Introduction
We know it when we see it. We are exposed to it thousands of times every day. Most of us are reasonably good, although rarely perfect, at distinguishing it from other kinds of messages. It is something that we tend to take for granted, occasional thinking about what it is or how it came into existence. But what is this thing called advertising?
In other words advertising is the act of calling public attention to an idea, good, or service through paid announcements by an identified sponsor. A 30-40 second spot, a catchy jingle or image, creative message and slogan. But there’s more to advertising. An average human is exposed to around thousands of advertising messages in a day. Advertisements come in many different ways like shapes, sizes, colour, pattern and forms.
Definition
According to Philip Kotler, “Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of goods, services, or ideas by an identified sponsor.”
According to Frank Presbrey, “Advertising is a printed, written, oral and illustrated art of selling. Its objective is to encourage sales of the advertiser’s products and to create in the mind of people, individually or collectively, an impression in favour of the advertiser’s interest.”
According to Wheeler, “Advertising is any form of paid non-personal presentation of ideas, goods and/or services for the purpose of inducing people to buy”.
According to American Marketing Association, “Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services, by an identified sponsor. The medium used are print broadcast, and direct”.
According to William Stanton, “Advertising consists of all activities involved in presenting to a group a non-personal, oral or visual, openly sponsored identified message regarding a product, service, or idea. The message, called an advertisement, is disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by the identified sponsor”
A. Evolution of Advertising
Advertisements have come a long way in the past century or so. As it’s had to adapt and change to suit new mediums and audiences constantly. To raise the value of the advertising of today and imaging the advertising of tomorrow, we need to comprehend the origin and evolution of advertising.
Advertising was produced by a market-driven system and developed in a capitalistic, free enterprise market economy in which mass production utilized advertising as an essential tool. Urbanization, transportation expansion and communication advancements all facilitated the use and growth of advertising, the result of which is that advertising is firmly entrenched as a business function in different societies with deeply rooted economic and cultural foundations.
Advertising is the result of years of developing in capitalism among its use in mass communication media. We can define advertising, as a form of commercial mass communication way, designed to promote the sale of a product or service, or a message on behalf of an institution, organization, or candidate for political office. That implies concepts such as market, publics, sponsors, persuasion, products, services, mass communication, etc.
1. The Beginning
In Middle Age, together with street callers, appeared brands in products for identifying the maker, giving to them a sign of individuality from a manufacturer from other, allowing to difference, for example, wines and geographical areas such as Osnabruck and Westphalia.
In this period, a big number of people can´t read. So, signs that today would say cobbler, miller, tailor or blacksmith would use an image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour.
Gutenberg’s printing press (1438) really began the era of mass communication in that now printed materials could be mass produced whereas prior to the printing press, books and other printed materials had to be made individually. A Londoner printed the first English newspaper in 1622 and the first ad appeared in 1625.
That 1622´s first newspaper was the Weekly News, by Nicholas Brown and Thomas Archer. Other newspapers of this time were the Mercurius Britannicus, in 1665 and La Gazzette from Paris by Théophraste Renaudot in 1630. Those were considered beginners of modern advertising, despite of the fact that the first newspaper´s announce appeared in 1650 in the Several Proceedings in Parliament; it was about offering a reward for returning twelve stolen horses.
2. Propaganda and Mechanization
Today, the word ‘propaganda’ implies a negative, harmful implication. Webster’s dictionary (Merriam-Webster’s collegiate) defines it as the ‘spreading of ideas, information, or rumour for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.’
During World War I, advertising became a medium for propaganda. Governments used advertising to convince their citizens to join the military. This period also saw increased mechanization of the industry, making ads more costly.
a. Why the war perpetrators use propaganda?
- Each of the nations which participated in World War One from 1914-18 used propaganda posters.
- They used posters to:
- Justify their involvement to their own population
- As a means of recruiting men
- A way to raise money and resources to sustain the military campaign.
- To urge conservation
b. Why Posters?
- Television had not yet been invented
- Not everyone owned or had access to a radio
- Posters were the most effective means of getting a message across
c. Government Supports
- Quite often propaganda is connected with negative emotions
- During the Great War the governments needed money for the war effort so they focused their efforts on posters aimed at raising money from citizens for the war effort
3. The Emergence of New Mass Media
The major media types or groups that have been introduced since the beginning of the twentieth century include film, sound recordings, radio, television, personal computers, video cassettes, video games, and the Internet. During this time new mass media radio and cinema became commercially available in the first part of the 20th century, the advertising industry quickly took advantage of their reach, spread, and popularity.
