Advertising and You
In our world of modern communication and technology, you can't turn on your television or surf the internet without eventually coming across an advertisement by somebody trying to sell you something (if you're watching a show, well, there's a reason they last for 30 minutes or an hour—that extra time has to be filled somehow). It goes without saying that advertising is big business; advertising companies spend millions on the Super Bowl every year for 30-second commercials (it doesn't matter if the message makes sense—the fact that potentially millions of eyeballs will see it can be considered a success in itself). It's obvious that advertising can—and does—play a big impact on whether or not consumers will buy into a given product, but in order to understand the how, it's important to first understand the why.
For as long as people have been selling things, there have been advertisements advertising their goods. Among other uses, ancient Egyptians wrote on papyrus to create wall posters and flyers in addition to hawking their sales pitches; commercial and political campaign ads have been found in the ruins of Pompeii; the earliest-known form of advertising was recorded in the Chinese Classic of Poetry, in which bamboo flute-playing was used as a means of selling candy; while the earliest-known form of print advertising is from a copper printing plate that dates back the Song dynasty (960-1279). Before the introduction of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg (upon which he printed his world-famous Bible), advertising took three major forms:
1. trademark (the earliest maker's marks were found in India and dated to around 1300 BC)
2. town crier (because a large population of a city or town's citizens in the 15th century were illiterate, the town crier was used to proclaim official announcement and general news to the populace)
3. sign-board (in use since the days of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, these would be found on storefronts as well as on walls depicting various public events)
As advertising technology began to pick up steam in the 18th and 19th centuries, advertising practices had to adapt as well. Englishman Thomas J. Barratt (known as the "father of modern advertising" in that country) put forth many ideas that ended up being so successful that they remain in practice today—a strong and exclusive brand image, saturation campaigns to promote a product's (un)availability, and the importance of keeping tabs on a constantly-changing market in order to adjust the message and thus maximize profit.
For all of the steps forward that advertising takes, however, there have been instances where it takes two (or three) steps back.
Snake Oil: It's Not What You Think
"If it's too good to be true, it probably is." Nowhere is this phrase more appropriate than in advertising. For every one person selling you a legitimate health remedy, there are at least two trying to swindle you with a "miracle cure", hoping that you'll be just smart enough to believe what they're selling while being just gullible enough to not look too closely at what they're actually selling (which usually a load of crap anyway).
"Quackery" may be a relatively new word, but the practice behind it—and false advertising in general—is as old as advertising itself. Quack doctors and their miracle health "cures" were first prominently advertised in Britain and the Colonies as early as the 17th and 18th centuries, with snake oil being the most commonly-peddled commodity (ironically enough, snake oil from the Chinese water snake has been used as a traditional remedy for ailments including joint pain and arthritis, but the rattlesnake oil that was advertised as a cure-all in the West didn't contain any of water snake oil's beneficial ingredients, because of course it didn't). Quackwatch's Stephen Barrett defines quackery specifically as "the promotion of unsubstantiated methods that lack a scientifically plausible rationale", while pediatrician Paul Offit notes that there are four ways alternative medicine turns into quackery:
1. "by recommending against conventional therapies that are helpful"
2. "by promoting potentially harmful therapies without adequate warning"
3. "by draining patients' bank accounts"
4. "by promoting magical thinking"
Snake oil unsurprisingly ticks all four boxes—it claims that it will cure a specific malady that more conventional therapy has allegedly failed to accomplish; the salesman conveniently leaves out potential side effects after the oil is used (if there were any to begin with); unsuspecting customers give their money away thinking that they'll get something back in return (they won't); and the snake oil is projected as a cure for literally everything.
Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll
Whoever first came up with the phrase "sex sells" must have either been a time traveler, or they were really good at reading the tea leaves. Sex can be (and is) used to sell practically everything, from fast food—thanks, Carl's Jr.—to prophylactic commercials that only used to come on late at night after everyone was asleep, but now for some inexplicable reason air in the middle of the afternoon. Although the world's oldest profession itself was being advertised from the beginning, it wasn't until the 1870s that sex was used for more commercial purposes; in 1871, New York's Pearl Tobacco became the first company to feature risqué advertising by putting a naked women on their products. It's known that advertising using sex comes in four types:
1. physical attractiveness (literally how the models look when they sell the
product; think of the shirtless Abercrombie & Fitch male model)
2. sexual behavior (i.e., body language)
3. sexual referents (using implied double entendres and innuendo)
4. sexual embeds (ex. suggesting a bottle looks like a phallus)
Advertising was also used heavily when promoting nicotine products such as cigarettes. Until the early 1970s (at least on this side of the Atlantic), cigarette commercials were freely advertised on television and made use of underhanded tactics including rebellion (suggesting using nicotine as a way to stick it to The Man and authority in general), social conformity ("Everyone else is doing it"), and the "health benefits" of nicotine (the Cope Bros. & Co tobacco company in England first attempted this in 1841, when they proclaimed to middle-class men that "smoke not only checks disease but preserves the lungs.")
However...
There's Always a Bright Side
It may seem like all advertising is negative, but this couldn't be further from the truth. In response to the earlier mention of false advertising and rampant hoodwinking being done on the average consumer, the National Better Business Bureau was formed in 1912 to combat these allegations of abuse and provide the public with a trustworthy source of reliable information.
The Ad Council (first established during World War II as The Advertising Council and then The War Advertising Council before it was shortened to its present form) also uses advertising to make the public more self-aware—some of its more famous campaigns include "Crying Indian", which ran from 1971 to 1983 and managed to help reduce litter waste by 88%; and the "Crash Test Dummies" collaboration with the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), running from 1983 to 1999 and increasing the use of seat belts from 21% to 67% in 26 years.
Like everything else, advertising doesn't reside in a vacuum—it's a product of time and changing circumstances. The important factor isn't necessarily what the message is, but how it's perceived.
About the Author: Ronald Hamilton, Jr. is a graduate of Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Media Studies. When he's not writing for COM-GAP, Ronald is a volunteer with the nonprofit Live Forever Project.