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Advertising In Advertising

Decent Essays

Advertisements are all around us, it is seemingly impossible to go even an hour without seeing a billboard, banner, logo, or commercial that is trying to convince us to do or buy something. Due to their saturation in our everyday lives it is easy to assume that it has always been this way, but that is not the case. Modern advertising in many ways began 150 years ago by the Pears Transparent Soap Company which led by a man named Thomas Barrett developed an ad campaign which differed from others at the time. The ad pictured above is one such Pears Soap ad. It appeared in This ad by today standards is highly offensive to most but in its context and within its target audience it was a highly effective ad and additionally has many similarities to modern ads. In this essay we are going to examine the context that it was published in and the methods that might have made it effective, and how those methods are still used today.

Thousands of years ago advertisements existed but were much more simple and generally did not include words but were picture to represent shops for skilled workers, such as cobblers or blacksmiths. Most people then were illiterate at the time and using words would not have been very successful in conveying messages to potential shoppers. After the advent of the printing press more people began to read and as a result advertisements began to be more complex, but they still were far removed from the ads of today. It was not until the late 1860s when

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