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The Definition of Advertisement

l something (such as a short film or a written notice) that is shown or presented to the public to help sell a product or to make an announcement.

l a person or thing that shows how good or effective something is.

l the act or process of advertising.

The History of Advertising

In ancient times the most common form of advertising was by word of mouth. The archaeologists have found Babylonian clay tablet dated 3000 BC having inscription of a shoemaker, a scribe and an ointment dealer. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii, where little shops used to have inscriptions on walls near the entrance to inform the pedestrians about the products to be purchased.

Egyptians used papyrus to create sales messages and wall posters. Such one document found in the ruins of Thebes bears announcements offering rewards for the return of fugitive slaves. In Greece and Rome, lost-and-found advertising on papyrus was common. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is manifestation of ancient outdoor advertising form, which, is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America.

For instance, the tradition of wall paintings can be traced back to Indian rock-art paintings that goes back to 4000 BC. Phoenicians used to pain commercial messages on prominent rocks along the frequently travelled trade routes. The other mode of advertising was town crying that was used in Greece and India, where town criers were paid to go around town spreading news and making announcements in the streets.

As printing developed in the 15th and 16th century especially after the invention of movable type by Johann Gutenberg in 1438 AD, advertising flourished. The first known print advertisement in English appeared nearly 40 years after this inventions in the form of handbill of rules for the guidance of clergy at Easter released by William Caxton of London. In about 1525, one ad eulogising the virtues of mysterious drug printed on a circulated sheet appeared in German news pamphlets.

This was followed by a rapid spurt in the growth of newspapers the first of which in English came out in 1622 named Weekly News of London. The first advertisement appeared in an English newspaper in 1625. The first ad in America appeared in 1704 in Boston Newsletter offering a reward for the capture of a thief. In the 17th century, weekly newspapers called ‘mercuries’ started to be published in England, which used to feature many advertisements most of which were in the form of announcements made by the importers of products new to England like coffee in 1652, chocolate in 1657 and tea in the next year.

The other print ads were used mainly to promote books (which became increasingly affordable thanks to the printing press) and medicines (which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe). However, false advertising and so-called “quack” ads became a problem, which ushered in regulation of advertising content.

As the economy was expanding during the 19th century, the need for advertising grew at the same pace. In the United States, classified ads became popular, filling pages of newspapers with small print messages promoting all kinds of goods. The success of this advertising format led to the growth of mail-order advertising such as the Sears Catalog, at one time referred to as the “Farmer’s Bible”.

In 1843 Volney Palmer established the first advertising agency in Philadelphia, who worked as an agent for around 1400 newspapers. He only used to sell space to advertisers and did not provide any creative or account planning services to clients. But by the 20th century, agencies started to take over responsibility for the content also in addition to being just brokers for ad space in newspapers.

The Early years of Advertising in America:

1. 1843 – Volney B. Palmer opens the first American advertising agency, in Philadelphia.

2. 1852 – First advertisement for Smith Brother’s Cough Candy (drops) appears in a Poughkeepsie, New York paper – the two brothers in the illustration are named “Trade” and “Mark.”

3. 1856 – Mathew Brady advertises his services of “photographs, ambrotypes and daguerreotypes” in the New York Herald paper. His inventive use of type in the ad goes against the newspaper industry standard of all-agate and all same-size type used for advertisements in the papers.

4. 1856 – Robert Bonner is the first to run a full-page ad in a paper, advertising his own literary paper, the New York Ledger.

5. 1861 – There are twenty advertising agencies in New York City.

6. 1864 – William James Carlton begins selling advertising space in newspapers, founding the agency that later became the J. Walter Thompson Company, the oldest American advertising agency in continuous existence.

7. 1865 – George P. Rowell and his friend Horace Dodd open their advertising agency in Boston.

8. 1867 – Lord & Taylor is the first company to use double-column advertising in newspapers.

9. 1869 – N. W. Ayer and Sons advertising agency is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the following year begins advertising its own agency in both general and trade publications.

10. 1869 – E. C. Allan starts the People’s Literary Companion, marking the beginning of the “mail order” periodical.

11. 1869 – The first advertisement for Sapolio soap is published.

12. 1869 – George P. Rowell issues the first Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory, providing advertisers with information on the estimated circulation of papers and thus helping to standardize value for space in advertising.

