Hello and welcome back to Advertising and Society. Today we continue our discussion of what advertising is and where it came from. Our focus will specifically be on the relationship of advertising to media. After all, for an advertisement to work, it has to be sent by someone who is delivering it to someone else. And what happens in this message is that, when it's received and acted upon, it becomes a successful advertisement. Now if we look at all the definitions of advertising that we considered, both in the previous lectures and also in the ad text material that i referred you to, all these definitions talk about three different aspects of an advertisement. That there is a seller. There is a message. And there is an audience. Now in the case of advertising, this means that there is the advertiser, the advertisement, and the consumer. So seller message audience becomes in the case of advertising advertiser, advertisement, and consumer. Now I'd like for us to talk specifically about these in terms of how they have evolved over time. And to focus on this, I'm preparing a chart, as we talk today, that will help us see some of the differences in the way that advertising operated in different periods and with different forms of advertising media. To begin with, we start our story in, let's say, the early 1800s. When communications between sellers and buyers was primarily in the form of salesmanship. Salesmanship was an interpersonal medium where the seller, who might also be the maker, spoke in an interpersonal way to one or a few people and deliver this message directly to them. The example that we saw before was this kind of situation where people by a roadside or in an open air market would be talking to others who would come by, and they would have a discussion about what they had to sell, what, how what, how it was made or how it was grown or what it taste like, probably offered a sample. And then the seller would decide whether the consumer was going to buy it at the price he wanted. They might negotiate that. And then in the end, a successful interpersonal communication would have taken in place and the commerce would be enacted. Or in this department store that we see, here again is that interpersonal face to face salesmanship that we see taking place between the seller and the buyer. Now, note in both these situations that there are no literacy requirements per se. All that needs to take place is that the people involved need to speak the same language, and that they need to be able to communicate to each other in ways that are clear and understandable. This changes when we move from advertising, sorry, move into advertising as a form of salesmanship in print. You'll remember that this was the definition that Kennedy gave in the early 1900s when he was trying to explain what advertising was, that it was nothing other, he said, than what had always been done in the form of salesmanship, just transferred to the medium of print. But this makes a big difference because there are a variety of forms of print, newspapers, magazines, billboards, all sorts of things that are printed and could be the media for advertising messages. This is also the period when all this was happening that the advertising agent emerged to help the seller write the message and deliver the message to the media outlet. So these were the first two things that advertising agents did was to help write and to place the message for the person who was selling. And that message was no longer delivered directly by the seller but through a mass medium, like a newspaper. And it reached, not just one, but a potentially quite large audience. Certainly many, many people would come into contact with the advertisement. And that's what we see, is a really great sea change here occurring between what had happened before in salesmanship and what happens after advertising itself comes on the scene. But note, that along with this advertising phenomenon comes a literacy requirement. You have to be able to read in order to understand the advertisement. And not everyone could in the 1900s in America. A lot of people could and increasingly more and more people could. And by the middle of the 20th century, literacy is pretty much universal in American society. But until that happened, advertising as salesmanship in print was limited to print media to people who could read. Now, another important change occurred because salesmanship didn't just stay in print in it's embodiment as advertising, but it also moved from things like this, into other kinds of media like radio. When we have radio, we begin to change once again the way that advertising works. Because we still had the same features of the client helping or being helped by the agency to produce a medium that will be delivered in a mass way to a potentially large audience. But note, that what happens here with the advent of radio is the requirement of literacy drops out of the picture. And thus, we're back to the ability to communicate between the advertiser, sender of the message, and the audience and consumer without the literacy requirement intervening. Now as advertising evolved, this radio thing had happened in the late 1920's. And then in the 1940's, what happened in the later years after World War II finished was that television became a commercial medium. We no longer had it like this, where the radio was blaring at people, but we started having radio with pictures as was how television was first referred to. But note, when you look at the essential features of it, that it's what's happening here, in terms of our chart remarkably. There's not much different between radio and television. It does have pictures, and that's about it from a technical point of view. But from the structure of the cinder medium and audience situation that we've been examining, nothing has really changed here. It's just simply the format has changed somewhat. And although that's a significant one, it isn't really the same sort of sea change that we saw in the period between the shift from salesmanship to advertising as salesmanship in print or radio, video or television. Now I want to take a moment and show you some early television commercials because you'll note that they're very quaint from today's point of view. They're also very entertaining, partly because they were done live. They were done on the side of the stage in many cases where the program occurred. And thus, there was no opportunity to correct mistakes that might be made. This is a very famous one from the 1950s, where in demonstrating a refrigerator, the problem is the refrigerator door doesn't open. So watch what happens here and see this rather amusing commercial from our current point of view. Certainly not amusing to the advertiser at that point in time, or to the presenter. But it shows what early television looked like. And many of the things that are said here could also be delivered through radio, we just happen to have some pictures to go along with it here. [MUSIC] >> And now, let's