History of Marketing: First and Innovations

Ever since people have had something to sell, we’ve been marketing. But a lot has changed in terms of products, people and marketing methods over thousands of years, and as consumers and their technologies advanced at a more and more rapid pace, marketers have had to change their game.

Here are some of the major milestones in the world of marketing:

First Evidence of Advertisements

Although advertising may be thought of as a relatively modern invention, it has been about for much longer. Archaeologists have found evidence of ancient posters and inscriptions dating back as far as 3000 BC. Egyptians used papyrus and stone carvings to spread messages, often these messages were offering a reward in return for missing persons or religious and political propaganda.

Although unrecognisable by today’s standards, this was the beginning of the long journey to get to our modern marketing.

First branding

Now we can easily recognise something by reading the label but in the Middle Ages, the majority of people could not read. As towns and cities grew many merchants would use images associated with their trade to guide consumers.

Around the same time, craftsmen would use trademarks stamped onto their goods to differentiate them from competitors and to make them recognisable.Nowadays trademarks such as McDonald’s or Nike are some of the most easily and widely recognisable symbols on the planet.

First Printed Advertisements

Not long after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1440s, the first printed advertisements began to appear. Before this any text would have been handwritten/painted, this invention made it much easier to reproduce copies as many times as required. 

One of the first printed advertisements was produced by an English priest in 1472 and was announcing a prayer book for sale. After this printed posters began to become popular as access to printing became more widespread. 

First Magazines & Newspapers

The first regular publications, gazettes, or magazines as they would soon be known appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries. 

In Britain the first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant was first printed in 1702. Many of these daily/weekly publications included advertisements to offset some of the cost of publishing and distribution, just as we see in our modern newspapers. For a long time, this was the most popular method of advertising as these were the only way to spread messages to large audiences at the time.
  
It wasn’t until the 19th century that newspapers began to rely on advertising revenue to make themselves profitable, a model which has continued to this day. 

First Billboards 

Although now a common sight along roads and on buildings, billboards are a relatively recent phenomenon. The first billboards appeared in the 1860s advertising things like Barnum and Bailey circus and new health remedies.

This coincided with the ability for companies to ship and sell products nationally and resulted in the establishment of well-recognised brands such as Coca Cola, Colgate and Jim Beam. 

These came about because there were so many advertisements being posted around London that it was made illegal to put up posters and in the UK today flyposting is still illegal.

First Product Placement

Today you can watch anything without seeing pretty obvious product placement, James Bond has probably sold more Aston Martins than any salesman. 

The first record of product placement was in a 1927 film called wings, it features several close-ups of Hershey’s chocolate bars and showed several characters eating them. After this it began to be commonplace for companies, Hershey paid $1,000,000 for Reese’s Pieces to be the official chocolate of E.T.

Fewer people had televisions so it was later before products began appearing on the small screen. One of the most famous examples is soap operas, so-called because they were sponsored by cosmetics companies such as Unilever. Although this practice has stopped the name stays and many shows feature heavy placement of particular products and brands. 

First TV and Radio Advertising

As soon as these mediums became popular, companies began to take advantage of them for advertising.

The first radio ad went on air on 28 August 1922 on the AT&T-owned New York station WEAF and cost Queensboro Corporation $50 for 50 minutes of airtime to promote the sale of apartments in Jackson Heights. Amazingly, advertising on wouldn’t be allowed British radio until 1973.

The first TV ad was broadcast in 1941 it aired before the beginning of a baseball game in New York between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The commercial aired on NBC’s WNBT-TV, was only 10 seconds long and was an advertisement for Bulova watches. It cost the company a total of $9. Five dollars went to station charges and four dollars went to airtime charges.