13. 1860s – Advertising begins to appear in nationally distributed monthly magazines.

14. 1870 – 5,091 newspapers are in circulation, compared to 715 in 1830.

15. 1872 – Montgomery Ward begins mail order business with the issue of its first catalog.

16. 1879 – John Wanamaker places the first whole-page newspaper advertisement by an American department store.

17. 1870s – Charles E. Hires begins advertising Hires Root Beer in the Philadelphia Ledger, expanding over the next two decades into national magazines.

18. 1870s – $1 million dollars is spent annually advertising Lydia Pinkham’s Pink Pills.

19. 1870s – Louis Prang, a lithographer and printer, develops the idea of mass-producing small “trade cards” that could be adapted to the needs of individual advertisers at low cost. Thread companies, such as Clark’s O.N.T., are among the first to begin nationwide distribution of advertising trade cards.

20. 1870s – In response to the high volume of outdoor advertising (including posters and signs painted on rocks, buildings and barns) in cities and rural areas, several states begin to impose limitations to protect natural scenery from sign painters.

21. 1880 – John Wanamaker hires John E. Powers, who brings a fresh style to advertising – an honest, direct and fresh appeal emphasizing the style, elegance, comfort and luxury of products. Powers is later called “the father of honest advertising.”

22. 1886 – Sears, Roebuck & Company begins mail-order business.

23. 1880s – Illustrated trade cards reach the height of their popularity, not only with advertisers but also with the American public, which becomes remarkably interested in collecting them.

24. 1890 – J. Walter Thompson Company’s billings total over one million dollars.

25. 1891 – The precursor organization to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) is created under the name Associated Bill Posters Association of United States and Canada. OAAA is not used as the organizational name until 1925.

26. 1891 – Batten and Co. advertising agency is founded by George Batten in New York, merging with another agency in 1928 to form Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne (BBDO).

27. 1891 – Nathan Fowler, in Advertising Age, recommends that because women make most of the purchasing decisions of their household, manufacturers would do well to direct their advertising messages to them.

28. 1900 – 1920

29. 1902 – Packard begins use of the long-lasting slogan “Ask the man who owns one.”

30. 1902 – Unilever hires the J. Walter Thompson Company for advertising Lifebuoy Soap and later Lux and other products in America. Unilever is still with J. Walter Thompson and represents the oldest client relationship in the advertising industry.

31. 1904 – Cigarette coupons are first used as a draw for a new chain of tobacco stores.

32. 1914 – The first full-length feature comedy motion picture, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, stars Marie Dresser, Mabel Normand, and newcomer Charlie Chaplin.

33. 1917 – A massive advertising campaign for Lucky Strike tobacco gets underway, employing the slogan “It’s Toasted.”

34. 1917 – The American Association of Advertising Agencies is formed.

The 1960s saw advertising transform into a modern, more scientific approach in which creativity was allowed to shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to consumers’ eyes. The Volkswagen ad campaign featuring such headlines as “Think Small” and “Lemon” ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a “position” or “unique selling proposition’ designed to associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer’s mind.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV. Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertisement, rather than it being a byproduct or afterthought. As cable (and later satellite) television became increasingly prevalent, “specialty” channels began to emerge, and eventually entire channels, such as QVC and Home Shopping Network and Shop TV, devoted to advertising merchandise, where again the consumer tuned in for the ads.

Marketing through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and led to the “dot-com” boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access. At the turn of the 21st century, the search engine Google revolutionized online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant, unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than inundate, users. This has led to a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of interactive advertising.

The share of advertising spending relative to total economic output (GDP) has changed little across large changes in media. For example, in the U.S. in 1925, the main advertising media were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters. Advertising spending as a share of U.S. GDP was about 2.6% in 1925. By 1998, television and radio had become major advertising media. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower — about 2.4%.

A recent advertising innovation is “guerrilla promotions”, which involve unusual approaches such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and “embedded” ads, such as via product placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various innovations utilizing social networking sites such as MySpace and Orkut.

An early advertising success story is that of Pears Soap. Thomas Barratt married into the famous soap making family and realised that they needed to be more aggressive about pushing their products if they were to survive. He launched the series of ads featuring cherubic children which firmly welded the brand to the values it still holds today, he took images considered as “fine art” and used them to connote his brand’s quality, purity (ie untainted by commercialism) and simplicity (cherubic children). He is often referred to as the father of modern advertising.

