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Britain’s prehistory

Although advertising agencies had begun to flock to offices in Madison Avenue, New York, before the war, it was only in the heady days of post-war prosperity that this street became the de facto headquarters of the US advertising industry. A lot of new, 20+ storey office buildings were constructed there in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and these prestigious skyrise workspaces attracted agencies who wanted to exude glamour and panache, and take advantage of all the fine restaurants that thronged the street level.

By the 1950s, advertising was considered a profession in its own right, not just the remit of failed newspapermen or poets. It attracted both men and women who wanted the thrill of using their creativity to make some serious cash. Hard-working (early heart attacks were common), hard drinking (those legendary three martini lunches), unconventional and often amoral, the flannel-suited Ad Man became a recognizable archetype, the epitome of a new kind of cool. Cary Grant even played one in North By Northwest (1959). For many, Englishman David Ogilvy embodied this quintessential type. He started his own ad agency, and from the very beginning, parlayed his charm and personality into the agency brand, using his British accent to stand out from the crowd.

Ogilvy's advertising ethos involved bold creativity and risk-taking, but he understood that advertising's main - indeed, only - function, was to sell. To that end copy and pictures had to be clear, simple, and provide a direct connection between customer and brand. He specialized, in the early days, in attention-grabbing campaigns that relied on a clever idea rather than a huge budget. One of his earliest, most successful campaigns was for Hathaway Shirts. Like the Arrow Shirts team almost half a century before, he latched onto an image that suggested a lifestyle, rather than just a clean collar. He added a rakish eyepatch to the model (and to 25 years of subsequent Hathaway models and the logo to this day), he intrigued the audience, who would then read the copy to find out what was going on. Hooked. The 'Hathaway man' appeared in a variety of scenarios (buying a Renoir, at the Opera, driving a tractor etc), and was in fact Baron George Wrangell, a Russian aristocrat with 20/20 vision. Ogilvy only ran the ads in The New Yorker magazine, adding to their allure. The Hathaway brand became the #1 best-selling dress shirt in the world.

Much has been written about David Ogilvy, especially as he was one of the first ad men to recognize that if you create a story around an ad campaign, you're getting a lot of free advertising. He made his agency part of the story-telling process of a campaign. Although he disliked the label, Ogilvy was hailed as a genius in his day, and more than a decade after his death, is still very much considered a guru of modern advertising.

However, not all the ad industry archetypes being generated in Madison Avenue in the 1950s were positive ones. In 1957, sociologist Vince Packard published his exposé of the advertising industry, The Hidden Persuaders. Packard accused the entire ad industry of psychologically manipulating the public into buying products they didn't want or need, usually via embedded or subliminal messages in ads and images. He also suggested these techniques were being imported into politics, and were used to persuade voters to accept politicians and policies they would otherwise have objected to. As a conspiracy theory, it convinced, especially given the Cold War paranoia of the era. People were used to the concept of 'the enemy within', on the alert for subtle Communist propaganda, leery of the concept of mind control. The Hidden Persuaders became a best-seller, and has colored attitudes towards the advertising industry – painting them as villains, out to exploit and brainwash the public – ever since.



 

In the 1960s, campaigns featuring heavy spending in different mass media channels became more prominent. For example, the Esso gasoline company spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a brand awareness campaign built around the simple and alliterative theme Put a Tiger in Your Tank. Psychologist Ernest Dichter and DDB Worldwide copywriter Sandy Sulcer learned that motorists desired both power and play while driving, and chose the tiger as an easy–to–remember symbol to communicate those feelings. The North American and later European campaign featured extensive television and radio and magazine ads, including photos with tiger tails supposedly emerging from car gas tanks, promotional events featuring real tigers, billboards, and in Europe station pump hoses "wrapped in tiger stripes" as well as pop music songs. Tiger imagery can still be seen on the pumps of successor firm ExxonMobil.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV. Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message, rather than it being a by-product or afterthought. As cable and satellite television became increasingly prevalent, specialty channels emerged, including channels entirely devoted to advertising, such as QVC, Home Shopping Network, and ShopTV Canada.

With the advent of the ad server, marketing through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the "dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access. 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, 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.

The share of advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media. For example, in the US in 1925, the main advertising media were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters. Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998, television and radio had become major advertising media. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower—about 2.4 percent.[11]

A recent advertising innovation is "guerrilla marketing", 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. Guerrilla advertising is becoming increasing more popular with a lot of companies. This type of advertising is unpredictable and innovative, which causes consumers to buy the product or idea. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and "embedded" ads, such as via product placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various innovations utilizing social network services such as Facebook.

