Research of Advertising

History of Advertising
Advertising ‘agents’ first appeared about 100 years ago, and originally worked for the media, selling advertising space for newspapers and magazines, and receiving commission from publications on the cost of the space sold. This original business then developed along the lines of ‘vertical integration’ - the agents gradually realised that they could work more effectively if they could suggest what went into the advertisement: if they could take the business of printing the advertisements away from the media and do it themselves as far as possible. They then gradually developed additional functions, first employing copywriters, then adding artists to their business, and finally employing a production team to oversee printing methods.
As such advertising ‘agents’ became established, and attracted regular business from advertiser clients, they began to face split in their loyalties, and were forced to choose between selling advertising space for specific publishers, or advising their clients impartially as to the best publications in which to advertise most effectively. They gradually swing to the latter operation, and became creators and advisers rather then salesmen. As the final stage in their development process, they then had to employ people who had experience of the best publications to advertise any particular product in, and who could negotiate with the media about advertising position, price and date of appearance - they then had to add the beginnings of the modern media department to their businesses.
By this point, the advertising ‘agents’ had broken away entirely from their subordinate position as media salesmen, and formed businesses in their own right with direct links to their clients rather than to the media being used. The media, however, continued to grant a certain commission to agencies which they regarded as efficient and financially sound, if they accepted (annually) certain conditions, e.g. promising not to refund any of the media-agency commission to the advertisers in an attempt to lower prices.

Development
Up until the 2nd World War, most advertising agencies, (especially in Britain) were, by modern standards, rudimentary affairs. The most important men were copywriters, who used their instinct and experience to produce copy that would motivate a generally defined group of consumers to buy the product - this copy was then laid out and illustrated if necessary by the artists, with the copy as the guiding principle. Media men, too, placed the ads by experience and instinct, with only circulation figures to guide them, and production men had only to contend with black and white letterpress in limited ranges, one commercial radio station - virtually no cinema opportunities. The whole business, in short, was conducted on an ad hoc basis, with little systematic effort because of a lack of theory and of practical data.
After the war, this situation changed completely with the introduction of the concept of marketing from America, which changed the emphasis in business from what the manufacturer wished to make and this times to sell through marketing (‘product orientation’) to what the consumer wished to buy and wanted to know about through advertising (‘consumer orientation’). This required a whole range of new facts not previously available; facts about consumers (what they wanted, who wanted what, at what price etc); and facts about the distribution of P/S (what was available, where and in what form - retail, wholesale etc). Both media/market research, and companies specialising in this business, quickly developed to meet this need.
The development of the marketing concept changed the role of the advertising agency yet again - instead of restricting itself to producing ads and placing them effectively, it began to look at all the ways in which a clients business could be ‘promoted’. Before thinking about creating an advertisement at all, it began to look at relevant but wider questions -whether the P/S really matched the consumer’s needs, or whether something new is needed; what the differing levels of distribution were, and how media expenditure should be organised to match this etc. Similarly, its creative work became more complex to match these more specialised requirements, as did production to meet new printing/processing techniques.
Finally, as agencies grew in size to cope with all these extra functions, they attached more importance to the post of ‘account manager’, who acted as a co-ordinator for all these activities throughout an agency on one specific ‘account’, and also represented the agency to the client. In the late 50s, with the marketing concept firmly established in advertising for products in similar categories became somewhat repetitive and hard to tell apart. This led to greater emphasis being placed on the individuality and impact of ads in all media. Creativity became the guiding principle of advertising and this lead to a rapid expansion of ‘hot shop’ agencies -
Small business, often no more than 2/3 people, whose only service was a creative solution to a marketing problem presented to them from outside. The end result was a tide of award-winning but largely unintelligible and ineffective ads.
The final stages in this development process were the increase in size amongst many agencies in the late 60s/early 70s through a series of merger and takeover and the diversification of these larger agencies into a wide variety of other fields and specialities - PR services, product development , package design, direct response, recruitment etc. - until they became full service marketing and communications agencies and not just ‘advertising’ agencies.