Tag Archives: advertising today

      Marketing and Advertising have many different meanings. The pure idea of marketing and advertising can take on different images, shapes, sounds, and emotions when you think of it. The history of advertising can go back as far back as the first time someone had something someone else wanted or you could say someone that had something that someone else didn’t know yet that they wanted. Marketing to me is the concept of product or service awareness. It comes down to psychology, when a person thinks to themselves what product or services they are going to purchase a mental list pops up in their head. You want your product to be on the top of that list. Then it’s just a matter of strategic positioning of your product or service by way of advertising to that person.

       The history of advertising (in the United States) dates back to Colonial times when America was just a developing country in the eighteenth century. There were a number of different businesses being created and goods being imported and only a few different media to communicate. American settlers were continuously purchasing these imported goods from Britain and the most effective form of advertising was word of mouth. Advertising took its first main-stream leap with the development of the newspaper. Benjamin Franklin was credited with being the first to capture the interests of readers in the Pennsylvania Gazette with headlines, illustrations, and advertising placements  . Items that were previously described with dry descriptions were now sensationalized and became “must haves.”

      This new media and the sense of marketing gave way for the “market revolution” and what we think of today as advertising today. Businesses now had to rethink how they produced their products and to brand their mass produced goods. The medical industry first took advantage of this revolution and spotlighted their branded “potions and pills” all over newspapers with outrageous promises and cures. Advertising was taking off.

      Soon industries where mass producing products and standardizing production of goods to reach out to new consumers. Branding and standardized production techniques became important as advertising was reaching consumers across the nation. Businesses were forced to advertise to keep up with their competition. Manufactures, department stores, and other products and services were continuously changing the styles of marketing. As the population grew and major cities developed businesses that advertised in these markets flourished

      Advertising agencies began to emerge. This industry that was once thought to be peddlers for “snake oil” medicines became legitimate. As the population soared in the United States so did spending. Consumers fueled the economy with the availability of credit. The auto industry, radios, household goods, vacations, and other activates thrived in this environment and depended on advertising to get their message across. Consumers soon embracedadvertising and product confidence gave way to more and more production and advertising media. Advertising was now reaching out past the newspapers and into movies, radio programs, magazines, product catalogues, Advertising in the United States was here to stay and growing at an enormous rate. Advertisements, as historian Roland Marchand pointed out, sought to adjust Americans to modern life; a life lived in a consumer society  .

      Today’s marketing arena looks nothing like it did back in the early 1900’s. The industry has grown exponentially over the last ninety years. New media has emerged with the advent of the internet. This form of advertising has revolutionized the industry. A whole new world of advertising now exists. It has created a direct link from producer to consumer. Tricky advertising has gone away with the ability to compare and research products online. Producers are now rethinking their product line and how they want to reach consumers. Many industries that advertised on traditional forms of marketing media are now exclusively on the web. Websites have created whole new platforms for industries to set up shop and reach new people.