PRESENT DAY ADVERTISING 1. Economic role of Advertise: to give public notice of ; to announce publicly, es pecially by a printed notice, as, to advertise goods for sale, a lost article, the sailing day of a vessel, a political meeting.
When a dictionary of recognized authority falls so far short of defining the modern significance of ad vertising, it is not surprising that a careful analysis and summary of the economic functions fulfilled by advertising is needed at this time. The citizen, the business man, even the trained economist have fre quently been misled in their efforts to classify and • interpret this tremendous force which, despite the active opposition of some powerful business factors, has grown into almost universal use within two gener ations.
2. Early development of adver tising of the eighteenth century was merely a series of announcements. The typical advertisement of those days states that a certain product is offered for sale at a certain place. Even in such announcements there is seen the awakening of a new force in business. The announcements acted as connecting links be tween consumers desiring a product and manufac turers or dealers with products for sale.
In the field of business the first half of the nine teenth century was devoted largely to solving the technical problems of production and transportation, while the latter half was concerned with problems of marketing, credits, selling and advertising. The commercial system gradually adjusted itself to the necessity of mass distribution, a necessity which the machine, the railway, the telegraph and the corpora tion had forced upon trade by crowding the world with excess goods. This necessity, in him, brought about the further need for publicity.
Occasionally before the Civil War, expensive ad vertisements were published, such as that of the Fair banks Company in The New York Tribune. This advertisement cost $3,000 and was the marvel of its day. In the main, however, the advertisements be fore 1860 were confined to ship and steamboat sailings and to runaway slaves.
About the time of the Civil War modern experi ments in advertising writing began. The old theory that goods were made to meet a demand was supple mented by a new and broader theory, that a producer in addition to manufacturing the goods must create a demand for them.
Shortly after the advertisements of Fairbanks came those of Pierre Lorillard, manufacturer of tobacco, Enoch Morgan's Sons, manufacturers of "Sapolio," and P. T. Barnum, of circus fame. By 1870, dealers in condiments, tea and similar commo dities had adopted advertising as a necessary adjunct to their sales methods. The more staple products such as flour and sugar began to be advertised about 1890.
3. Advertising today.—Advertising actually came into its own only recently, when this economic theory became generally accepted : that only as a product can be sold is there industrial need of its manufacture. Today it is estimated that there are at least twenty thousand general advertisers, and about one million local advertisers in the United States. The extent to which advertising counts in modern business, may be gathered from the estimates of an expert's figures which place the cost of printed advertisements at seven hundred million dollars annually, and the cost of all kinds of advertising at over one billion dollars annually.
4. Growth of the first two years of the European war, one and a half billion dollars of European money was spent in the United States for war supplies. The effect of this enormous sum of money put into a few restricted lines was felt in all industries. Agriculture, mining, manufactur ing, transportation—all felt the force of this tide of money and adjusted themselves to move with it.
Compare this spasmodic impact upon the whole body of business during the comparatively short war period with the one billion dollars—three million dol lars a day—which American advertisers are pouring into every line of business year after year, and then judge of the effect which this constant pressure must have upon the marketing structure of America.