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2000 BCE
Criers
Criers were the first people hired to proclaim the virtues of a product. This started at the streets of Babylon and were most likely to sell carpets, tapestries, and spices. -
Period: 2000 BCE to 500
The Greeks: KERUX, AXON AND KYBRO
A common mode of advertising, about the same time, was the so-called Kerux. This was an official spokesman, selected for his loud or penetrating voice. Another way was through the Axon, this was a cubic block of stone or wood painted white on which laws or policy statements were written. We also know Kybo, this had the same purpose but had a cylindrical shape which allows rotation. -
Period: 2000 BCE to 1 CE
Prehistory
Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. -
1500 BCE
Phoenicians
Phoenicians were good sellers too. They bought and sold exotic products such as fabrics, clothes, jewelry, and ivory and they crossed the river with them. When their boats came ashore, they lit a fire in a high mountain: “we have arrived”. -
Period: 1200 BCE to 1 CE
Ancient Egypt: PAPYRI
A papyrus was maybe the first ‘advertising’ text in the history of commercial nature. Very soon after the invention of writing in its rudest form, advertising started: rewards for and descriptions of runaway slaves, written on papyri more than three thousand years ago, have been exhumed from the ruins of Thebes (a city in Egypt). -
Period: 1000 BCE to 500
The Romans: ALBUM and GRAFFITI
This was the beginning of written advertising. Album describes how they used the most visible walls in the city, and then painted them white. Graffiti were walls covered with notices of a different kind and painted in black/white. -
Period: 1000 BCE to 500
The Romans: PRAECO
The oral tradition of advertising continues in Rome with praeco, a civil servant who proclaims official notices and bring order in the courtroom. -
Period: 1 CE to 500
Medieval Advertising
There were no newspapers, only a newsman. This was a person who traveled from place to place and collected scraps of information and sold them in the towns and marketplaces. -
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The invention of printing on woodcut, paper and ink.
Cai Lun is the founder of printing on paper. -
Period: 500 to 1500
Middle ages
In the Middle Ages the peddlers, Charlants of Puppeteers were the chief medium of intercommunication. They loudly advertised their products on the streets. -
Period: 1200 to 1300
The French
In France, public criers were very well organized. There were criers of wine (wine-criers), a French peculiarity. But also other products were being sold, such as almonds and wooden combs. -
1447
Invention of the Printing Press
Advertising took a leap forward, with the appearance of the printing press, the invention generally credited to Johannes Gutenberg in 1447. -
Period: 1500 to
The power of the Press
Everything was ready for the change of advertising tools, newspapers, posters will soon replace the crier thanks to the earlier invention of the printing press.
The medicines and other exotic products like tobacco or spices began to be labeled. -
Period: to
Théophraste Renaudot
In 1630 Renaudot created a recruitment office and notice
board for the jobless, where prospective employers
and employees could find each other. He also initiated a system of free medical consultations for the poor in 1640 and 2 years later, he published a self-diagnostic handbook, the first treatise on diagnosis in France. -
La Gazette
To disseminate information more widely, Renaudot established
the first weekly newspaper in France, La Gazette. -
Period: to
The Industrial Revolution
The transition from hand production methods to machines. -
Period: to
James White
Was an Englishman and created his agency in 1800. His agency was a mix of a news agency and an advertising agency. -
Period: to
Charles-Louis Havas
He started his own agency in 1835, called Havas Agency. He carried
news from London to Paris in six hours. They managed to do this with messenger pigeons. -
Period: to
The French Revolution
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Period: to
Charles Duveyrier
Duveyrier created in 1845 the first true French advertising agency, called "Société des Annonces". -
Period: to
Ferdinand Haasenstein
Haasenstein created in 1855 in Hamburg Haasenstein und Vogler, an agency that would soon have branches throughout
Germany and Denmark. In 1898 it was the first European advertising
agency to open a branch in Spain, in Barcelona. These agencies in Spain called Roldós y Compañía and Los Tiroleses. -
Period: to
James Walter Thompson
James Walter Thompson was the founder of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and a pioneer of many advertising techniques. He opened his own agency in 1896. -
Period: to
Atilio Manzoni
He created in 1863 in Milan a company that sold health products.
