Shift Happens

Advertising has been a form of glorifying or gaining publicity for goods and merchandize since very early times. In fact, advertising has been around as an informal concept since the beginning of civilizations and former methods were oral advertising or claiming the benefits of products verbally when merchants sold goods to people directly on the streets. However with the advent of paper and writing, advertising took a more formal shape. Egyptians and Ancient Greeks used the papyrus for advertising and rock painting was also used. Advertising in English in magazines as we know today dates back to the end of the 17th century and newspaper advertising in America began during the first part of the 18th century with advertisements for estates. With the growth of mass media and different forms and avenues of communication like radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and of course the internet in the 20th century, advertising started becoming an important aspect for commercialization of products. People started understanding the potential of advertisements and it became a business with the establishment of advertising agencies with the first advertising agency in US opened in 1841. With advertising becoming a business in itself, the methods of using advertisements became even more formalized, controlled and systematic and the advertisements for products started appearing as newspaper ads, on billboards, hoardings, as handbills, leaflets, on magazines, newspapers, on TV and radio as commercials and more recently on the internet. Web advertising is now a very powerful means to take the message across to the customers. However to actually appeal to customers, advertising will have to work in accordance with the principles of psychology and sociology. Thus advertisers will also have to be familiar with sociology and psychology to really have an impact on the minds of consumers.

In a Western society, the money that its citizens earn goes to the state in taxes, to corporations when buying products, and a parts of that money again goes to the state in the form of product taxes. The corporations also pay taxes to the state, which enables corporations to exist. Advertising markets products to consumers, so corporations sell more products, earn more money and together with its consumers, pay more taxes. Some people say that advertising will disappear because it's overflooding us and it's losing its credibility but that will never happen. Society is a dynamic system of which advertising is an inherent component. With advertising, the system would fall apart. Corporations wouldn't earn money and can't pay their part to the state anymore, essential products and services would not reach consumers. Removing advertising from the equation would undermine the very foundations of a relatively free market economy. Most Western economies are comprised of a mixture of capitalism and socialism, due to the existence of both private-owned and state-owned enterprises. Advertising is not going to go away, it can merely adapt to changing circumstances in its system.

All advertising can do, is stimulate demand. Advertising doesn't have any control over the consumer. What ad campaigns do, is entice the consumer to try a product for the first time. If consumers fundamentally don't like the product, it doesn't matter how big your advertising budget is, it's not going to sell. Coca Cola tried to introduce a new formula in the 1990s, but completely failed. They had a huge multi-million dollar budget, but people just didn't like the product. It was too sweet, it left an aftertaste, it was too acidic. So they went back to the old product. Advertising places a great strain upon your need for quality and consistency in your products.

In advertising you're appealing to people's self interest to get them to try a product for the first time. And that's a big step. Unfortunately, more often than not this is done by creating a very loud message, hope a lot of people hear the message and count a smell percentage of that group to actually try out the product and have an even smaller percentage of those people like the product you're advertising. It's like a sniper trying to use a shotgun with buckshot to take out some enemy a mile away. Much of the ammo won't even hit its target because it's not accurate enough. As the world of consumption is increasingly individualizing, personalization and precise targeting of the message becomes much more important.