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Lesson#20
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ADVERTISING – HAND IN HAND WITH MEDIA
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ADVERTISING – HAND IN HAND WITH MEDIA
The area which benefited the most from the extraordinary growth of mass
media from the
seventeenth century is advertising. Advertising generally means announcing
new products and services with
commercial interest and which people can use as part of their daily life.
Always present before the mass media, advertisements were, however, few and
far between. People would
know little about the products and services available to them within a
society. Verbal announcements on the
beat of drums or distribution of hand-written bills were common mode of
telling the people around about
something pertaining to them. It was never an industry.
At the time printing process introduced in the middle of the fifteenth
century no one would have thought
that the new invention would lead to entirely a new industry which would
create jobs for millions of people
around the world and generate enormous business.
Not only the mass media helped the advertising industry grow, the later
reciprocated in equal terms and at
present stage has come when outlets of mass media are opened only after
ensuring that ample support from
the advertising business is available. Fact is that the two areas – mass
communication and advertising – are
essential for each other’s survival.
Here we will examine the rise of advertising business as part of mass
communication, its impact on society
and the help, it provides to mass media.
Historical background
In the colonial period, advertisements were primarily signboards on inns,
coffeehouses, and the
likes. Travelers needed information about inns, but locals did not need
advertisements in order to find the
blacksmith for instance.
The first newspaper to appear continuously, the Boston
News-Letter,
was established in 1704. It contained
sporadic advertisements. Real estate advertisements, rewards for runaway
apprentices, and notices of slaves
for sale were all common, as were announcements of sale of articles, wine,
and cloth. These advertisements
were limited to text; they contained no photographs or drawings obviously.
Publisher Benjamin Franklin founded the
Pennsylvania Gazette
in 1728. The
Gazette
included more
advertisements than did any other colonial newspaper, with up to half the
pages devoted to advertising.
Franklin is credited with introducing the use of large-point headings, using
white space to separate the
advertisements from the text, and, after 1750, including illustrations, say
some sort of cartoons etc.
Over the next century, there was little subsequent change in advertising.
Advertisements provided
information about goods for sale, arrivals and departures of ships, and
coach-schedules.
Print advertisements were confined primarily within column rules;
advertisements spanning more than one
column were yet to come.
In the 1860s, newspaper circulation increased, and magazine and periodical
advertising began. Advertising
volume increased markedly. Multicolumn display advertisements were designed;
their first use was to call
attention to the transcontinental railroad bonds that were being sold to the
public. By the 1870s,
multicolumn advertisements had become common in most European and American
newspapers.
Advertising in the backdrop of Industrialization
Since advertisements were assuming a very formal shape along with the
newspapers and magazines,
the diffusion of steam power in the 1850s paved the way for a wave of
technological change in the 1870s
and 1880s.
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The mass production characterized much of the west manufacturing by 1890.
Increased mechanization
generated increased fixed costs, creating an economic incentive to build
large factories that could enjoy
economies of scale in production but which were dependent on mass demand.
The transcontinental railroad allowed relatively low-cost shipment of goods,
making regional or national
markets economically feasible. Telegraph wires allowed low-cost and fast
nationwide transmission of
information. Manufacturers created brand names and sought to familiarize
buyers nationally with their
product. Where a housewife had once ordered a pound of generic baking
powder, now she was encouraged
to insist on known quality by requesting only
Royal Baking Powder.
Interestingly, manufacturers believed that buyers were primarily interested
in the quality of the product;
competition by price was uncommon. National firms included drawings of
sprawling factories and factory
owners in their advertisements; the larger the factory and thus the more
successful the firm, the higher
quality the merchandise could be presumed to be. Singer Sewing Machines,
Steinway Pianos, and
McCormick Harvesters and Reapers all produced advertisements of this sort.
The need to maintain demand became especially apparent during the 1893–1897
economic depression.
Many businesses failed; many more came close. Businesses needed methods to
insulate themselves from
cyclical downturns in sales and production. Advertising was one tactic they
employed.
Urbanization and commercials
In the U.S. only 20 percent of the population lived in urban areas in 1860,
increasing to nearly 40
percent by 1900. The need for easy provision of consumer goods increased as
more people therefore lived
divorced from the land. It is observed that in most cases it is the
population in big cities and towns which is
targeted by the advertisers. The trend was stemmed in the beginning.
