Rewind: History of Print Advertising

Advertisements can be found in several forms and in several places, but one of the oldest and the most significant form is print advertising. Let us go back in time to see how it all started...

This advertising strategy started way back in 1468 during the days of William Caxton when he promoted a book that had his 1st printed advertisement.

After which in 1704, Joseph Campbell moved on to include ads in Boston Newsletter. This in fact was a great idea since people started becoming well informed regarding certain people and products.

In 1833 period, Benjamin Day got his 'New York Sun' book printed which was a combination of advertising vehicle and news.

After this, the 'Edward Book of Ladies Home Journal' created a magazine ad code during 1910. Since this period, print advertising started evolving with more attention seeking designs.

Print ads stand effective only if people view them. When people look through several publications, they get a tendency to receive new details and become more observant about the things that interest them.

This form of advertising aims to attract more and more people towards their services and products, as and when they read or scan publications. Such ads are commonly seen in magazines, newsletters and newspapers. This type of advertising requires lots of planning which is done often by a group of individuals.

When we glance through the history of print media advertising, we get these concepts:

• A group of individuals are required for creating ideas which further develops into a concept.

• Several others are involved in placing these concepts appropriately, since this factor earns them more cash.

Finally, print media advertising becomes a major part of earning revenue for any publication.

Different companies, Different execution

Here’s another pair of advertisements to compare and analyze

Two different companies

Two different parts of the world

Yet same product!! Take a look..

Hayat and Blue Waters are two companies that sell water, one is for Arab countries and the other is for the West.

You can notice in both advertisement that the brand is trying to sell a product. However, the ad that is targeting Arab countries uses a celebrity to advertise for the product. When you first see the ad you won’t understand what the ad really means, because the product is placed in the corner of the ad with the brand name under it. The celebrity took all the attention from the main message that the advertisers are trying to sell.

You can see that it is difficult for an individual to receive the intended message. The background  of the ad sends mixed messages for the audience, which makes it confusing and hard to understand. The layout and the design of the ad doesn’t support the product been advertised. It is hard to notice what is the goal or the purpose of the ad.

In the second ad, Blue Water send a direct message for the audience which is to advertise for their product and sell it. The way they placed the logo of the brand  and the picture of the water bottles grabs the audience attention because they are positioned in a place at the subject’s eye level.

Even the lighting and the design of the ad attracts the audience attention because the colors represents water and nature. It makes an individual thirsty when he or she first sees the ad. The motto “ join the blue crew” and the way the font is used matches the theme of the ad.

Both ad uses emotional appeals to relates the consumer’s social and psychological needs for purchasing the product. But not all the ad were successful in delivering the intended message to their target audience. I think the Arab based ad could have used more creativity and effort to push their product to be more noticable. I don't think that they always need a celebrity to promote a product, because thats when advertisers tend to make the mistake of focusing on the celebrity rather than the actual product.

Why print ads?

Why did we choose print ads??? If you're following us on twitter @printad101, you can tell how much we favor print ads.

Although marketers have gravitated towards more online advertising in the past couple of years, print advertising still remains as the most effective!! This is good news because now you can be sure that print is still going to be around for quite a while.

Lets look at the main benefits of print advertising...

1. Specific target audience: helps enhance sales figures and there is no wastage of resources as ads get to reach the target audience
2. Royal readerships: in the print media industry, readership is mostly longstanding and loyal.
3. Special ad positioning: advertisers can request special and positioning which will bring greater visibility to the brand. This is also commercially more effective as potential buyers would notice it
4. Credibility: Magazines create a large number of loyal readers who feel safe in its very credible environment, unlike online advertising
5. Long life span: compared to websites or national newspapers, magazines enjoy the longest life span
6. High Reach Prospective: magazines containing print advertisements get passed from family to friends to customers and so on
7. Glossy Ads: these are usually trend setting and eye catching and the best thing is that everybody loves to look again at glossy ads

...Still thirsty?

Other than passing on the basics of analyzing print advertisements, one of our main goals for this blog is to compare ads based in the Gulf with ads from other parts of the world.

You may notice that advertisers change their advertisement based on the region, but they do not change the product. Let us look into some examples ...

Pepsi uses different advertisements for its target audience

The colors  red, blue, and white symbolized Pepsi and represents the brand image. The layout, logo and of the ads are the same, yet the visual appearance or the model used is different depending on the region  that is been targeted.

Both ad targets football fans and players, however, the geographic location is different. One is targeted for Arab countries, and the other is targeted for West countries.

It seems that Pepsi paid more on the ad of David Bekham than it did for the ad in Arabic, because Bekham is an icon of football that is known globally, and the ad could also be used to target audience globally from all regions. However, the one in Arabic uses icons from Egypt football players that might be known only in the Arab region.

