Name: Odunuga Joshua Ifeoluwa

Matric No: 228670

Department: Communication and Language Arts

Course: Principle and practices of Advertising

1. What is Advertising? What does advertising entails?

People commonly take advertising to cover all forms of commercial promotional activity. However,
Academics and practitioners in the industry use the term nearly exclusively since advertising is only one
type of marketing communication. Other forms of marketing communication such as sales promotion,
public relations, direct marketing and personal selling; though frequently used to boost sales are seldom
clearly classified or defined as advertising. So what then is advertising?

Advertising has been defined in a variety of ways over the years with an attempt to capture some vital
element of its' essence but some definitions have become outdated and unfit to characterize the
practice of advertising today. One of these is the most basic definition of advertising. A widely used
definition coined in 1905 by John E Kennedy; a relatively unknown copywriter then. He described
advertising as "Salesmanship in print". Obviously, the mention of the word "print" represented the
media of the era but because advertising has evolved significantly over time due to emerging
technologies; it would be necessary to revise definitions such as these.

The American Heritage Dictionary (2000) provides a definition that covers a wider range of media: " The
activity of attracting public attention to a product or business as by paid announcement in the print,
broadcast or electronic media". The limitation with this definition is the specificity of media. Though the
word "electronic media" might be taken to refer to the digital age of today but how about online
platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest. It's important to note that advertising engages broad
audience on any means of communication.

A contemporary definition according to the American Marketing Association(AMA) is that advertising is

any paid form of non- personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified
sponsor. This definition help us understand what advertising is and how it differs from other
communication efforts. However, this AMA's definition did not cover the creative and persuasive
elements of advertising or its' roles and duties.

A very good working definition is stated:

Richard F. Taflinger. " Advertising is the impersonal communication of information, usually paid for and
usually persuasive in its' nature, about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the
various media."

Advertising is a paid for, non-personal communication; designed to influence or persuade people to

respond in a way consistent with the advertiser's objectives as regards an idea, product or service.
(Odunuga, 2024)

These two definition covers some key words:

2. History of advertising

A common misconception is that advertising originated in America and is a relatively new phenomenon,
possibly dating back only a century or two. Advertising is as old as humanity. Since prehistoric times,
there has been evidence of advertising being a part of human nature. The temptation to eat the
forbidden fruit in the biblical account of the serpent and Eve's encounter bears similarities to
advertising. The characteristics of the forbidden fruit are cunningly portrayed by the serpent. Both
propaganda and persuasion can be said to have been included in this communication.

Advertising at the earliest time.

In its early form, advertising centered on drawing the attention of customers to available goods and
services produced by early Craftsman. Many scholars suggest some practices now understood as
advertising must have been in existence as long as trade existed, to facilitate exchange between people,
and examples of both oral and written efforts to increase sales of goods can be traced back many
centuries (Russell & Lane 1996; Tangate 2013) It was the classical Athenians who can probably lay claim
to the invention of commercial advertising in the sixth century BCE, before it was spread by merchant
around the Mediterranean Sea and along ancient trading routes. According to Fletcher (2008), In Athens
during this period town criers chosen for their mellifluous voice and clear elocution, strolled through the
streets making public proclamations and interrupted their proclamations with paid-for oral
advertisements. (Just as advertisements interrupt television newscasts today). Aesclyptoe, an early
Athenian cosmetic seller used town criers to promote his lotions and potions with consummate
professionalism.

" For eyes that are shinning, for checks like the dawn
For beauty that lasts after girlhood has gone

For price reasons the women who know

Now buy their cosmetics from Aesclyptoe"

Shopkeepers in the Roman period used shop signs and frontage as one of their primary means of
advertising. (Vennarucci, 2015). Some examples of shop signs and shop frontage from the imperial
Roman period are found in the ruins of Pompeii. Signs in stone, or Terra Cotta advertising what the
shops were selling. A row of hams for a butcher's shop, a cow for a dairy, a boot for a shoemaker.
Another early example of advertising found in the ruins of Pompeii was a sign promoting a brothel.
Following the Athenians, advertising burgeoned in Rome, Herculaneum, and Pompeii where prostitute
ads can be seen carved into the stonework of the city.

Paper and Printing Phase.

After walls and rock painting, the tradition of print advertising took place which is also called the
modern period of advertising, as posters and fliers for advertisement had started as quick and
inexpensive services. However, one of the earliest discovered instances of print advertising comes from
Thebes in Egypt, a papyrus fragment dated around 3000BC. The advertisement is believed to be the first
ever written ad, written on behalf of Hapu, a Weaver and slave owner who was trying to find one of his
lost slaves ( Shem). At the end of the notice, he added some self-promotion that is strikingly similar to
what we still see in modern advertising. As translated by James Playsted Wood, 1985. The last line goes
thus " And for his return to the shop of Hapu the Weaver where the best cloth is woven to your desires a
whole gold coin is offered"

Moving forward a few thousand years around 1436. Advertising took a new leap with the appearance of
the printing press and movable press. An invention generally credited to former German Goldsmith
Johannes Gutenberg. You could now print books, flyers, and other documents in far greater quantity
than before. And with that print advertising began its ascent though very slowly at first.

In 1472, a flier was nailed on the door of a church advertising a book of prayers. Magazines and
newspapers started to use advertising as a way to generate revenue. The London Gazette was the first
newspaper to start print advertising in the late 17th century. They started a wide circulation of
newspapers and reserved a section in the newspaper pages for ads on a fee basis (Danesi 2015). But
back then, advertisements were simple, entirely text without illustration. The inclusion of pictures in
advertisements was applied in the eighteenth century in England and Ireland (Cox & Dannehi, 2007).
These were produced by people calling themselves ‘advertising agents’ because they not only wrote and
illustrated the advertisements but also
acted as sales agents for the media, selling advertising space to the merchants. The earliest advertising
agents worked for newspapers rather than for
advertisers. Acting as intermediaries, they sold space and took a commission out
of the fee.

Volney B. Palmer set up the first advertising agency in 1840 in Philadelphia. Palmer extended his
business in 1842 by purchasing space in different newspapers at lower cost and resolving it at higher
prices to advertisers. Later on, N.W. Ayer & Son was founded and offered the services to prepare, plan,
create, execute, and complete advertising campaigns for the audience.

In 1900, N.W. Ayer & Son had become the focal point of advertising and from that time advertising
became a profession. It was the first full-service agency for advertising content in history.

In the 19th century, Thomas Barratt had created an advertisement campaign for a peers soap company
in London with the additions of slogans, images and phrases, like one of his famous slogan as "Good
morning, have you used pear soap?" (Barratt 1908). Due to the reason, Thomas J Barratt is called the
father of modern advertising and remain as a famous contributor till 20th Century. (Haig 2005)

Digital Phase

History of advertising is Nigeria: