History of advertising

Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers.

[23] In June 1836 the Paris newspaper La Presse - edited by Émile de Girardin - became the first to rely on paid advertising to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability.

Barratt continued this theme with a series of adverts of well-groomed middle-class children, associating Pears with domestic comfort and aspirations of high society.

The result was a series of consolidations yielding much larger, largely nonpartisan newspapers, which depended more heavily on advertising revenue than on subscriptions from loyal party members.

Lasker's use of radio, particularly with his campaigns for Palmolive soap, Pepsodent toothpaste, Kotex products, and Lucky Strike cigarettes, not only revolutionized the advertising industry but also significantly changed popular culture.

[61] Among Lasker's pioneering contributions was the introduction into public schools of classes that explained to young girls about puberty and menstruation (done to promote Kotex tampons).

They rehabilitated the concept of consumer sovereignty by inventing scientific public opinion polls, and making it the centerpiece of their own market research, as well has the key to understanding politics.

Moving into the 1940s, the industry played a leading role in the ideological mobilization of the American people for fighting the Nazis and Japanese in World War II.

"Advertisers," Lears concludes, "played a crucial hegemonic role in creating the consumer culture that dominated post-World War II American society.

Journalist Stephanie Capparell interviewed six men who were on the team in the late 1940s: Pepsi advertisements avoided the stereotypical images common in the major media that depicted one-dimensional Aunt Jemimas and Uncle Bens whose role was to draw a smile from white customers.

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.

At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites, including the search engine Google, started a change in online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant ads based on an individual's browsing interests.

It was successful because of its close ties with top officials of the French government, its clever use of symbols to promote itself, and its ability to attract clients from widely diverse growing industries.

As automobiles diffused to the middle classes, Michelin advertising likewise shifted downscale, and its restaurant and hotel guides covered a broader range of price categories.

The French market was heavily regulated and protected to repel foreign interests, and the American admen in Paris were not good at hiding their condescension and insensitivity.

[94] During the Nazi era (1933–45), the advertising industry expelled its Jews, and came under the supervision of the "Ad Council for the German Economy," a department of the propaganda ministry of Joseph Goebbels.

This is especially true in the case of manipulation, people take advantage of their underdeveloped social skills and exploit them for selfish gain, this was later criticized to be adopted by turpitude agents of modern advertising.

Italian graphic designers, most prominently Armando Testa, were inspired by modernist aesthetics and thinking brought in by the American advertising agencies and techniques in Italy.

Architects and designers made room for the new marvel, as the promotional language celebrating the device became a chorus of praise for domestic appliances as the secret of "progress" and "freedom" and "liberation."

He started with multicultural themes, tied together under the campaign "United Colors of Benetton" then became increasingly provocative with interracial groupings, and unusual sexual images, such as a nun kissing a priest.

[107] In the first 20 years of communist control of China (1947 to 1966) Mao Zedong tried to reverse the long-standing advertising practices of Chinese newspapers, considering it a capitalist infringement on the goals of socialism.

The approach worsened the massive famines that happened when national resources were devoted to a highly inefficient factory production at the cost of basic food output.

Major changes have come in terms of shifting cultural values, the growing role of brand names, the attractiveness of English-language titles to the younger generation, the redefinition of acceptable/offensive advertising, the very rapid growth of new media (especially the Internet and smart phones), the emergence of on-line shopping in a country with an underdeveloped system of department stores in shopping centers, and much more advanced techniques of managing advertising agencies.

Central roles are played by Chinese-based social networking sites Weixin (also known as WeChat), and Sina Weibo, and the efforts of Western companies, including Coca-Cola, Burberry, and North Face, to market to Chinese consumers through their smartphones.

By contrast, ads for low-value products are typically placed in vernacular papers and are aimed at a lower middle class with highly restricted spending power.

In 2002, widespread protests forced Hindustan Lever Ltd. (the Indian subsidiary of London-based Unilever) to cancel a television ad campaign for its fairness cream because of its portrayal of women.

The All India Women's Democratic Association (AIDWA), a far left political organization, lodged a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission in New Delhi.

The government's Ministry of Information and Broadcast sided with AIDWA and directed stations not to air the ads because they violated the Cable and Television Networks Act of 1995 which states that no advertisement shall be permitted which "derides any race, caste, color, creed and nationality" and furthermore states that, "Women must not be portrayed in a manner that emphasizes passive, submissive qualities and encourages them to play a subordinate secondary role in the family and society."

For example, in Egyptian popular culture the cigar was associated with elites, the water pipe with a lower-class and traditional lifestyle, and the cigarette with the new middle class which was striving to make the transition to modernity.

The flood of American brand-name products greatly expanded the scope of the advertising industry, and the Mexican agencies faced new competition from branch offices of international firms.