 

 

Britain’s prehistory

Britain has not always been an island. It became one only after the end of the last ice age. The temperature rose and the ice cap melted, flooding the lower-lying land that is now under the North Sea and the English Channel.

The Ice Age was not just one long equally cold period. There were warmer times when the ice cap retreated, and colder periods when the ice cap reached as far south as the River Thames. The first evidence of human life is a few stone tools, dating from one of the warmer periods, about 250 000 BC. These simple objects show that there were two different kinds of inhabitant. The earlier group made their tools from flakes of flint, similar in kind to stone tools found across the north European plain as far as Russia. The other group made tools from a central core of flint, probably the earliest method of human tool making, which spread from Africa to Europe. Hand axes made in this way have been found widely, as far north as Yorkshire and as far west as Wales.

However, the ice advanced again and Britain became hardly habitable until another milder period, probably around 50 000 BC. During this time a new type of human being seems to have arrived, who was the ancestor of the modern British. These people looked similar to the modern British, but were probably smaller and had a life span of only about thirty years.

Around 10 000 BC, as the Ice Age drew to a close, Britain was peopled by small groups of hunters, gatherers and fishers. Few had settled homes, and they seemed to have followed herds of deer which provided them with food and clothing. By about 5 000 BC Britain had finally become an island, and had also become heavily forested. For the wanderer-hunter culture this was a disaster, for the cold-loving deer and other animals on which they lived largely died out.

About 3 000 BC Neolithic (or New Stone Age) people crossed the narrow sea from Europe in small round boats of wood covered with animal skins. Each could carry one or two persons. These people kept animals and grew corn crops, and knew how to make pottery. They probably came from either the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula or even the North African coast. They were small, dark and long-headed people. They settled in the western parts of Britain and Ireland.

These were the first of several waves of invaders before the first arrival of the Romans in 55 BC. It used to be thought that these waves of invaders marked fresh stages in British development. However, although they must have brought new ideas and methods, it is now thought that the changing pattern of Britain’s prehistory was the result of local economic and social forces.

The great “public works” of this time, which needed a huge organization of labour, tell us a little of how prehistoric Britain was developing. The earlier of these works were great “barrows”, or burial mounds, made of earth and stone. Most of these barrows are found on the uplands of south Britain. Today these uplands have poor soil and few trees, but they were not like that then. They were airy woodlands that could easily be cleared for farming, and as a result were the most easily habitable part of the countryside. Finally, and over a long period, these areas became overfarmed, while by 1400 BC the climate became drier, and as a result this land could no longer support many people.

Yet the monuments remain. After 3000 BC people started building great circles of earth banks and ditches. Inside, they built wooden buildings and stone circles. These “henges”, as they are called, were centres of religious, political and economic power. By far the most spectacular was Stonehenge, which was built in separate stages over a period of more than a thousand years. The purposes of Stonehenge remain a mystery.

Stonehenge was almost a sort of capital, to which the chiefs of the groups came from all over Britain. Certainly, earth or stone henges were built in many parts of Britain. They seem to have been copies of the great Stonehenge in the south.

After 2400 BC new groups of people arrived in southeast Britain from Europe. They were round-headed and strongly built, taller than Neolithic Britons. It is not known if they invaded by armed force, or if they were invited by Neolithic Britons because of their military or metal-working skills. Their influence was soon felt and, as a result, they became leaders of British society. Their arrival is marked by the first individual graves, furnished with pottery beakers, from which these people get their name: the “Beaker” people.

Why did people now decide to be buried separately? It is thought that the old barrows were built to please the gods of the soil, in the hope that this would stop the soil getting poorer. The Beaker people brought with them from Europe a new cereal, barley, which could grow almost anywhere. Perhaps they felt it was no longer necessary to please the gods of soil.

The Beaker people probably spoke an Indo-European language. They seem to have brought a single culture to the whole of Britain. They also brought skills to make bronze tools and these began to replace stone ones. But they accepted many of the old ways. Stonehenge remained the most important centre until 1300 BC. The Beaker people’s richest graves were there, and they added a new circle of thirty stone columns.

However, from about 1300 BC the henge civilization seems to have become less important, and was overtaken by a new form of society in southern England – settled farming class. At first this farming society developed in order to feed the people at the henges, but later it became more important and powerful as it grew richer. The new farmers grew wealthy because they learned to enrich the soil with natural waste materials so that it did not become poor and useless.

From this time power seems to have shifted to the Thames valley and southeast Britain. Political and economic power remained in the southeast. Hill-forts replaced henges as the centres of local power, and most of these were found in the southeast. There was another reason for the shift of power to the east. A number of better-designed bronze swords have been found in the Thames valley, suggesting that the local people had more advanced metalworking skills.

 


Date: 2015-01-02; view: 5956


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