A tale of the advertisement

Advertising has been a cornerstone of business long before the dawn of modern society. Political campaigns and commercial messages have long been found in the ruins of Pompeii and Ancient Arabia. With the growth of towns and cities, a large portion of the population were illiterate, thus campaigners started to use images associated with their trade such as images of hats, or shoes etc. It wasn’t really until the 17^th century, with the advancement of printing press, that advertisements really started to move at a fast pace. Along with this, the advent of false-advertisement, so-called “quack” advertisements started to grow, and soon became a problem.

An advertising flyer from 1806 for a traditional medicine called Kinseitan

In the 19^th century, the US, with its rapidly growing economy, saw the first use of mail-order advertisements. The idea went worldwide, with the French newspaper Le Presse becoming the first to receive payment for placing advertisement in its papers. It allowed the newspaper to reduce its price, attracting a wider audience of readers, thus increased its profits. In the 1840s Palmar established the first advertising agency in Philadelphia, buying advertisement spaces, in various papers and magazines, in large numbers and reselling them at a higher price to his customers; however the actual content of the adverts were still being designed by the companies wishing to advertise. This changed when the agency N.W. Ayer & Son was found, which was involved in not only providing advertising spaces, but it also designed the adverts for the companies. By the early 1900s, advertising was firmly recognised as a profession. Sometime after that advertisements in magazines and billboards started, and was an immediate hit with advertising companies.

In the 1920s, the first radio stations were broadcasted; and as non-profit organisations such as the governments and schools, started to broadcast, the idea of sponsoring the radio station was invented. Radio station owners soon realised that instead of selling sponsorship for the whole station, they could sell it separately for each show and make more profit. This idea was then transferred over to television stations in the 1940s. We then had a big row in the 40s-50s in the UK over whether radio stations should be commercialised or not, and as evident greed took the better of us and we opted for commercialisation.

The good old days when adverts described the products with hard facts - An advertisement for 1913 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The 1980s gave us a new type of television advertising where instead of advertisement being by-product of the channel, for it’s funding, it became the sole purpose of the channel. MTV was broadcasted as a channel where people turned to just to watch advertisements. Soon after channels such as QVC, Home Shopping Channel and the like opened up. The 1990s took advertising to a whole new level with the use of the Internet. Entire websites were able to operate solely on advertising revenues. The start of the 21^stcentury saw websites such as Google and Facebook developing systems where advertisements were specific, contextually relevant, yet unobtrusive adverts designed to help the user. A new branch of advertising, sometimes termed “guerilla advertising” aims to physically interact or have staged encounter with the audience, such as giving out freebies, interactive advertisements amongst others.

The advertising industry has come a long way over the centuries, worth billions of pounds a year, and yet companies are pushing more to get their messages to us, consumers, as competitions become fierce. Perhaps that is a problem in itself. Many advertisements, and their way of delivery, have raised ethical and moral questions, whilst others have been found to be guilty of misinformation.

One of the first use of sexual sell that had nothing to do with the product

Ever since modern advertisements started, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women’s insight into advertising, because a lot of the shopping was indeed carried out by women, especially in the early 1900s. This led to the creation of the first “sexual sell” advert, albeit very mild compared to todays standards, to advertise a soap product, by promising love and intimacy for those who use the brand. Since then a lot of other products were also given the sexual touch, even though it had no associations with the advertised products. Perfumes were adorned with sexual attraction properties, something that vastly increased the profits of Jovan Musk Oil (the first company to do so). Many modern adverts are laced with sexual innuendos, some even bordering on sexism. Lynx’s recent advertisement of its fragranced shower gels and antiperspirants, one of which read “The cleaner you are, the dirtier you get”, was likely to cause “serious or widespread offence” because of its objectification of women, according to Advertising Standards Agency, which led it’s banning in the UK. The ever-increasing sexual nature of many adverts caused think tanks to raise questions about the nature of our modern society.

False advertisements were rife since the 19^th century, and it is something still prevalent in the modern society despite the presence of various standard agencies. The Motorola Defy advert is one example of clear false advertisement, which has recently been asked to be withdrawn because of misinformation. It claims the smartphone is shatterproof, waterproof and indeed life-proof, but it isn’t quite so in real life.

Internet shopping is another area that can be quite annoying at times. There are many websites that require you to create an account before you can buy an item (e.g. the popular Amazon or Play.com). The idea behind this is that if you create an account with a username and password, giving your personal details such as your address, bank details etc. you are more likely to shop from there again. Yet I never recall a time when I had to register, or be a member, to shop from my high street store. Why can’t I just buy an item on a per purchase basis, without having to create an account? The worst thing is once you’ve bought your precious item after filling in all that detail, they start sending you daily e-mails advertising other items in the store, simply because you forgot to check a tiny box at the bottom of page saying “I do not wish to be contacted about offers and promotions”. I don’t want to know what you have in store, I can check the website myself if I want it; after all I managed to find the first item myself. In a high street store, you don’t receive any posts or e-mails unless you specifically ask to join the mailing list. So why is there an apparent double standards?

My final straw goes to Internet advertisements by websites such as Facebook, which delivers personalized adverts to its users, but with a twist. The twist being if your friends “like” a certain product, company or service; an advert will be shown to you, along of which of your friends “like” the item and their pictures shown next to it, and vice versa. In addition, you have no option to prevent this being displayed to your friends. There are obvious privacy and moral questions that are being raised, not to mention that Facebook is “exploiting” its own customers in order to gain profit from the advertisers. It’s like being used in an advert without your permission. When this was asked to the VP of Facebook he answered the question with a long silence followed by, “you’re asking a profound question – what’s advertising?” According to Facebook, our lives would have improved if we are more open and social, and its default stance is sharing everything openly. This is what the advertisers will insist on, in order that their products get maximum exposure.

The VW advert that won the Advert of the Century Award

Advertising, then, is a tool whose limits have been pushed and tested, along with our morals and what we deem acceptable. What was once deemed outside the bounds of morality now seems to be within it. How far can we go before we go a step too far, and it all comes crumbling down? Questions and complaints are raised against adverts regularly, yet not many advertisers seem to take heed. What started as an honest informative portrayal of a product, has become a way for advertisers to exploit users into becomes their customers.

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Tagged: advert, advertisement, advertising, facebook, lynx, motorola

Posted in: General Posts