History

In ancient times the most common form of advertising was by word of mouth; however, commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii. Egyptians used papyrus to create sales messages and wall posters, while lost-and-found advertising on papyrus was common in Greece and Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient media advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America.

As the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable to read, traders and craftsmen such as cobblers, millers, tailors or blacksmiths used 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. 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.

As printing developed in the 15th and 16th century, advertising expanded to include handbills. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These early 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.

But the history of modern advertising started with a success story 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 and used them to connote his brand's quality, purity and simplicity (cherubic children). He is often referred to as the father of modern advertising.

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. These ads included simple descriptions, plus prices of products. 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 the first advertising agency was established in Philadelphia. At first the agencies were just brokers for ad space in newspapers, but by the 20th century, advertising agencies started to take over responsibility for the content as well.

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" (which were used to describe the appearance of the car) 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.

In the late 1980s and early as cable (and later satellite) television became increasingly prevalent, "specialty" channels began to emerge such as ShopTV, 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. 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.

Today, innovations include "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.

Media

Commercial advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards , street furniture components, printed flyers, radio, cinema and television ads, web banners, web pop-ups, skywriting, bus stop benches, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, taxicab doors and roof mounts, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in supermarkets, the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts.

Television. The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominent advertising event on television. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached US$3 million (as of 2009). The majority of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the product. Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops. Virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where none exist in real-life. This technique is especially used in televised sporting events. Virtual product placement is also possible.

Infomercials. An infomercial is a long-format television commercial, typically five minutes or longer. The word "infomercial" is a portmanteau of the words "information" & "commercial". The main objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone number or website. Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and their features, and commonly have testimonials from consumers and industry professionals.

Press advertising describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper, magazine, or trade journal. This encompasses everything from media with a very broad readership base, such as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more narrowly targeted media such as local newspapers and trade journals on very specialized topics. A form of press advertising is classified advertising, which allows private individuals or companies to purchase a small, narrowly targeted ad for a low fee advertising a product or service.

Radio advertising. The radio might have lost its charm owing to the new age media however the radio remains to be the choice of small-scale advertisers. These ads have to be very simple and easy to be understood, since people are usually doing something, like driving, when listening to them. The radio jingles have been very popular advertising media and have a large impact on the audience, which is evident in the fact that many people still remember and enjoy the popular radio jingles.

Direct mail is another kind of advertising, sending the ads via mail system to the future customers. This system is also used through e-mails and offers graphics and links to more information. In order to do this kind of advertising, the advertisers have to buy so-called mailing lists, which contain the addresses of people with certain wanted characteristics.

The Yellow Pages are thick directories of telephone listings and displays of advertisements, mostly of local use, but nevertheless very effective.

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results pages, banner ads, pop-ups, social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

Billboard advertising. Billboards are large structures located in public places which display advertisements to passing pedestrians and motorists. Most often, they are located on main roads with a large amount of passing motor and pedestrian traffic; however, they can be placed in any location with large amounts of viewers, such as on mass transit vehicles and in stations, in shopping malls or office buildings, and in stadiums. Mobile billboards are generally vehicle mounted billboards or digital screens. The billboards are often lighted; some being backlit, and others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays are static, while others change; for example, continuously or periodically rotating among a set of advertisements.

In-store advertising is any advertisement placed in a retail store. It includes placement of a product in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisles and near checkout counters, eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, and advertisements in such places as shopping carts and in-store video displays.

Celebrity endorsement. This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain recognition for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products. The use of celebrities to endorse a brand can have its downsides, however. One mistake by a celebrity can be detrimental to the public relations of a brand. For example, following his performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, swimmer Michael Phelps' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as Kellogg's did not want to associate with him after he was photographed smoking marijuana.

Covert advertising embedded in other entertainment media is known as product placement. A more recent version of this is advertising in film, by having a main character use an item or other of a definite brand - an example is in the movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise's character Tom Anderton owns a computer with the Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the Bulgrari logo. Another example of advertising in film is in I, Robtot, where main character played by Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them "classics," because the film is set far in the future. Cadillac chose to advertise in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used. Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches and BMW cars featured in recent James Bond films.

Some companies have proposed to place messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station.

Unpaid advertising (also called word of mouth advertising), can provide good exposure at minimal cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun ("Xerox" = "photocopier", "Kleenex" = tissue, and "Vaseline" = petroleum jelly) -- these are the pinnacles of any advertising campaign. However, some companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object.

Subliminal advertising includes messages such as words, images, or sounds that might appear in television or radio commercials, TV shows or movies, print ads or recorded music. Usually when subliminal messages are seen or heard, they’re not recognized for what they are. In fact they may be ignored by the conscious brain and be beyond the level of conscious perception. So subliminal advertising is out of conscious perception. Visual messages may be quickly flashed before an individual may process them, or flashed and then masked. Audio messages may be played below audible volumes, similarly masked by other stimuli, or recorded backwards in a process called backmasking.

The theory holds that subliminal messages are perceived by the subconscious or unconscious mind. Since the conscious mind doesn’t have time to rationalize or analyze these messages, people might more easily accept them. For instance, the use of red in commercials for Target® is at least partly subliminal. The red itself really has nothing to do with the company, but persistence in using it for most commercials means advertisers hope that the color red, whenever seen, will remind people of Target and convince them to shop there.