pause for a moment and turn to our Westinghouse program again. [MUSIC] Balancing act. >> Watch it. Watch it. Look out, oh, there it goes. Emptying messy drip pans is just part of your job when you're defrosting an old fashioned refrigerator. First, you have to remove all the frozen foods. Then you have to chip or melt away all the frost. It's such a messy job. And so unnecessary, too. When you own this wonderful new Westinghouse refrigerator, it always keeps itself frost free. Yes. Somebody's playing games. Well, ordinarily, it's simply automatic. There's never anything that you have to do. And the secret is inside here. Yes. I think we messed up the current. At any rate, inside, there is a magic counter button. And it's the sign of the frost free system. You never have to worry about it. You never have to touch it. You never have to defrost the freezer or the refrigerator. And here's why. You see, there's a little magic counter button up here, and every time you open and close the door, a small amount of frost enters by the warm moist air, and when the door has been open and closed enough times, that is about 60 times. Well, the magic counter button sends a signal that starts the frost-free system to work. Mm-hm. The door opens completely automatically and it wipes every trace of frost away. Why, even the defrost water evaporates automatically. And you see this magic counter button? You never have to touch it. It does the whole job automatically. And here's something else. Ordinarily you'll never touch this button here. You see? Just a tap of the elbow. Right. It does it. And the magic opener opens it for you. Believe me that's mighty handy when your hands are full of food. And just look at all the room you have in this huge refrigerator. Now this freeze kit holds up to 56 pounds of frozen foods. That's a two week supply for the average family. And listen, your old refrigerator right now, is worth a lot more than you think. And your dealer will give you a great big trade in allowance on your old refrigerator when you buy any new Westinghouse. So, see you tomorrow, won't you? And remember, you can be sure if it's Westinghouse. >> I hope you'll agree with me that that was a rather amusing television commercial from the 1950s. Surely not amusing to the advertiser or even the presenter, but to us, with contemporary eyes looking back at it, we find this sort of thing really amusing. Partly because we're not accustomed to the format of those sorts of television commercials. They've really moved far beyond how they started. And this one could be said to be not much more than radio with pictures. Because much of what's said here, by way of demonstration, could also be said in words, and not really require the demonstration. That's whats new about it, and it does show the thing working, well, that is when it works. Sometimes there were other things that were done of a rather gimmicky sort, that couldn't simply be shown or communicated when it was radio alone. Radio had been lots of music, and lots of jingles, and nice ways of saying things. And so when the pictures were added, they needed to be things like demonstrations, or in the following case that you're going to see,. Some amusing dance steps added to a carton of cigarettes, where the cigarettes actually dance. >> Say, it's time for my favorite dance team. So let's look. [MUSIC] A box of matches and a pack of Old Gold cigarettes. That's all you nee,d my friend, and you're enjoying the smoothest, mildest, tastiest cigarette ever created. A [INAUDIBLE] instead of a treatment that's Old Gold cigarettes made by tobacco man math medicine man to give you the cigarette that treat you better in every way, because in every way it's a better cigarette. Good huh? Yes for a treat instead of a treatment, get a pack or get a carton of Old Gold cigarettes. Right now, this is Dennis James reminding you to keep smoking Old Gold Cigarettes. Thanks. >> Again I think a rather nice television commercial from the early period for us to have a sense of just how things worked. The big change, the next really big change, occurred in the 1970s. Two things happened during that decade. First of all cable was introduced so that no longer did we have simply three television channels that were available to the public. And thus, the same advertisements appearing on all three of them, and not much variety in terms of choice of programming or even advertisements. But what we saw was that with the advent of cable, all of a sudden the three number moved to 100 or more. Where there were many, many channels with very specific interests and programming. And this meant, for example, that the Field and Stream channel, that catered to people interested in outdoor sports like those, might be given advertisements that were tailor-made to them. So, note that in such a situation when the programming becomes more specific and the channel is directed not to everyone but to a particular audience, the advertisements can be much more tailored to the people who are known to watch that particular kind of advertising. So this is a big change in that, it changes the selection of the audience. It begins to fragment it from being a mass audience where one size fits all, everybody gets the same ad to the ability to tailor ads much more directly to audiences with particular characteristics. In addition to cable, a second big change occurred in this decade and that was advent of video tape. It became possible, commercially feasible, and price wise available enough for people to be able to make home video recordings first on video tape which is what occurred in the 70s. But this meant that they could copy the program and shift the time in which they watched it. This was a big, big change because instead of directing the audience to a particular commercial at a particular point in time, the commercial went along with the program. And whenever people viewed it, they'd see it then. So if you'll look at the chart again, you'll see that there are many things that remain the same about the period of print, radio, television, and now cable and video tape added to it. But what happens is there's a big shift in the audience from it being a mass audience, where many people are given the same message through a mass medium to it still being a mass medium, but a fragmentation of the audience who has the ability to shift viewing time. And that really is a big change. It shakes things up a great deal. But there's a little problem that came along with that. In the early years of cable and video tape, the use of the equipment turned out to be very difficult. People used to say that it was so difficult to program your VCR to record a program they'd sometimes just give up on it. You had to enter not only the channel, but the time that it started, the time that it finished, you had to say whether you wanted it to run over a little bit. And for example, if you're recording the Sunday night news after a sporting event, you had no way of exactly planning when it happened. [MUSIC] >> If you've ever tried recording the late movie and ended up with the morning farm report, you'll love Zenith's VCR onscreen programming. It lets you correct your mistakes instead of watching them. Zenith quality. >> These things were all fixed later with regard to cable television and the kind of television that we have nowadays. But it was a big problem to do good programming, and a lot of people really gave up on the complexity of it. So what I've written in here is that there were technology requirements, kind of technological literacy that came along with the advent of this much more complex technology. And these are big shifts that occur because we see both the literacy requirement issue and the kind of audience that's being spoken to shifting here in the 70s. I'd say it's a bigger change that [INAUDIBLE] change between radio and TV itself. It's change between television as broadcast with one mass audience to television as broadcast. But many more channels and the ability to time shift. Now a huge change occurred later, and I suspect we have to time bracket this one around 1990 or so when the internet emerged as a popular means of communicating. And today, it's become not just a popular means, but the medium of communication. Almost everyone is connected to it in the United States in one manner or another. We learn about it in school. We use it in our lives. We do our work with it. And lets look at what is done with regard to the advertising situation. So first of all, what's happened with the internet is we've seen a shift that away from the fact that it's the client and the agency producing the message, to the fact that messages become interactive. Consumers now participate in the development of the messages, their websites, in which consumers can post their feelings about a product, their reactions to commercials and so forth. And in many ways, what happens is that there's a joint collaboration here between the agency, the advertiser, and the consumer in the actual production of the content and information about the product that's actually there online. What also occurs is that the message can become highly personalized here because as cookies are kept by computers and advertisers. Then messages can be very specifically tailored, as all of us know, to us in terms of our viewing and surfing habits. So that instead of one large message for one large public, what we have here is the bifurcation and the vision down to the level of the individual of the message in a highly personalized way. I know for example, last night, I was surfing and looking at some things about the possibility of travel to another country, and today I find my computer filled with ads about hotels in that other country. That's the kind of thing I mean by this. Now that means also in regard to the audience we're no longer talking about a mass collective audience. But a real atomization of the audience down to the level of the individual. But, of course, all this is supported by the fact that people who use this medium to communicate have a certain degree of computer and Internet literacy that they bring into the process so that it works. Because without the ability to use a computer, and there are people without that ability, then this kind of communication is closed off to them. What's interesting about all of this is if we'd look through the chart and see the things that have happened from the early part of the 1800s through the early part of the 2000s. We see ironically a change back to an individualized message. But albeit through the media of technology, we've had a lot of things happen and it's not the same at all. But there are some characteristics that are really interestingly similar, and these occur with regard to the media where in both cases of salesmanship and the internet we have a highly personalized medium, and we have the audience divided down into as small as a single person. While the salesmanship did not require literacy of any sort other than the ability to speak a language, today's internet situation does have very strong, complex literacy requirements that come along with it. Now so, we might ask the question, where are the big changes in the history of advertising and media? Well, I'd say that the first big change was the shift between salesmanship as an interpersonal face to face process, to a salesmanship in print, which we might also call advertising proper. Because it marks a real difference in how the process works, and it make a huge difference with regard to how many people can be spoken to, and how the message is delivered. But as salesmanship in print or advertising evolved, it evolved through the stages of print, radio, and television without a great deal of change in terms of the dynamic process that's occurring between the three component parts, the sender, the medium and the message. It takes until the 1970s, when the shift of television into many, many channels, and the ability to shift in time begins to make a bigger change than we've seen before and also requiring again, literacy to some degree in order to have access to these things. And then another big sea change occurs I think around 1990 where we see the internet emerging as a kind of ultimate, so far ultimate way, of personalizing the message, albeit through complex technology. So that these three shifts between salesmanship to advertising and from television to videotape and cable. And from all those mechanisms to the internet are the places where we see the large changes. I'd like to suggest to you that in order to follow up on what I've said today you might want to refer to the ad texting on advertising and media, where all this is discussed and discussed in more detail. It's a good way to review what we said here, but it's a good way also to see some more specific examples of what we're talking about in each of these periods and also to extend your knowledge of it. Other good places to follow up on this are to consult the trade press, that is magazines, newspapers, and so forth that are published for people in advertising about advertising. And I'd like to mention two in particular and those are Ad Age and Adweek, or Advertising Age and Adweek. You can find links to them on the Internet, and also in general just searching the Internet for advertising and media. We'll reveal vast numbers of sources where people are talking about all the new kinds of ways that the Internet can be used social media, lots of other complex mechanisms for communicating between the seller and the potential consumer that are part of our modern situation. But it's an interesting period that we're living in here for a couple of hundred years, we see an enormous transformation in the way that commerce operates through largely. The emergence of new kinds of media that allow the message to be communicated in different ways and have consequences in terms of the way the entire system operates. This course is a collaborative venture of Duke University and the Advertising Education Foundation.