This company will become Manzoni Pubblicitá, which is still alive today and is one of the largest advertising agencies in Italy.
In 1888 he made his first national publicity campaign, the launching of the Santa Caterina mineral water. -
THE BIRTH OF ADVERTSING!
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Period: to
Phineas T. Barnum
Was a shameless promoter about his circus shows. Was more than once accused of fraud more. He was considered as the first one who used texts like ‘1000 thousand visitors!’.
He promoted all his shows everywhere he went.
From his success, advertisers learned more effective and creative ways of promoting their products. -
Period: to
Claude Hopkins
Hopkins spends his career thinking of techniques that would best sell. Only by understanding the product and the benefits of it they could be able to make a convincing ad.
Invented two techniques:
Dramatized selling & Pre-emotive claim -
Period: to
Earnest Elmo Calkins
He was a deaf American advertising executive who pioneered the use of art in advertising, of fictional characters, the soft sell, and the idea of "consumer engineering". He co-founded the influential Calkins and Holden advertising agency. His work was recognized with many awards during his lifetime and was called the "Dean of Advertising Men" and "arguably the single most important figure in early twentieth-century graphic design." -
N. W. Ayer and Son
Founder Francis Wayland Ayer. Ayer brought transparency to the business of buying and selling space in the newspapers, charging advertisers a fixed commission of 12.5 per cent.
This later rose to 15 per cent, which remained the standard commission fee for advertising agencies for many years. -
Period: to
Theodore Macmanus
He was born in 1872 in Buffalo, New York, and he started his career as a journalist. Later, as a copywriter, he revolutionized advertising with his work on advertisements for luxury cars by General Motors, including Cadillacs. In 1927, he started his own advertising company, the MacManus agency. His best-known advertisement, written in 1915, is called The Penalty of Leadership. -
Lord and Thomas
Founded in Chicago by Daniel Lord and Ambrose Thomas. -
Period: to
Art Noveau - Modernism
Art Nouveau (“The new art”) appeared in a wide variety of fields
throughout Europe. Characterized by its use of organic lines, employed most often in architecture, interior design, jewelry and glass design, posters and illustration. They wanted to make a change and modernize design, escape from the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. -
Period: to
Helen Landsdowne Resor
Resor is credited as the first woman in American history to design and implement national advertising campaigns. Lansdowne was the first woman to make an impact in a profession that remains overwhelmingly male-dominated to these days. -
Period: to
BBDO
BBDO is a worldwide advertising agency network, with its headquarters in New York City. The agency originated in 1891 with the George Batten Company, and in 1928, through a merger with Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BDO), the agency became Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. -
Period: to
Leo Burnett
He was an American advertising executive and the founder of Leo Burnett Company, Inc. He was responsible for creating some of advertising's most well-known characters and campaigns of the 20th century, including Tony the Tiger, the Marlboro Man, the Maytag Repairman, United's "Fly the Friendly Skies", and Allstate's "Good Hands", and for garnering relationships with multinational clients such as McDonald's, Hallmark and Coca-Cola. -
Fouding of the radio
Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, proved the feasibility of radio communication. He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. In the 1920s radio was seen as a powerful instrument that could educate, inform, and enlighten the public. In 1922 the Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, criticized commercial radio, saying that it was “inconceivable that we should allow so great a service to be drowned in advertising clatter". -
Period: to
Illustrated magazines
Advertisers realized very soon that national magazines provided a much wider readership than local newspapers, but at first the publishers of these magazines refused to carry advertising. American news photography reached a new level of popularity and credibility in the 1930s with the rise of documentary photography and large-format photographic magazines. -
Period: to
Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron
Commercial poster artist, stage and typeface designer, lithographer, and painter. One of the greatest graphic artists of the 20th century. Earned a reputation with works like Le Bucheron (The woodcutter). He created several new typeface styles such as Bifur, Acier Noir, and Peignot. He set up an agency called Alliance Graphique. He designed after the war its well-known Yves Saint Laurant logo. -
Period: to
Cassandre - Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron
Was born in Kharkov (Ukraine) in 1901. He was a commercial poster artist, stage and typeface designer, lithographer and painter, Cassandre is undoubtedly one of the greatest graphic artists of the 20th century. -
AACA
In 1904 the Associated Advertising Clubs of America was launched. -
Creation of FDA
In 1906 the creation of the Food and Drug act obligated proper labelling of the ingredients and cut down many of the unproven claims. -
Period: to
David Ogilvy
Born in London in 1911 and educated at some of England’s finest schools (he had been kicked out of Oxford for bad grades). David Ogilvy was tall, charming, well spoken and impeccably groomed.
