade Card in Britain and France," Cultural & Social History (2007) 4#2 pp 145-170
↑ Hamish Mathison, "Tropes of Promotion and Wellbeing: Advertisement and the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Periodical," Prose Studies (1998) 21#2 pp 206-225.
↑ Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, "Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination and Identity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World," Journal of Social History (2005) 39#1 pp 39-64 online
↑ Andrew McDiarmid, "Thomas Lipton's 10 secrets to success," History Scotland Magazine (2014,) 14#2 pp 28-29.
↑ Sean Nixon, "Apostles of Americanization? J. Walter Thompson Company Ltd, Advertising and Anglo-American Relations 1945-67," Contemporary British History (2008) 22#4 pp 477-499.
↑ David T. Courtwright, "'Carry on Smoking': Public Relations and Advertising Strategies of American and British Tobacco Companies since 1950," Business History (2005) 47#3 pp 421-432. online
↑ Virginia Berridge and Kelly Loughlin. "Smoking and the new health education in Britain 1950s–1970s." American Journal of Public Health 95#6 (2005) pp: 956+
↑ Douglas West, "Multinational Competition in the British Advertising Agency Business, 1936-1987," Business History Review (1988) 62#3 pp 467-501
↑ Mark Tungate Ad Land: A Global History of Advertising (2007) pp 79-87; quote on page 79
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Church, Roy. "New perspectives on the history of products, firms, marketing, and consumers in Britain and the United States since the mid-nineteenth century 1." Economic History Review 52.3 (1999): 405–435.
Furdell, Elizabeth Lane. "Grub Street commerce: advertisements and politics in the early modern British press." Historian 63#1 (2000): 35–52. online
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Loeb, Lori Anne. Consuming Angels: Advertising & Victorian Women (1994) 224pp
Myerson, Jeremy, and Graham Vickers. Rewind Forty Years of Design & Advertising (2004)
Nachum, Lilach, and Jean-Daniel Rolle. "Home country and firm-specific ownership advantages: A study of US, UK and French advertising agencies." International Business Review 8#5 (1999): 633–660.
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Oram, Hugh. The advertising book: The history of advertising in Ireland (MOL Books, 1986)
Schwarzkopf, Stefan. "Discovering the consumer market research, product innovation, and the creation of brand loyalty in Britain and the United States in the interwar years." Journal of Macromarketing 29.1 (2009): 8-20.
Schwarzkopf, Stefan. "They do it with mirrors: advertising and British Cold War consumer politics." Contemporary British History 19.2 (2005): 133–150.
Smith, Lewis Charles. "Marketing modernity: Business and family in British Rail’s “Age of the Train” campaign, 1979–84." The Journal of Transport History 40.3 (2019): 363-394.
West, Douglas. "Multinational competition in the British advertising agency business, 1936–1987." Business History Review 62#3 (1988): 467–501.
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a specific good or service, but there are wide range of uses, the most common being the commercial advertisement.
Sex appeal is often used in advertising to help sell a particular product or service. According to research, sexually appealing content, such as imagery, used for marketing does not need to pertain directly to the product or service in question. Rather, such content is utilized as an attempt to shape or shift brand image held by the consumer. As more companies have adopted the strategy of "sex sells", the prevalence of sexual campaigns has led to controversy. Consumers in society have voiced concern over the techniques and content used to titillate audiences, often stemming from the fact that such ads challenge conventional morals and cultural standards.
Corporate propaganda refers to propagandist claims made by a corporation, for the purpose of manipulating market opinion with regard to that corporation, and its activities.
In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is perceived as planned and secures its objectives. Developing a good relationship with target markets is essential for brand management. Tangible elements of brand management include the product itself; its look, price, and packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experiences that the target markets share with the brand, and also the relationships they have with the brand. A brand manager would oversee all aspects of the consumer's brand association as well as relationships with members of the supply chain.
Joe Camel was an advertising mascot used by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) for their cigarette brand Camel. The character was created in 1974 for a French advertising campaign, and was redesigned for the American market in 1988. He appeared in magazine advertisements, clothing, and billboards among other print media and merchandise.
Greenwashing, also called "green sheen", is a form of advertising or marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly. Companies that intentionally take up greenwashing communication strategies often do so in order to distance themselves from their own environmental lapses or those of their suppliers.