By 1900, advertising in newspapers was supplemented by advertising on
streetcars, on billboards, and in
magazines. Full-page advertisements, especially in women's magazines, sought
to influence women's
choices.
Ladies' Home Journal,
established in 1883 by Cyrus H. K. Curtis, led the way. The Crowell
Publishing
Company founded
Women's Home Companion. William Randolph Hearst began
Cosmopolitan, Good
Housekeeping, and
Harper's BAZAAR.
Between 1890 and 1905 the monthly circulation of periodicals
increased from 18 million to 64 million.
Advertising Agencies
Advertising agents were middlemen in 1850. They bought advertising space
from newspapers and
resold it at a profit to a company seeking to place an advertisement.
Beginning in about 1880, N. W. Ayer and Son of Philadelphia offered its
customers an "open contract"
under which Ayer would be the company's sole advertising agent and, in
exchange, would price advertising
space at cost plus a fixed-rate commission. The idea caught on.
Manufacturers were soon blocked from
buying advertising space without an agent.
In 1893, the American Newspaper Publishers Association agreed to not allow
discounts on space sold to
direct advertisers. Curtis Publishing Company, publishers of
Ladies' Home Journal,
inaugurated the same
practice in 1901, and other magazine publishers soon followed suit. The
cost-plus-commission basis for the
agency was accepted industry wide in 1919, with the commission standardized
at 15 percent.
Until the 1890s, conceptualization and preparation of advertising copy were
the responsibility of the firm
placing the advertisement. But as companies followed N. W. Ayer & Son's
cost-plus-commission pricing
policy, agents could no longer compete with each other on price; they needed
some other means of
distinguishing their services from those of competing agents.
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Advertising agents—soon to be known as advertising agencies—took on their
modern form: writing copy;
creating trademarks, logos, and slogans; and overseeing preparation of
artwork. Ayer hired a full-time
copywriter in 1892; Procter and Collier of Cincinnati did so by 1896; Lord
Thomas of Chicago did so by
1898. By 1910, advertising agencies were universally characterized by the
presence of full-time copywriters
and artists.
One step in convincing others that advertising was a profession to be taken
seriously was the 1917
formation of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
The Association crafted broadly defined industry standards. Thereafter, the
industry was quickly afforded
the respect it desired. In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge addressed the
Association's annual convention.
For its ability to create mass demand, he credited advertising with the
success of the American industrial
system.
Modern Advertising
Modern advertising—advertising with the goal of creating desire for a
product where none
previously existed—began in the early twentieth century. With the blessing
of leaders in the advertising
industry, psychologists had begun applying principles of psychology
to advertising content in the
late 1890s.
In 1901, psychologist Walter Dill Scott, speaking on the psychology of
advertising, addressed a gathering of
businessmen. His book
The Theory of Advertising
appeared in 1903. Advertisers were initially skeptical of
Scott's thesis that psychological principles, especially the concept of
suggestion, could be effectively applied
to advertising.
Public service advertising
The same advertising techniques used to promote commercial goods and
services can be used to
inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues, such as
AIDS, political ideology,
energy conservation, religious recruitment, and deforestation advertising,
in its non-commercial guise, is a
powerful educational tool capable of reaching and motivating large
audiences.
Public service advertising, non-commercial advertising, public interest
advertising, cause marketing, and
social marketing are different terms for (or aspects of) the use of
sophisticated advertising and marketing
communications techniques (generally associated with commercial enterprise)
on behalf of non-commercial,
public interest issues and initiatives.
In the United States, the granting of television and radio licenses is
contingent upon the station
broadcasting a certain amount of public service advertising. To meet these
requirements, many broadcast
stations in America air the bulk of their required Public Service
Announcements during the late night or
early morning when the smallest percentage of viewers are watching, leaving
more day and prime time
commercial slots available for high-paying advertisers.
Public service advertising reached its height during World Wars I and II
under the direction of several
governments.
Advertisement impact
An ongoing conflict thus arose in the early twentieth century between two
types of advertising:
"reason-why" and "atmosphere" advertising. Dominant in the late nineteenth
century, reason-why
advertising consisted of long, detailed discourses on the features of a
product. Atmosphere advertising
reflected psychology's influence; it emphasized visual imagery that evoked
emotions. The conflict between
the two types of advertising was especially intense in the decade before
World War I (1914–1918).
