I was 15 when someone told me “You should study advertising,” and I didn’t think it was such a bad idea. Little by little, I fell in love with this profession and the huge impact it had on our culture and everyday decisions.
But today, the advertising I knew when I was 15 (and still in college) is practically unrecognizable. With the huge changes brought about by the arrival of the Internet, in just a couple of decades it has reached a breaking point, where we must rethink that impact.
Is advertising still as powerful as it once was?
A bit of history
It is said that advertising originated in ancient times, when bahrain email list 191152 contact leads people placed signs outside their homes to advertise their products. But it was not until the invention of the printing press in 1440 that it began to take shape through flyers, posters and, later, newspapers.
More than three centuries later, in 1786, the first advertising agency was founded in London. At first, the agencies' job was simply to sell space in magazines and newspapers so that companies could advertise their products. However, it was not long before they also began to develop advertisements themselves.
Which brings us to:
Advertising as we knew it
The invention of radio in the 1920s and television in the 1940s revolutionized advertising, turning it into a powerful tool for communicating brands. Any company that wanted to be successful had to use mass media to convince others how wonderful its product was.
And that was the advertising we knew: practically the same since the 1920s and 1940s. Advertising that revolved around brands and whose main objective was to sell, in a one-way dialogue in which all the rest of us were simple recipients.
Although traditional advertising is still alive today, the popularization of the Internet has allowed for much more segmented and even personalized communication.
Now, selling a product is no longer the main objective. What matters is providing solutions to people.
Check out our complete advertising guide!