27 Advertisement

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27 Advertisement

Advertisement or the process of disseminating information for commercial purposes has existed from very early times. Even before the age of printing, advertisement flourished side by side with trade in every age and in every land. Traders made their wares known to the public by means of inscription on the well; and at Thebes, a papyrus has been discovered, showing how people in very ancient times used to announce rewards for their runaway slaves. In Europe as in Asia - in the ancient and medieval times - the public crier was a civic institution; for it was believed that the spoken word made a more direct and powerful appeal to the public mind and was, therefore, considered the only mode of publicity. A recent writer, Mr. Herbert N. Casson, compares advertisement to electricity, and observes: It has always been in toe world, but nobody knew of it or tried to organise it until a few years ago. Considered as a profession, it is new; but considered as a force, it- is a as old as the human race. With the invention of printing in the 16th century begins the new era in advertising. In England in the 18th century, when journalism began and Addison edited The Tatier and Dr. Johnson The Idler, advertisements such as those for stops for razors and remedies for various diseases were advertised in the newspapers. The use of advertisement as an aid to distribution of goods dates, in fact, from the introduction of the railways and the factory system in the early 19th century. Numerous and varied commodities, which could be produced only in small quantities by the factories; and manufacturers and factory-owners sought custom far a field by advertising their goods widely. Advertisement should be studied in two aspects: economic and psychological. In its economic aspect, advertisement in essentially a force of distribution and as such it is the link that connects the producer with the consumer. In these days of massproduction, the effects of advertising may be described as massselling. When manufacturers or producers advertise branded or trademarked goods such as Pears Soap or Glaxo -woollen textiles, tyres, tricycles, motorcars or paints - they no doubt have to spend enormous sums on the display of the goods and the capture and enlargement of markets. It is true that the cost of advertisement enters into the price of the goods advertised. But as a result of mass-production and mass-scale, numerous overhead charges and incidental expenses are considerably reduced and the consumer gets his goods very cheap in the long end. Again, the spirit of competition of rival manufacturers compels the producers to maintain the high standard of goods and even to improve it The psychological aspect of advertising is no less important than the economic. In the well-known book. The Psychological Theory of Value (1924), George R. Dibblee convincingly argues that the measure of exchange value of goods is the purchasers desire to possess. Constant repetition of a trade-marked or standardised article, say, of toilette, dress, or motor accessories slowly seeps into the prospective buyers mind; and the prospective buyer of yesterday becomes the actual consumer of today. Modern scientific salesmanship has discovered that reason alone does not determine the purchasers choice of goods and that emotion plays an equally important role in his final selection. The emotion which clinches the issue of the buyer or the Christmas shopper is based on suggestion and association of ideas. Therefore, tasteful and elegant methods of advertising supported by verbal and pictorial suggestion have an appeal, which is often difficult to resist The methods of advertisement, resorted to in modern times are as numerous as they are varied. There are in the present day commercial world four chief methods of

advertisement: pressadvertising; advertisement through posters; conveyance advertising and moving advertisement. With the rapid improvement in printing blocks and commercial photography, advertisement in the press has become nowadays extremely attractive. When we pore over the pages of English monthlies, our eyes tall instantly on highly attractive, pictorial advertisements of such articles as hair-oils, toothpastes, chemical foods for children, motorcars, dress-patterns and

the like, and we feel like going in for some of them, if they suit our pockets. Next to the press, the most important medium of publicity is the poster, says a modern writer. A poster is in fact a sheet or combination of sheets with an advertisement intended to be displayed out of doors. By reason of the shortness of size and colourphotography, the poster is often an effective weapon of advertising. But one should not forget tfiat press-advertising makes a greater impact on the public mind than the poster, just because the newspaper is bought by- the reader and enters the house. Conveyance advertising is of recent origin. It includes advertisements on motor lorries and at the railway stations. The object of such advertisements is of course to rivet the passengers attention during the whole course of the journey on the advertisement of a particular ware so that he may carry in his mind without effort the principal points about the advertised article. Moving advertisements include advertising on the screen in the picture-theatres as well as mechanical models worked by electric wires fn window-shows; they are based on the principle of greater attractiveness of things in motion in comparison with those at rest. Besides the four methods of advertising described above, there are other media such as the mail-order and radio-advertising. One of the latest methods of advertising is of course sky-writing. Sky-writing is nothing but legible smoke-trails of the names arid brands of goods made an advertising method by the aeroplane. It is often resorted to by the American producers and manufacturers. Some critics condemn the huge waste of money in advertisement. The actual total amount of money spent in advertising in USA in one-year alone mounts to a billion dollars; this is regarded as economic waste. They further contend that the money spent on advertisement increases the cost of goods advertised. Their last argument is that advertisement generally intensifies mans desire for dispensable luxuries. * H. G. Wells in his novel Tono-Bungay (1906) describes the evil effects of advertising. In the novel, he paints the characters of George Ponderevo and his uncle Edward Ponderevo, the inventor of a; quack-remedy Tono-Bungay; they widely advertised it as a panacea and made a large fortune. But the case for advertising is always stronger than the case against it, concludes Dr. Daniel Starch, Associate Professor of Business Psychology in the University of Harvard. In the first place, advertising has very much reduced the seasonal fluctuation in the volume of business; for instance, shoppers do not rush for attractive toys or fashionable clothes only on festive occasions such as both Eids or Christmas; the stale of such articles is evenly distributed throughout the year. In the second place, advertising has standardised the quality of most goods. In the third place, the general level of living and the standard of public taste and personal as well as domestic conveniences have very much improved as a result of judicious advertising. Lastly, we should never overlook the fact that the large revenue that comes from classified advertisement renders the dailies like The News, The Nation, The Pakistan Times and magazines and periodicals like The Review available to the poorer classes. The social and educational value of magazines and periodicals, which are so made easy of access, cannot be exaggerated.

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