The Evolution of Advertising and its Impact in the Modern Day

Advertising has been an essential facet of marketing for as long as there have been human civilization and interaction. It is human nature to “advertise” oneself or to expose certain aspects of ones life that create an image or facade of how that person would prefer to be perceived by their community and peers. Advertising generally involves the promotion – and many times an exaggeration – of the positive aspects and the cloaking of negative attributes related to the particular item in question.

The very first form of advertising that took place in humans was the propaganda, otherwise known as intentionally skewed or misleading advertisements to fit an agenda or dogma, that rulers used to promote their image. Rulers, whether it be the ruler of a small tribe an isolated forest in Papua New Guinea or the emperor of the Roman Empire, generally promoted a self image of generosity, fairness, kindness; while simultaneously appearing stern, powerful and uncompromising. However, a public figure's true image and public image are almost never one in the same. This was a result of an attempt to gain public acceptance. The medium by which this advertising propagated during this period was almost ubiquitously by word of mouth. In the past, especially before the printing press, dissemination of information was especially slow and was susceptible to the spread of misinformation. This phenomena can be witnessed when watching the childhood game of telephone; a game in which children in a row choose either end to start by saying a random message to be passed along the entire row of children. When the game is played correctly with enough people, the message is generally skewed in some way – either from mishearing or misinterpreting the person ...

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...g, which is not necessarily bad because they are good at what they do.

It is clear that all three mediums used for promotion hold their place in the advertising world. All three used Pathos in their commercials predominately. The first being comfort, the next being lustful, and the last being irritated. This is also a representation of how humans generally make decisions based on their emotions, often times called a “gut feeling”. This makes one wonder how many extraordinarily things have vanished as a result of poor marketing. Probably many.

Works Cited

Sweney, Mark. " Women under-represented in senior advertising jobs, says IPA report | Media | guardian.co.uk ." Latest US and world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian . N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. .