He tried several occupations before settling into advertising. He worked for a while as a chef in Paris, sold kitchen stoves door-to-door in Scotland, farmed in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, and finally got a job conducting surveys for the Gallup Company in Princeton. -
AWNY
Advertising Women of New York, Inc. (AWNY), originally called the League of Advertising Women of New York, was the first organization solely for women in the advertising and communications industry in America founded in 1912. -
AAAA
in 1917 was the launching of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. This is a U.S. trade association for advertising agencies and still exists today. -
First World War
The first recognized major advertising campaign was launched during the First World War, in the shape of a recruitment drive. Artist James Montgomery Flagg was commissioned by the United States government to design a poster to encourage men nationwide to join the Army. -
Period: to
Art Deco
Works were showed at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925. It later shortened to Art Deco. The exhibited works were principally intended to promote and proclaim French supremacy in the production of luxury goods.
Abstract Geometric Decoration was an important aspect. Exoticism played also a big role; designers started to explore new materials, techniques, and forms. -
Wall Street Crash
The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 had ripped the floor out of the US economy and sent a shudder through the entire Western world. -
Period: to
Area of Scientific advertising
Based on the book written by Claude Hopkins. He believed in research, both before and after the event, and insisted that advertising was worthless unless it could demonstrate a tangible effect on sales. Two theories used: Dramatized selling & Pre-emptive claim. Also the start of “Reason-Why Advertising”. You must give prospects, a reason why people should want your product or service. -
First TV ad
In 1941, the world’s first TV advert was aired in America. Around 7,500 households had a television set in New York alone, so NBC’s WNBT began trialing adverts on 1st July. In 1949 advertisers spent about $12 million promoting their products on television. By 1951 they were spending more than ten times that (almost $128 million) to spread their messages to Americans on the TV. -
Period: to
The creative revolution of Advertising
Through advertisements, people learned of the latest trends in food, fashion, household appliances, automobiles, even houses. Advertising during the 1950s delivered the promise of stability and the prosperity that Americans crave. Scientists from several countries had investigated the possibility of transmitting not only sound but also pictures through the air. Television also offered advertisers a great opportunity to have celebrities or Key
Opinion Leaders (KOL) endorsed products on the air. -
Political advertising
The starting point was the presidential election of 1952 when Reeves produced a series of television spots for the Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower. The campaign pioneered their use with a series of ads titled "Eisenhower Answers America." -
Volkswagen 'Think small' ad
Helmut Krone, Julian Koening and Bill Bernbach created the best print ad campaign from the 20th century: “THINK SMALL”, which
was later on followed by “Lemon” and many more printed ads. -
Dishonesty and deception in presidential television advertising
The duping of the American voter: Dishonesty and deception in presidential television advertising written in 1980 by Robert Spero (an ad man who then turned an author) is an eye-opening book, one of the best on the topic of the media and the presidential elections. -
The invention of Internet
ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there, researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. This affected advertising forever.