However, it was not until the emergence of advertising agencies in the latter part of the nineteenth century that advertising became a fully-fledged institution, with its own ways of working, and with its own creative values. These agencies were a response to an increasingly crowded marketplace, where manufacturers were realising that promotion of their products was vital if they were to survive. They sold themselves as experts in communication to their clients – who were then left to get on with the business of manufacturing.

World War 1 saw some important advances in advertising as governments on all sides used ads as propaganda. The British used advertising as propaganda to convince its own citizens to fight, and also to persuade the Americans to join. No less a political commentator than Hitler concluded (in Mein Kampf) that Germany lost the war because it lost the propaganda battle: he did not make the same mistake when it was his turn. One of the other consequences of World War I was the increased mechanisation of industry – and hence increased costs which had to be paid for somehow: hence the desire to create need in the consumer which begins to dominate advertising from the 1920s onward.

Advertising quickly took advantage of the new mass media of the first part of the twentieth century, using cinema, and to a much greater extent, radio, to transmit commercial messages. You can listen to some early radio advertising here (RealPlayer req’d). This was beginning to show signs of working effectively in the 1920s but the Wall St crash put an end to widespread affluence, and the Great Depression and World War Two meant that it was not really until the 1950s that consumers had enough disposable income to really respond to the need creation message of advertisers.

The 1950s not only brought postwar affluence to the average citizen but whole new glut of material goods for which need had to be created. Not least of these was the television set. In America it quickly became the hottest consumer property – no home could be without one. And where the sets went, the advertisers followed, spilling fantasies about better living through buying across the hearthrug in millions of American homes.

The UK and Europe, with government controlled broadcasting, were a decade or so behind America in allowing commercial TV stations to take to the air, and still have tighter controls on sponsorship and the amount of editorial control advertisers can have in a programme. This is the result of some notable scandals in the US, where sponsors interfered in the content and outcome of quiz shows in order to make their product seem, by association, sexier.

Unhappy with the ethical compromise of the single-sponsor show, NBC executive Sylvester Weaver came up with the idea of selling not whole shows to advertisers, but separate, small blocks of broadcast time. Several different advertisers could buy time within one show, and therefore the content of the show would move out of the control of a single advertiser – rather like a print magazine. This became known as the magazine concept, or participation advertising, as it allowed a whole variety of advertisers to access.

The Functions of Advertising

1. To introduce a new product by creating interest for it among the prospective customers.

2. To support personal selling programme. Advertising may be used to open customers’ doors for salesmen.

3. To reach people inaccessible to salesmen.

4. To enter a new market or attract a new group of customers.

5. To fight competition in the market and to increase the sales.

6. To enhance the goodwill of the enterprise by promising better quality products and services.

Advertising has become an essential marketing activity in the modern era of large-scale production and severe competition in the market.

It performs the following functions: 

(i) Promotion of Sales:

Advertising promotes the sale of goods and services by informing and persuading the people to buy them. A good advertising campaign helps in winning customers and generating revenues.

(ii) Introduction of New Products:

Advertising helps in the introduction of new products in the market. A business enterprise can introduce itself and its products to the public through advertising. Advertising enables quick publicity in the market.

(iii) Support to Production System:

Advertising facilitates large-scale production. The business firm knows that it will be able to sell on a large-scale with the help of advertising. Mass production will reduce the cost of production per unit by making possible the economical use of various factors of production.

(iv) Increasing Standard of Living:

Advertising educates the people about the products and their uses. It is advertising which has helped people in adopting new ways of life and giving up old habits. It has contributed a lot towards the betterment of the standard of living of the society.

(v) Public Image:

Advertising builds up the reputation of the advertiser. Advertising enables a business firm to communicate its achievements and its efforts to satisfy the customers’ needs to the public. This increases the goodwill and reputation of the firm.

(vi) Support to Media:

Advertising sustains press. Advertising provides an important source of revenue to the publishers of newspapers and magazines and the producers of T.V. programmes.

Significance of Advertising:

Advertising helps in spreading information about the advertising firm, its products, qualities and place of availability of its products and so on. It helps to create a non-personal link between the advertiser and the receivers of the message.

