||- The Cobweb Society of Advertisements -||

Advertising is nothing but a form of marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea. - Wikipedia

If the word advertisement reminds you of short, jingly video clips that irritate you (or at times amuse you) when your favorite television program is taking a break, then stop and think again. The world of advertisement has gone through a long journey to appear on our television screens. Progressing from black and white newspaper clippings to the evolutionary new age technology of this decade, to popping up randomly on our webpages. The progress, has been astronomical.

If you ever get down to flipping through magazines or newspapers, you will get to know the initial and raw form of advertisement: printed ads. Sharing a sizable space along with news articles, printed ads have been promoting goodies all over our magazines and newspapers. Apart from being in television, the Web world and print media, advertisements can be heard (yup! Rather than seen) transmitting along with radio programs as well. Though the modernized version of these four types of advertisements look or sound pretty impressive, it was not always the case when it first made its appearance.

The first advertisement dates back to a few hundred years BC when Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. From then to now, four very influential inventions have shaped the advertising industry and. These inventions include: the printing press, radio, television and the Internet.

The printing press made the wide dissemination of information with words on paper possible, mainly advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Selling materials had to be created and thus advertising agencies were born. The very first advertising agency was borne in Philadelphia in 1841. Ads, in those days, used to be uncomplicated and rather direct in their approach like the cycle ad you can see below.

And this was the first coca-cola ad ever published. Pretty hard to accept seeing how this brand of soft drink is promoted today, right? Trust us! We are not kidding!

Pears, a soap brand, was perhaps the first to introduce a story or a theme to their advertisements.

Then television came along.

Print and radio had taken a back seat as Television made, for the first time, broadcasting commercials with sight, sound and motion possible. The effect of the Television on the advertising industry was remarkable. Advertising agencies not only had to learn how to produce these mini movies in units of thirty or sixty seconds, they also had to learn to effectively segment the audience and deliver the right commercial message to the right group of consumers.

With the invention of television and television programs getting popular day by day, the trend of using popular faces to promote stuffs came into play and this had a lot to do with making few particular brands more popular than others.

Here, the star of famous American Sitcom "I Love Lucy" can be seen promoting a particular brand of cigarettes, which made the sale of this product soar remarkably.

And here we see another popular face promoting an insecticide.

This trend of promoting goodies through celebrities became so popular among masses and proved to be so beneficial for companies that the particular trend has turned into a common regularity now. These days we are habituated to find our favorite faces promoting various products every now and then, be it in papers, magazines or in television, irrespective of the product type.

From garments to fragrance, from delicacies to daily needs... even a telecom company needs popular faces to promote their network.

As we saw, with time, Advertisements have come a long way and have gone through a remarkable evolution.

To know for good or bad, scroll down to the next post!

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