An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally independent of the client; it may be an internal department or agency that provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services, or an outside firm. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies promotions for its clients, which may include sales as well.
Advertising management is a planned managerial process designed to oversee and control the various advertising activities involved in a program to communicate with a firm's target market and which is ultimately designed to influence the consumer's purchase decisions. Advertising is just one element in a company's promotional mix and as such, must be integrated with the overall marketing communications program. Advertising is, however, the most expensive of all the promotional elements and therefore must be managed with care and accountability. Advertising management process also helps in defining the outline of the media campaign and in deciding which type of advertising would be used before the launch of a product.
Silk Cut is a British brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by Gallaher Group, a division of Japan Tobacco. The packaging is characterised by a distinctive stark white packet with the brand name in a purple, blue, red, silver, white or green square.
Nicotine marketing is the marketing of nicotine-containing products or use. Traditionally, the tobacco industry markets cigarette smoking, but it is increasingly marketing other products, such as electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products. Products are marketed through social media, stealth marketing, mass media, and sponsorship. Expenditures on nicotine marketing are in the tens of billions a year; in the US alone, spending was over US$1 million per hour in 2016; in 2003, per-capita marketing spending was $290 per adult smoker, or $45 per inhabitant. Nicotine marketing is increasingly regulated; some forms of nicotine advertising are banned in many countries. The World Health Organization recommends a complete tobacco advertising ban.
Sustainability advertising is communications geared towards promoting social, economic and environmental benefits (sustainability) of products, services or actions through paid advertising in media in order to encourage responsible behavior of consumers.
Pears Glycerin soap is a British brand of soap first produced and sold in 1807 by Andrew Pears, at a factory just off Oxford Street in London. It was the world's first mass-market translucent soap. Under the stewardship of advertising pioneer Thomas J. Barratt, A. & F. Pears initiated a number of innovations in sales and marketing. English actress and socialite Lillie Langtry was recruited to become the poster-girl for Pears in 1882, and in doing so she became the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product.
Bubbles, originally titled A Child's World, is an 1886 painting by Sir John Everett Millais that became famous when it was used over many generations in advertisements for Pears soap. During Millais's lifetime, it led to widespread debate about the relationship between art and advertising.
Toy advertising is the promotion of toys through a variety of media. Advertising campaigns for toys have been criticised for trading on children's naivete and for turning children into premature consumers. Advertising to children is usually regulated to ensure that it meets defined standards of honesty and decency. These rules vary from country to country, with some going as far as banning all advertisements that would be directed at children.
The study of the history of marketing, as a discipline, is meaningful because it helps to define the baselines upon which change can be recognised and understand how the discipline evolves in response to those changes. The practice of marketing has been known for millennia, but the term "marketing" used to describe commercial activities assisting the buying and selling of products or services came into popular use in the late nineteenth century. The study of the history of marketing as an academic field emerged in the early twentieth century.
Thomas James Barratt (1841–1914) was an English businessman who was the chairman of the soap manufacturer A. & F. Pears. A pioneer of brand marketing, he has been called "the father of modern advertising".
Emotional branding is a term used within marketing communication that refers to the practice of building brands that appeal directly to a consumer's emotional state, needs and aspirations. Emotional branding is successful when it triggers an emotional response in the consumer, that is, a desire for the advertised brand that cannot fully be rationalized. Emotional brands have a significant impact when the consumer experiences a strong and lasting attachment to the brand comparable to a feeling of bonding, companionship or love. Examples of emotional branding include the nostalgic attachment to the Kodak brand of film, bonding with the Jim Beam bourbon brand, and love for the McDonald’s brand.
Cigarette smoking for weight loss is a weight control method whereby one consumes tobacco, often in the form of cigarettes, to decrease one's appetite. The practice dates to early knowledge of nicotine as an appetite suppressant.
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.
As nicotine is highly addictive, marketing nicotine-containing products is regulated in most jurisdictions. Regulations include bans and regulation of certain types of advertising, and requirements for counter-advertising of facts generally not included in ads. Regulation is circumvented using less-regulated media, such as Facebook, less-regulated nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigarettes, and less-regulated ad types, such as industry ads which claim to discourage nicotine addiction but seem, according to independent studies, to promote teen nicotine use.
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