Revolutions in

Communication
Media History from
Gutenberg
to the Digital Age

Slides based on the Bloomsbury book by Bill Kovarik

Chapter 6 – Advertising and Public Relations

Web site & textbook
http://www.revolutionsincommunication.com

Textbook:

1st edition – 2011 2nd edition – 2016

This lecture is about …
 The image
 Ballyhoo: PT Barnum & Thomas Lipton
 First ad agencies: JW Thompson, NW Ayer
 Patent medicine scandals 1900s
 PR vs muckraking: Ivy Lee
 WWI & the Creel Committee
 Scientific PR: Edward Bernais
 Tobacco ads in print and on air
 Ad men (and women)
 New agencies for the digital age
Rise of the Image
 The rise of imagery in culture,
commerce and politics is the second
of four media revolutions in our history
 Along with photos and cinema, images
have a central place in the history of
advertising and public relations
 Imagery, said historian Daniel Boorstin
in the 1960s, had become so
important that it led to pseudo-events
replacing real events.
Sandwich men London early 1800s

“A piece of human flesh between

two slices of paste board.” -- Charles Dickens
Advertising and the Penny
Press
 With the advent of industrial presses
and greatly expanded circulation,
penny press editors realized that they
could sell their newspapers at one or
two cents, actually losing money on
circulation, but then regaining it with
advertising revenue.
 This business idea is one of the most
important in media history.
P.T. Barnum
One of the most celebrated
showmen and public
relations agents of the 1800s
was P. T. (Phineas Taylor)
Barnum.

Founder of Barnum’s
American Museum in New
York and a popular traveling
circus, Barnum understood
the public’s taste for hokum
and ballyhoo.
Barnum’s Museum 1841 - 1865
Philosophy of Advertising
Men of business are hardly aware of the
immense change which a few years
have wrought in the power of the public
press . . . He who would build a business
must be like the times . . . To neglect
(advertising) is like resolving never to
travel by steam nor communicate by
telegraph. It is to close one’s eyes to the
light and insist on living in perpetual
darkness. . . . He who neglects the
advantages of advertising not only robs
himself of his fair advantages, but
bestows the spoils on his wiser rivals.
First Ad Agencies
 London 1812 George Reynell
◦ Legal ads
 New York 1841 Volney Palmer
◦ Quickly branched out to other cities
 N.W. Ayer & Son 1869
◦ Open book ad agency / ethical … but …
◦ Placed patent medicine ads
 J. Walter Thompson 1878
◦ Full Service ad agency – Copy writing,
design, placement
Four models of ad agencies
1. Newspaper agency (taking orders for
ads);
2. Brokers / space jobbing (selling
space to clients and then buying the ad
space);
3. Space wholesaling (buying large
amounts of advertising space at a
discount and then reselling the space to
clients at regular rates);
4. Advertising concession (contracting
for advertising space and taking the risk
of selling the space).
Uneeda Biscuit
N. W. Ayer agency,
for the first
packaged
ready-to-eat food
from Nabisco
 Thomas Lipton

"What's the matter with the pig, Pat?”

"Sure, Sirr, he's an orphan so, out of

pity, I'm taking him to Lipton's!"

Once the joke was known, pigs with ribbons tied in their tails
would be paraded through the streets with signs showing that
they were “Lipton’s orphans.” This and other low stunts made
Lipton very rich.
Advertising unregulated
 Anything could be advertised without
concern for the public until around
1906 – 1914 regulation in the US by:
◦ Federal Trade Commission
◦ Food and Drug Administration
 For instance, Grape nuts cereal were
advertised as a cure for appendicitis
 Opium & cocaine dispensed
‘Patent’ medicine
 Until the 20th
century,
‘Patent’ medicine

advertising was a
lawless frontier.

Samuel H Adams
was a muckraker
who exposed
patent medicines
in magainzes.
 Samuel Hopkins Adams
And worst of all, the media
was blocking reform, Adams
‘Patent’ medicine

said.

A “red clause” in the advertising

contracts allowed the patent medicine
makers to void the contract in case of
adverse legislation. So newspaper
publishers had an interest in ensuring
that no laws regulating patent
medicine were passed.
Image shift: c. 1910
Ivy Lee – Standard Oil shill
In 1914, a state militia killed 19 people,
including two women and 11 children,
during a coal miners’ strike in Ludlow,
Colorado.

Ivy Lee was dispatched to the scene by

the mine’s owner, Standard Oil tycoon
John D. Rockefeller. Lee blamed the
victims for carelessness in starting a
fire, and then circulated a bulletin,
“How Colorado Editors View the In 1934, Lee fell into
disrepute when ties
Strike,” quoting 11 editors who
between Standard Oil
supported the coal industry. All 11 and the Nazi German
worked for newspapers owned by the government were
coal industry. The rest of the state’s exposed.
320 editors were not quoted.
Protecting the monopoly
The campaign that
helped American
Telephone and
Telegraph hold on to its
monopoly in the
antitrust era was
designed by Ivy Lee
and N. W. Ayer. It
emphasized reliability
and universal service.
Creel committee 1917

Washington Post view of WWI censorship group.

 The Camels are coming!
Most people smoked cigars, not
cigarettes, until this ad campaign
started in 1913.

Ayer copied its Uneeda biscuit

campaign. Camels would be
introduced into each market with
teaser ads.