In 1909, the advertisers of Colgate toothpaste took the conflict directly to
consumers, giving them the
opportunity to decide "Which Is the Better Ad?"—the one that offered a
detailed explanation of the health
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advantages of Colgate toothpaste, or the one that used illustrations to
associate the use of Colgate with a
happy family life.
Most practitioners and advertisers were won over by about 1910
Psychologists were judged correct; advertising could change needs and
desires. After 1910, most
advertising copy emphasized buyers' needs and desires rather than the
product's objectively described
characteristics.
WWI
Advertising's success during World War I fully settled the issue. Most
advertisements sounded a
patriotic pitch as they sought to sell Liberty and Victory Bonds, raise
money for the Red Cross, and more.
Some advertising historians even credited the industry with shortening the
war.
A number of advertising appeared in the 1920s, authored by
professors of psychology
whose affiliations were often with schools of business. Surveys
sought to ascertain the
fundamental wants or desires of human beings. A typical list would include
appetite, love, sexual attraction,
vanity, and approval by others. Atmosphere advertisements emphasized how a
product could satisfy these
desires.
Advertisers increasingly looked upon themselves as quite set apart from the
consumers who saw their ads. Copywriters were
male. Consumers were female. Roland Marchand, author of Advertising the
American Dream (1985), found that advertisers
in the 1920s and 1930s were predominantly male, white, Christian,
upper-class, well-educated people who frequently employed
servants and even chauffeurs, and whose cultural tastes ran to modern art,
opera, and symphonies. They saw their audience as
female, fickle, debased, emotional, possessing a natural inferiority
complex, having inarticulate longings, low intelligence, and
bad taste, and being culturally backward. The copy and visual imagery
created by these advertising men often emphasized the
woman's desire to be loved or her desire to be a good mother.
Criticism on advertisements
Advertising is often charged with creating a culture of consumerism in which
people define
themselves by the goods they buy. Certainly the first big boom in
advertising volume and the rise of
consumerism are coincidental: Consumerism first characterized the United
States in the early twentieth
century; advertising volume increased at an annual rate of nearly 9 percent
between 1900 and 1920.
Moreover, it was in this period that advertising first began emphasizing the
ability of goods to meet
emotional needs and, more to the point, first began its efforts to create
needs where none had previously
been felt.
Advertising business
U.S. Census Bureau,
Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001
YEAR AMOUNT-GROWTH
(billions of dollars)
PERCENTAGE
1900 0.5 —
1920 2.9 8.8
1929 3.4 1.7
1946 003.3 0.1
1960 011.9 9.5
1970 019.6 5.1
1990 129.6 9.9
2000 236.3 6.2
NOTE: The most recent
media development, the Internet, was advertisement-free until the first
banner advertisements were
sold in 1994. Ownership of computers and use of the Internet are both
increasing rapidly; by 1999, 34 percent of adults
nationwide claimed access to the Internet or an online service. Internet
advertising increases apace.
Legislation on advertisements
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Consumer’s objections to advertising and its tactics have resulted in
legislation, lawsuits, and
voluntary restraint. The 1914 Federal Trade Commission Act empowered the
Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) with the authority to regulate "unfair methods of competition." The
1938 Wheeler-Lea Amendment
extended the FTC's powers to "unfair or deceptive acts or practices." The
detrimental effects of billboards
on the countryside inspired the federal Highway Beautification Act in 1965,
which regulated placement of
billboards near interstate highways. The "Joe Camel" campaign for Camel
cigarettes introduced by R. J.
Reynolds in the 1970s resulted in a 1990s federal lawsuit because of the
campaign's alleged attempt to hook
kids on smoking. A voluntary ban on television advertising by the Distilled
Spirits Council of the United
States was just one part of its Code of Good Practice regarding marketing
and advertising, first adopted in
1934. Political advertising, with the goal of swaying voters rather than
consumers, enjoys First Amendment
protection but does face some constraints under state laws and under the
Federal Communications
Commission's Equal Access Law as well as the Federal Election Campaign Act.
Legislation was also done in almost all the European states, in Asia and
Australia of similar nature to
regulate the business of advertising. |
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