last highlighted date: 2023-12-04
Highlights
- “Advertising today is selling Corn Flakes to people who are eating Cheerios” (Levinson, 1994) In one simple sentence, advertising icon Leo Burnett is able to provide insight into the complex and constantly-evolving world of advertising. While you may not recognize Burnett by name, there is no doubt that you will know his work as he is responsible for bringing some of the most recognized brands to life; including: the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Keebler Elves, the Marlboro Man, the Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger and Ronald McDonald. What made Leo Burnett so successful was the innovative use of textual, audible and visual elements to capture the imagination and the emotions of the target demographic. It is these elements combined with the emergence of communication technologies that have allowed advertising to evolve into an entity that blends information, innovation and science to be the educator of new technology.
- Tags: people
- Note: Leo Burnett
- It was these activities that are found at the dawn of the advertising era. In pre-literate cultures, street callers would announce the arrival of ships, cargo and where proprietors would be able to set up tables to sell their fruits and vegetables
- Note: pre-literate advertising
- In Pompeii, examples of advertising on shop signs for establishments for drinking and eating and accommodations were mostly simplistic in nature but there are also examples of “beautiful illustrations and persuasive words” (Rokicki, 1987)
- Note: pompeii, first advertising in papyrus
- The walls of Pompeii were blanketed with messages in what could be considered as the earliest example of billboard advertising (Sampson, 1875). The campaign slogans for politicians would also be displayed
- Note: pompeii
- Using the aforementioned textual elements, the first ad for coffee was published as strictly text with no visual elements. It appeared on May 26th, 1657 in the Publick Advisor:
In Bartholomew Lane, on the back side of the Old Exchange the drink called coffee, which is a very wholesome and physical drink, have many excellent vertues, closes the orifices of the stomach, fortifies the heat within, helpeth digestion, quickeneth the spirits, maketh the heart lightsum, is good against eye-sores, coughs, or colds, rhumes, consumptions, head ache, dropsie, gout, scurvy, King’s evil, and many others; is to be sold both in the morning and at three of the clock in the afternoon. (Wood, 1958, p.32)
- Note: first coffee ad