First: “Camels” and then

“The Camels are coming” and then
“Tomorrow there’ll be more
camels in this town than in all Asia
and Africa combined!”
and finally
“Camel Cigarettes are here.”
Edward Bernais - Scientific
PR Bernays's efforts to inform
the public about the
dangers of smoking earn
him praise from Action on
Smoking & Health in the
1960s.
He said if he had known
in 1928 what he knew
about smoking in the
1960s, he would have
refused to work with the
American Tobacco
Company’s campaign to
get women smoking.
 Torches
of freedom
The “scientific” part
of scientific PR
involved
consultation with
psychologists
about why
people liked Mrs. Taylor-Scott Hardin parades
down New York's Fifth Avenue
certain products. with her husband while smoking
"torches of freedom” a protest for
equality with men.
 Best
ad copy
ever
Somewhere west
of Laramie there’s
a broncho-busting,
steer-roping girl
who knows what
I’m talking about…
Changing ad designs

1863 1917
Changing ad designs 2

C 1942 C 1972
 War Advertising Council
Organized in 1942
voluntary ad campaigns.
But industry was under
investigation at the time.
“The industry launched a
frontal campaign to protect
itself, promoting its
importance to the war effort
and construing itself as ‘the
information industry’

After the war it was

renamed the Advertising
Council.
Ad guys: Leo Burnett
(1892–1971) believed in
personalizing and
sentimentalizing products,
creating icons like the Jolly
Green Giant, the Pillsbury
Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna,
Tony the Tiger, and most
famously, the Marlboro Man.
Burnett’s Marlboro man
First conceived in 1954

Market research showed men

were worried about being seen
with filter cigarettes, which
were considered feminine.

So the initial reason for the

campaign was to re-make the
image.

Ironically, the actor here

(William Thourlby) did not
smoke, and was not one of the
four or five cowboys who died
of lung cancer.
Barney Rubble, 1950s
TV tobacco ads banned 1971
 Tobacco advertising was banned from
broadcasting by Congress starting
January 2, 1971. All printed
advertising must now display a health
warning from the US Surgeon
General.
 The 2010 - 15 controversy in the US
involves highly graphic health
warnings.
 David Ogilvy
 (1911–1999) said
brand personality
draws consumers to
products. At the height
of his career in 1962,
Time magazine called
him “the most sought
after wizard in today’s
advertising industry.”

 1972 Campbell’s ad
More ad guys
 Norman B. Norman (1914–1991), one of
New York’s original ad men, tied advertising
to theories of empathy for clients including
Colgate-Palmolive, Revlon, Ronson, Chanel
and Liggett & Myers.

 Helen Lansdowne Resor (1886–1964),

worked for J. Walter Thompson to help
market products to women. Woodbury
Soap’s ad, “The skin you love to touch,” was
typical of her use of personal appeals to
attract interest.
Ad guys: Rosser Reeves
 Rosser Reeves (1910–1984) was a pioneer
of broadcast advertising who saw repetition
of a “Unique Selling Proposition” (USP) as
the key theory. These were often translated
into slogans (such as M&M’s candy that
“melts in your mouth, not in your hand”) or
dramatic demonstrations. Reeves was
famous for annoying pain reliever
commercials with cartoons that would depict
anvils inside people’s heads being hit with
hammers. In one commercial, a nerve-
wracked daughter shouts “Mother Please! I’d
rather do it myself.”
Reeves 2
 Reeves was the
model for the
protagonist (Don
Draper) in the TV
Mad Men
 Reeves generated

The world’s most annoying

millions for his clients,
advertisement – Click for video especially Anacin
link.
Ad guys:
William
Bernbach
(1911—1982)
developed off-beat,
attention getting
campaigns that made
him a leader in the
“creative revolution” of
the 1960s and 70s. His
“think small”
campaign for
Volkswagen was the top
campaign of the 20th
century, said
Advertising Age.
Ad guys: Leo Clow
(1942– ) took Bernbach’s
creative revolution of the
1970s into the next
generation, crafting
television ads like the
famous Apple “1984”
commercial. Also Energizer
Bunny, Taco Bell
chihuahua, and California
Cooler campaigns.
 Ad guys: Saatchi & Saatchi
 Maurice and Charles Saatchi (1946– ) and (1943– )
were among the first to take a global approach to
advertising when they founded Saatchi & Saatchi in
1970.
 Through a series of mergers and acquisitions in the
1980s, the company became the world’s largest
advertising super-agency by 1988. The Saatchi
brothers split off from the main agency, now owned
by Publicis Groupe, to run a smaller creative agency
M&C Saatchi.
Adverts as free speech
New York Times v
Sullivan, 1964

Important US libel case

Did civil rights groups

have the freedom to
criticize Alabama state
government in
advertising?

US Supreme court
gave a very strong
unanimous answer yes.
Adverts as free speech
If ads are “political”
then they should be
protected speech.

But what is political?

Is a pharmaceutical ad
targeted towards senior
citizens political?

Is a liquor ad aimed at
college students
political?
Declines in advertising
Review: people
 Volney Palmer, George Reynell, J.
Walter Thompson, N.W. Ayer, Thomas
Lipton, P.T. Barnum, Ivy Lee, Edward
Bernays, George Creel, Maurice and
Charles Saatchi, Lee Clow, Helen
Lansdowne Resor, David Ogilvy,
Rosser Reeves, Leo Burnett, James
Grunig
Review: Concepts
 Advertising is ancient, ballyhoo,
 Business models of first ad agencies:
◦ Newspaper agency,
◦ Brokers (space jobbing), Space wholesaling,
◦ Advertising concession,
 Regulation of advertising, patent medicine
 Image shift, protecting big companies with
PR,
 Creel Committee, War Advertising Council
 Changing ad designs from product to
personal appeal, re-imaging products,
brand personality, unique selling
proposition
Next: Chapter 7
Telegraph and telephone