Advertisements are part of everybody’s everyday life. We are faced with them on the internet, on the smartphone, on TV, on the radio, in magazines and in public places like bus stops, football stadiums or shopping centers. There is hardly any place in which posters cannot be seen or jingles cannot be heard. It is a fact that commercials have a major influence on people’s consumer behavior and shape their idea of a certain product or organization.
The term “advertisement” derives from the Latin phrase “ad vertere”, which translates in “to turn the mind toward”, and thus already indicates the core concept of advertisements: It is a form of communication which directs people’s attention to a certain good or idea, and encourages its addressees to act in a specific way, for example to buy a particular brand, to vote for a certain political party, or to donate money for charity.
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It was the Londoner Thomas J. Barratt who introduced the use of slogans or catch phrases into in the 19th century, and thereby gave the contemporary commercial its classic form appearing in all types of advertising.
Generally, there are many ways to develop campaigns and to produce commercials. Big companies might have their own marketing department, others may assign the job to an external agency like McCann Erickson, and again others mix both ways. Everything is possible and can work.
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The idea of sending sales messages goes back to ancient times. The old Egyptians already created posters with papyrus to make people buy goods. In Greece and Rome so-called lost and found advertising was popular. And in the ancient societies of Asia, Africa and South America walls and rocks were painted for advertising purposes. In the Middle Ages, when many people could neither write nor read, it was popular to transport sales messages audibly through town criers and visually through signs. Eventually, the emergence of literacy among the population in the 18th century gave rise to the modern types of advertising.
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