New media are forms of media that are native to computers, computational and rely on computers for redistribution. Some examples of new media are telephones, computers, virtual worlds, single media, website games, human-computer interface, computer animation and interactive computer installations.
New media are often contrasted to “old media”, such as television, radio, and print media, although scholars in communication and media studies have criticized rigid distinctions based on oldness and novelty. New media does not include television programs (only analogue broadcast), feature films, magazines, books, unless they contain technologies that enable digital generative or interactive processes.
Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia, is a good example of New Media, combining Internet accessible digital text, images and video with web-links, creative participation of contributors, interactive feedback of users and formation of a participant community of editors and donors for the benefit of non-community readers.
Facebook is another type of New Media, belonging to the category of social media model, in which most users are also participants. Another type of New Media is Twitter which also belongs to the social media category, through which users interact with one another and make announcements to which the public receives. Both Facebook and Twitter have risen in usage in recent years and have become an online resource for acquiring information.
4. The Creative Advertising Revolution
At that time there was not a great deal of competition for an advertising message. Television was just beginning, people had time to read. But it was clear to us that there would soon be tremendous competition for the attention of the consumer. And that unless the advertising message was put down in a fresh way that made people select it out of a bombardment of messages, that made people care and respond to it, it was not even going to be perceived.
Before 1949, typically advertising copy writers would write ad copy and then take the text to their art department to lay out the ad. Bernbach’s advertising firm, Doyle Dane Bernbach, combined copywriters and graphic designers into one collaborative creative team that sought to produce ads that were original, fresh, and imaginative. Doyle Dane Bernbach’s ads were prominent drivers of a creative revolution in U.S. advertising.
Competition for attention today has reached a level that Bill Bernbach probably never imagined. A creative revolution in advertising today requires deep changes in business organization and integrating sense in communication across words, images, and personal actions.
The ad that changed advertising
Carl Hahn had contracted his agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) to promote a car called the Volkswagen in the United States. Bernbach’s problem was that Hahn’s call came at the end of the fifties, when America was in a deep love affair with stylish vehicles made in Detroit, USA. How could DDB sell a small, ugly, cheap, foreign car that Hitler had a hand in creating to the American public? Luckily for Hahn, Bill Bernbach was the most innovative ad man of his time, being a key player in what is today known as the Creative Revolution.
The campaign that DDB put together for Volkswagen in 1959 would not only make their car “as American as apple pie” but be recognised by Advertising Age as being the greatest ad of all time and change the industry forever.
4. Contemporary Advertising
Contemporary advertising attracting customers to their product range has become more difficult because consumers have become more literate in technology and, therefore, can research items before purchase. Nowadays remote controls are in the hands of every individual and it gave access to hundreds of cable channels mean that advertising must generate interest among the viewers. Along with these experiments, there are also new leading edge such as Internet and social media marketing. In contemporary times advertisers and agencies today see innovations like digital ads and interactive advertising as challenges and opportunities rather than difficulties.
Contemporary advertising are methods of advertising that are basically generic in nature and are widely used. It can be used to build the relationship with the client through market sensing and recognising categories of clients according to their choice. It also helps to bridging the gap via the use of digital inbound marketing techniques.
The Future of Advertising
Yulia Khansvyarova, Head of Digital Marketing at SEMrush,
“I have no doubts that the future of advertising lies in digital world. Traditional marketing channels have exhausted themselves and are now stepping back. In my opinion, the future of digital advertising is about personalization, multi-device targeting and building a unified user-centred ecosystem. Right now such ecosystems are just appearing.
There is a lot of talk about cross-device tracking, mobile ads and different marketing channels used as a complex. But in reality, if you want to build a system that will be able to keep an eye on user behaviour and follow all user steps in decision making, you will still need to code a lot and build a custom solution yourself. In the nearest future, I guess, this situation will change for the better.”
There’s no question that technology will continue to shape the future of advertising. We’ve already seen dramatic shifts in form and factor, powered by technologies such as 3D, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality. As the landscape continues to change, advertisers that don’t follow suit risk getting left behind.
Artificial Intelligence will eliminate the loopholes in the existing digital advertising processes. AI relies on data-driven accumulated information; the AI based neural networks are capable of experience-based self-learning. This means that with more interaction or repeated application they evolve to become better and better. To put it into perspective, in the context of advertising AI can provide the consumer behaviour patterns with more precision, it can help create better campaigns by identifying more focused target consumer groups and more.
It is tough to forecast what form advertising will take in the future. But one thing is sure; it will continue to advance and strive to become more useful to business and to the consumer.