Subconscious stimuli by single words are well known to be modestly effective in changing human behavior or emotions. This is evident by a pictorial advertisement that portrays four different types of rum. The phrase "U Buy" was embedded somewhere, backwards in the picture. A study was done to test the effectiveness of the alcohol ad. Before the study, participants were able to try to identify any hidden message in the ad, none found any. In the end, the study showed 80% of the subjects unconsciously perceived the backward message, meaning they showed a preference for that particular rum.

But still there’s disagreement on the degree to which subliminal messages can affect peoples’ mind. Till the mid 20th century, the use of subliminal messaging in advertising was considered standard fare, especially visual messages where something would flash for a split second on a screen that would subliminally convince the viewer to act in a certain way. But soon people became afraid that subliminal messages could be used to “brainwash” themselves or others. This fear became so great that by the 1970s, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned the use of subliminal messages in advertisements.

Yet it’s never really been proven that subliminal messages work to any great degree. In 1957, market researcher James Vicary claimed that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, had influenced people to purchase more food and drinks. Vicary also claimed that during the presentation of the movie Picnic he used a tachistoscope to project the words "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals. Vicary asserted that during the test, sales of popcorn and Coke in that New Jersey theater increased 57.8% and 18.1% respectively. However, in 1962 Vicary admitted to lying about the experiment and falsifying the results, the story itself being a marketing ploy. An identical experiment conducted by Dr. Henry Link showed no increase in cola or popcorn sales.

Though today subliminal advertising--hidden messages embedded in ads--is considered a deceptive business practice and is banned a legal kind of "subliminal" persuasion happens every day. Shoppers are regularly encouraged to buy by appeals to their senses or unconscious assumptions.

Store owners know that playing music with a tempo faster than the human heartbeat causes shoppers to shop quickly--and therefore buy less. The slower the beat, the more time shoppers will take, and the greater the chances are that they'll buy something. Music also can direct us to certain products. For example, it can determine what kind of wine we pick up from the shelves. In one experiment over a two-week period, British researchers played either accordion-heavy French music or a German brass band over the speakers of the wine section inside a large supermarket. On French music days, 77% of consumers bought French wine, whereas on German music days, the vast majority of consumers picked up a German selection. Intriguingly, only one out of the 44 customers who agreed to answer a few questions at the checkout counter mentioned the music as among the reasons they bought the wine they did.

Shapes also have a Draw. A large food manufacturer once tested two different containers for a diet mayonnaise aimed at female shoppers. Both containers held the exact same mayo, and both bore the exact same label. The only difference? The shapes of the bottles. The first was narrow around the middle and thicker at the top and on the bottom. The second had a slender neck that tapered down into a fat bottom, like a genie bottle. When asked which product they preferred, every single subject--all diet-conscious women--selected the first bottle without even having tasted the stuff. Why? The researchers concluded that the subjects were associating the shape of the bottle with an image of their own bodies.

1. In the text find words and expressions that mean

1. to give, to allocate

2. the attributes of a brand as perceived by potential and actual customers

3. a group of related products marketed by the same company

4. talk, rumors, a kind of advertising

5. a small printed notice for distribution by hand

6. advertising goods by spreading information about them among other people

7. information about things that where lost and then found

8. location

9. to promote

10. to start, to release

11. to mean

12. ads in the press, usually divided into rubrics

13. ads which offer customers to order products by mail

14. a characteristic of a product that can be used in advertising to differentiate it from its competitors

15. to introduce

16. a company in the Internet

17. important, to the point

18. advertising gift

19. ad on TV

20. of, for, or appealing to a large number of people; popular

21. he time allocated to a particular programme, item, topic, or type of material on radio or television

22. a run of airtime

23. unplanned purchase

24. an intracity phone call

25. a recommendation of the character, ability, etc., of a person or of the quality of a consumer product or service, esp by a person whose opinion is valued

26. all the readers collectively of a particular publication or author

27. a song or a tune played in a commercial

28. by means of

29. a book, arranged alphabetically or classified by trade listing names, addresses, telephone numbers, etc., of individuals or firms

30. an advertisement, often animated, that extends across the width of a web page

31. something that appears over or above the open window on a computer screen

32. a characteristic of a product by a famous or reliable person

33. a famous person

34. tending to attract attention; striking

35. to include

36. the highest point or level, esp of fame, success, etc

37. the disadvantageous aspect of a situation

38. the act or the effect of perceiving

39. a trick or a tactic aimed at attracting public attention to the product

2. Say whether the following statements are true or false

1. Companies are trying not to spent too much of their budget on advertising

2. In ancient times the most common form of advertising was by town-criers.

3. Thomas Barratt is often referred to as the father of modern advertising as he was the first to use visual images to appeal to customers.

4. Lost-and-found advertising included simple descriptions, plus prices of products.

5. The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format.

6. The main objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase.

7. Information in The Yellow Pages usually covers the whole country.

8. Usually one mistake by a celebrity advertising the product can be detrimental to the public relations of a brand.

9. Subliminal messages are perceived by conscious mind.

10. Most researchers agree on the degree to which subliminal messages can affect peoples’ mind

11. Today subliminal advertising is considered a deceptive business practice and is banned

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 963