Advertising

Location

Handbills and fliers to promote events or to recruit for the military

• Handbill recruiting sailors for
• USS Constitution 1798

Ad about runaway slave - 1770

Since most products such as shoes and clothing were one-of and made to order you only needed to advertise where to order

Service

Industrial Revolution

• Early 19th Century
• Mass production of products
• Led to three stages of marketing:

Production-oriented

• Demand far outstripped supply
• Could just advertise the existence of the product and where to get it
• Whatever was made was sold
• Example: People wanted cars, so car companies made whatever they wanted and the cars were sold before they were built

Sales-oriented

• Supply exceeded demand
• Companies tried to convince consumers to buy their products rather than their competitors’
• Companies still made whatever they wanted, counting on their ability to peddle their products
• Example: supply of cars went up, so the companies made whatever they wanted and convinced people they wanted that

Marketing-oriented

• Supply of products far exceeded demand
• More choices than any promotion could overcome
• Resistance to “hard-sell”
• Companies tried to discover what products consumers wanted before making them, then advertise they had it
• Non-American companies (e.g., VW) found out what people wanted, then built cars that had it (e.g., a gas gauge)

Let’s take a example

• The American auto industry

Production-oriented

Sales-oriented

Marketing-oriented

• Early sales-oriented ads were basically “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware)
• Producers said whatever they wanted and thought they could get away with
• For example, the “Health Jolting Chair”

• Led to consumer and competitor anger
• 1938 – Federal Trade Commission given power to regulate deceptive and unfair advertising
• Advertising could no longer lie, so new approaches were tried