The Beginning of Advertising Agencies

The word advertising comes from a long time ago, but what does it mean? The Cambridge dictionary defines Advertising as “the business of trying to persuade people to buy something”. So just to be clear, it involves two concepts business and creativity. To be honest, advertising is often confused with marketing. Therefore, advertising agencies and marketing agencies have both been instinctively used since long ago.

The beginning of a great story

At the beginning of the 19th century, we can see the “Uncle Sam” poster as one of the first attempts of advertising or propaganda. This advertising was one of 46 illustrations that were posted all over the streets to recruit men for the war. Even if this example doesn’t encourage us to buy a product, it had the purpose of obtaining something by promoting something else. And the history continues, here are some important moments in the history of advertising agencies.

Stabilizing Advertising Agencies

The American Association of advertising agencies was born on June 4th in St Louis Missouri, This association had as mission to improve the advertising business by setting limits and regulations into the market of advertising, starting with 111 charter member agencies, nowadays the 4A´s (American Association of advertising agencies) represent close to the 80% of the total advertising volume worldwide.

Clever and sound

In 1922 the Government of the United States had prohibited direct selling, in response to that the radio host H.M. Blackwell created a commercial, speaking about the advantages of a product (apartments) in which they will be creating a new type of advertising, “radio marketing”. The time on the air had cost $50 at that time.

A moment in history

At the time of 1938, Alex Osborn, known as the father of Brainstorming, invented this method, to find a quicker solution for a specific problem by gathering a bunch of ideas from different members and analyzed as a team for finding the right solution.

And the history goes on and on…

After big moments in life, the rest of the advertising history, well, is history, if you like to know the rest of the never-ending history you can find almost 100 years of history in the 4A´s Association. But remember a one really important thing, an advertising agency most, incorporates business and creativity to be called like this.

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