Let’s start at the beginning, the birth of advertising, with a couple of ads from the 1890s. This era of advertising isn’t necessarily remarkable. Advertisements were fairly straightforward, using the hard sell tactic to get their point across. They would include the name of the business, what they were selling, and where you can find it. Sometimes slogans may be included, or phrases to catch attention, but they were very explicit in what they were selling.
Take this advertisement on page 4 of the Blue Rapids Weekly Motor, published on May 15th, 1891. The article reads “Brown Brothers, Hardware, Stoves, and Tinware. Sole Agents for ‘The New Process’”. In just a few short words, this advertisement tells you what they are selling– hardware, stoves, and tinware– and that it’s being sold by the brown brothers. The phrase “sole agents for the new process” is an attention grabber to get eyes on the advertisement. This is the general format for most advertisements at this time.
Advertising mostly remained the same for a few decades, focusing on the hard sell tactic and straightforward advertising. It’s around the mid-20th century that we begin to see a shift in advertising tactics, most directly as a result of World War II. Advertising became a vessel for propaganda, something that is evident in almost every advertisement found in the 1940s. I pulled multiple advertisements from the Newark Evening News that I feel accurately demonstrate the impact the war had on ads.
First, an advertisement from page 31 of the Newark Evening News, published on May 18th, 1944, for a company called Royalist. The advertisement features two large images, a picture of Abraham Lincoln’s statue and a royalist cigar. The advertisement includes phrases like “a tradition of integrity” and “buy war bonds”, which increase the impact of the patriotic visuals. The advertisement is technically trying to sell you Royalist cigars, but more importantly, it is selling you patriotism. It conveys to viewers that strong leaders of strong nations have a history of integrity, just like Royalist Cigars.
The second advertisement I pulled out is one I found on the page before the Royalist Cigars ad. The advertisement is for Carstair White Seal Whiskey and includes a four-panel comic where a man is talking to a seal. In the comic, the man is seen gardening and asks the seal why he has to grow more crops this year than the year prior. The seal responds, “Uncle Sam’s asking for 25% more crops from your plot,” to which the man responds by inviting the seal to join him in his digging effort. The comic isn’t specifically about Carstair White Seal Whiskey, but features a white seal that is seen on all the bottles, as well as the bottle pictured below the comic. This once again plays upon consumers’ patriotic values, creating the idea that a true patriot helps produce crops for the war, and more importantly, a true patriot drinks their whiskey. These are just two examples of the hundreds I found while browsing through newspapers from this period, and they demonstrate the overarching theme of patriotism in this era of advertising.
After the war ended, advertisers needed a new way to creatively draw consumer attention. This era of advertising is often referred to as the Golden Age of advertising for its innovative techniques. Building upon the creative messaging tactics of the previous era, many companies began to take a soft sell approach to advertising. In the soft sell, instead of telling the consumer what you’re selling and where to buy it, they focus on selling their product through visuals and feelings. This style is more similar to current-day advertising. Advertisements began to utilize fewer words and more pictures. A great example of this is found on page 66 of the Southwest Time Record, published on May 12th, 1972. Featured is a picture of two cars– a Chevelle Malibu sport coupe and an Impala sport sedan– parked by a beach, captioned “Chevelle and Impala. We’ve packed them for your vacation.” Below is a short article that details all the features of the cars that will make your vacation better. Another example is a smaller advertisement found on page 29 of the same issue, which reads “Passport Scotch. The finest, lightest whisky Scotland has to offer” next to an image of the bottle. What makes these advertisements different from the previous eras is that they aren’t explicitly telling you to buy this commodity. Instead, they are selling you the idea of their product. With the cars, they are selling you the idea of a perfect vacation, which is possible if you buy their car. With Passport Scotch, they are selling you the idea of the ‘best’ scotch, better than any other you have had. These advertisements are the beginning of the focus on selling ideas and feelings rather than products.
Print advertisements didn’t change drastically from the 70s to 90s. While advertisers gave more attention to the new streams of media, namely television and the internet, print advertisers focused on polishing up current strategies. During this time, we see more emphasis on short messages and soft sell advertising, using phrases and images to sell products. One example of this is an ad published in the Gazette on May 17th, 1997, for a Cedar Rapids Honda dealership. The ad simply reads “we have the key to your happiness,” pictured next to a car. This advertisement once again focuses on selling the idea of happiness, which you can achieve by purchasing a Honda. It was also during this time that more advertisers began to print full-page ads. One example of this is found later in the same issue of the Gazette, where you’ll find an advertisement for True Value. At the top, it reads “help is just around the corner” and pictures a woman presumably jumping into a body of water. Also in the ad is a set of gardening tools, advertising their sale price of 49 cents. This advertisement is for True Values’ “shower in savings” sale. The elements of the advertisement combined represent summer, through symbols of gardening and spring showers, using the nostalgic feeling of summer to sell their products. The use of a full page allows the advertisement to stand alone, ensuring it isn’t overlooked by consumers for other content on the page.
Finally, we reach present-day print advertisements, which are very similar to the previous eras of advertising. This is largely due to the shift in media forms following the introduction of television and the internet. They say video killed the radio star, but I’d go further and say that video killed the print advertisement. There have been incredibly creative marketing and advertising campaigns in the last decade on digital platforms, but print advertising remains largely the same when it comes to newspapers. As you can see in this Powerball advertisement published in the Gazette on May 18th, 2013, a lot of the previous era’s strategies continue to be used today. This Powerball ad is short and to the point, including the $600 million jackpot for that upcoming Saturday and the caption “it’s big. Really big.” This advertisement isn’t telling you to go buy a Powerball ticket, instead, it’s selling you the idea of being a millionaire. It makes the consumer imagine what life would be like if they won that jackpot, which will likely encourage them to buy a Powerball ticket so they can have a chance to win that life-changing amount of money. The key to this advertisement is the soft sell, allowing them to convince consumers to purchase without explicitly saying as much.
Long story short, print advertisements can paint an interesting picture of history, specifically how advertising has changed over time. This is just a small glimpse into the way history impacts other parts of society, like advertising, and how we can explore that connection through archival resources. Join me again next week to discover more of history’s hidden gems and timeless tales.
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