The significance of advertising has increased in the modern era of large scale production and tough competition in the market. Advertising is needed not only to the manufacturers and traders but also to the customers and the society. The benefits of advertising to different parties are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Benefits to Manufacturers and Traders:

It pays to advertise. Advertising has become indispensable for the manufacturers and distributors because of the following advantages:

(i) Advertising helps in introducing new products. A business enterprise can introduce itself and its products to the public through advertising.

(ii) Advertising develops new taste among the public and stimulates them to purchase the new product through effective communication.

(iii) Advertising assists to increase the sale of existing products by entering into new markets and attracting new customers.

(iv) Advertising helps in creating steady demand of the products. For instance, a drink may be advertised during summer as a product necessary to fight tiredness caused by heat and during winter as an essential thing to resist cold.

(v) Advertising helps in meeting the forces of competition in the market. If a product is not advertised continuously, the competitors may snatch its market through increased advertisements. Therefore, in certain cases, advertising is necessary to remain in the market.

(vi) Advertising is used to increase the goodwill of the firm by promising improved quality to the customers.

(vii) Advertising increases the morale of the employees of the firm. The salesmen feel happier because their task becomes easier if the product is advertised and known to the public.

(viii) Advertising facilitates mass production of goods which enables the manufacturer to achieve lower cost per unit of product. Distribution costs are also lowered when the manufacturer sells the product directly to the customers. Advertising also facilitates distribution of the product through the retailers who are encouraged to deal in the advertised products.

Benefits to Customers:

Advertising offers the following advantages to customers:

(i) Advertising helps the customers to know about the existence of various products and their prices. They can choose from the various products to satisfy their wants. Thus, they cannot be exploited by the sellers.

(ii) Advertising educates the people about new products and their diverse uses.

(iii) Advertising increases the utility of existing products for many people adding to the amount of satisfaction which they are already enjoying.

(iv) Advertising induces the manufacturers to improve the quality of their products through research and development. This ensures supply of better quality products to the customers.

Benefits to Society:

The whole society is benefitted because of advertisement in the following ways:

(i) Advertising provides employment to persons engaged in writing, designing and issuing advertisements, and also those who act as models. Increased employment brings additional income with the people which stimulate more demand. Employment is further generated to meet the increased demand.

(ii) Advertising promotes the standard of living of the people by increasing the variety and quality in consumption as a result of sustained research and development activities by the manufacturers.

(iii) Advertising educates the people about the various uses of different products and this increases their knowledge. Advertising also helps in finding customers in the international market which is essential for earning foreign exchange.

(iv) Advertising sustains the press, and other media. It provides an important source of income to the press, radio and television network. The customers are also benefitted because they get newspapers and magazines at cheaper rates. The publishers of newspapers and magazines are benefitted because of increased circulation of their publications. Lastly, advertising also encourages commercial art

Types of Advertisement

As it turns out, according to Donald Gunn, the creative director at Leo Burnett advertising agency, there are 12 types of ads.

Demo. Example: Apple iPhone commercials

Show Need or Problem. Example: Those annoying Cingular ads where the voice drops out making what would have been a normal conversation terribly awkward.

Symbol, Analogy, Exaggeration. The product solves a problem. Example: Theraflu ogre ad.

Comparison. Example: Charles Schwab posterized ads.

Exemplary Story. Example: The VW commercials where the people in the car are just chatting it up and, then out of nowhere, boom! Crash.

Benefit Causes Story. Example: the Lynx ad. Probably the funnies ad of the lot, both for men and women – it’s so far fetched. It’s amazing what one can get away with in the name of comedy. 

Tell it. Example: UPS ad with man who needs a haircut drawing on a whiteboard.

On Going Characters and Celebrities. Example: Subway, Mercury, Geico, Energizer Bunny, etc.

Symbol, Analogy, Exaggeration. This time, instead of showing how the product solves a problem, the technique demonstrates a benefit of the product. Example: Starbucks, Metamucil, etc.

Associated User Imagery. This is all about connecting the product to the type of person the advertiser thinks would be using the product. Hoping for identification. Example: Nike.

Unique Personality Property. Example: Dyson Vacuums.

Parody of Borrowed Format. I love this format. Basically, make fun of something popular and then stick your logo at the end. Brilliant. Example: Reality TV – Geico.

While we all know that there are many forms of online advertising, such as pay-per-lead, email, search engine keywords, adwords, etc – this next part only includes banner advertising.

Banner Advertising Classification:

Irritate Out of People by Making the Screen Shake. You’ve seen it. Mortgage companies love this tactic. Think right-hand column empire ads in Hotmail.

Whack-a-mole. The point is to get people to click.

TV ad on the web. Very popular on sites like Yahoo! and Collegehumor.com. Literally, the ad space looks like a mini made-for-television ad.

Background Branding. Where the entire background of the website is leased out to an advertiser. If you want to check this out, go to Pandora.com and keep refreshing the screen until you see it.

Traditional. Simple typography, imagery, message, and call to action. An all time classic.

“Whoa, did you see that?” rich media. Very amazing, high impact ads that stay contained in their space until the user mousse over them – at which point, the ad “unfolds” on the page overtop the page’s content, and a rich media experience is delivered. They are expensive to produce and expensive to run. But effective as hell.

Chameleon. The ads that look like content on the site. Trickery!

Buttons. 

REQUIREMENTS OF ADVERTISING

Advertising is the way that companies let you know about them and their products. So you have to make sure that as a representative of the company, you are producing the best advertisements possible for the company so that it will be profitable.

Good advertising has to have several things. An advertisement has to connect with the audience. It has to be unforgettable. It has to have some sort of trademark or something to remember it by every time. It has to be clear and to the point. And you have to have research and tests done on your commercial before it goes out into the public.

You have to connect with your audience. When you are creating an advertisement, you have a group of people that you want to focus on. Make sure that you are figuring out what they like and need. You have to put that information into the advertisements. You can't just have things that they like in the advertisements, but also have some sort of message incorporated into it. You have to make sure that they are loving what they see and have to go out and buy it.

Your advertisements have to be unforgettable. Super Bowl advertisements have a reputation for being the best commercials of the year. But if you want a really good advertising campaign, make commercials like those all year round. People don't forget a really funny commercial or one that was really crazy and not something you usually see. You don't have to shock the world, just be creative. For example, Sony came out with an advertisement to promote one of their new televisions where they dumped one million bouncy balls down the streets of San Francisco. It was an amazing commercial to see. No one was talking, just music and words, but it was amazing to see. People don't forget advertisements like that.

A really good advertising campaign will also have something like a trademark or something that connects them all. That way customers see the different commercials but know they all relate to something. For example, Geico has the gecko in most of their commercials, or the cavemen. Everyone knows about the Geico gecko and the Geico cavemen. It's become so familiar with everyone.

An advertisement also has to be clear. You can't have a whole bunch of information or you will confuse customers. Make it informative but to the point. Don't have any extra words or designs or acting in the advertisement.

Before you run even one advertisement you need to have research done on it. All companies do. You have to have research done on a control group and get feedback from them. Their feedback will let you know if the commercials and advertisements will actually impress customers and encourage them to go out and buy your product. Don't take their comments as criticism but as ways to improve what you have already done. They are the people who will be seeing the advertisements, so they will most likely have the best opinions of what needs to be changed and fixed. If you created the advertisement, it probably won't be easy to see the mistakes and what needs to be improved, so make sure you do the research.

A good advertisement has to have all of these components. If an advertisement is forgettable but is funny, the product will sell, but not as well. Make sure that you are putting everything together and are doing the research on what is working in the advertisement and what isn't. This will help to make sure the advertisements are the best you can ever have.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chand, Smriti. World History of Advertising. Retrieved from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/advertising/essay-on-world-history-of-advertising-2382-words/22249/

Chand, Smriti. Advertising: Objectives, Function and Significance of Advertising a Product. Retrieved from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/advertising/advertising-objectives-function-and-significance-of-advertising-a-product/27987/

Zapata, Andres. (2007, July 24). 12 TYPES OF TV ADS, AND 8 TYPES OF WEB BANNERS. Retrieved from http://idfive.com/12-types-of-tv-ads-and-8-types-of-web-banners/

Requirement of Good Advertising. Retrieved from http://businessknowledgesource.com/marketing/requirements_of_good_advertising_026285.html