Pay attention to detail!!! Notice that the Arab based one has a group of football players, since most Arabs countries are known as collectivists. The Western based one focuses only on Beckham, even though you can see bodies in the background, they are not important..and this is to support individualism.

Another point to notice is the location of the logo.. First look at the Arab based one, the logo is placed behind the group of football players, but it is still noticable. Now look at the Western based one, which has the a large sized logo beside Beckham.

Also, the Arab based ad is a temporary ad because it can only be used during the African Football Cup 2006 in Egypt, which is the overall theme. The Western based ad doesnt follow a specific theme and it is not binded by a certain period of time.

Pepsi has different ads to be advertised for different segments, and these two ads are targeting football players and fans as mentioned previously. 

Pepsi doesn’t need to sell its product, so the purpose of the ad is to or what is called as an advertising appeal is to remind the audience about the brand and its image.



The same concept is applied for Coca Cola  as it did for Pepsi, yet different audience is been targeted.

Coca Cola used an Arab singer as a model, and in the other ad it used two Indian actors to represent it.

The Arab ad targets the Arab region, while the other ad targets Indians mostly. There is no specific demographic segmentation used for the ad, but the geographic location was segmented. For each area or region, the models changes based on the location so that the audience in that location will recognize the brand and relate to it.

The colors red, white and yellow represents the brand image

Pay attention to detail!! Notice that the Arab based ad uses the standard logo in a medium size, whereas the Indian based ad uses a different logo which is black and a smaller size and mentions a website.

Another difference is the background. The Arab based ad uses the Coca Cola colors, whereas the Indian based ad uses plain white.

Also, the actors in the Indian based ad are dressed casually and seen happy and smiling unlike in the Arab based ad where the singer is shown wearing an evening gown with a sparkling microphone and a serious face expression. 

The purpose of both ads is to remind the audience about the product as Pepsi was doing

Thirsty?

Instead of using one simple print advertisement to show you how to use the 4 steps to analyze….We decided that we should give a brief, overall analysis on the changes in one company’s print advertisements over the years.

The company we chose is Coca-cola!

Why did we chose Coca-cola? Not only because they’re known for their print advertisements, but more importantly because people remember them!!!

This link has all the Coca-cola ad pictures from oldest to latest http://www.dirjournal.com/internet-journal/the-visual-tour-into-coca-cola-print-advertising/

 The link shows the company’s print advertisement from the early 1890 all the way to 2002…

Looking through the ads, there are a few obvious things that you can notice:

• They used illustrated ads that look like vintage paintings from 1890 to 1929
• They upgraded in 1950 to still photos for their ads
• At the beginning they used slogans along with at least a 3 line description explaining the advertisement
• Most of the advertisements feature more than one person, which is a symbol of hospitality, friendship, sharing, companionship ..etc.
• The people in the ads are always smiling to show that their happiness comes from Coca-cola, which also connects friends
• The ads get simpler, more colorful, and less crowded with the years
• The time period that the ad is published in determines the slogan along with the theme (ex: during Christmas time)
• All the advertisements show even the slightest hint of red color, which is the company’s main color. Even though the logo is usually placed in the bottom corner or located somewhere on the actual ad, the advertiser did this to create a memorable brand image
• 1993 they associated their drink to a polar bear. You can tell that this wasn’t appealing since they were very quick to turn around the concept
• From 2002, they began linking the Coca-cola drink to colors, as a way to describe the Coke side of life
• During the 1990’s, Coca-cola used the same strategy that they started out with, and that was to use illustrations, but they updated it by using animations instead
• The advertisers want people to associate the drink with happiness, and feeling good..

From this we want you to learn that analyzing or deconstructing an advertisement doesnt always mean to uncover the hidden details or meanings. Analyzing is more than that..

The most important parts of an advertisement is to figure out the idea, target, and intention!

Here we go: Step 4

Step 4: Examine the consequences

- Overall  is the ad memorable, persuasive, informative or believable?

- Consequences ( how would individual respond emotionally to the message)

- Will the advertiser accomplish his goal ?

- Customer response about the ad ( what do you think their response will be)

- Restate the thesis ( reason of the ad, is it effective or not, why or why not)

The final step is by far the easiest... It acts as a conclusion to help you gather your final thoughts and observations of the advertisement

Here we go: Step 3

Step 3: Determine the target audience

- Target audience for the ad ( be specific by defining the target audience it terms of:

1. Demographics (age, gender, family size, family life cycle, occupation, education, income race, generation , religion, and nationality)
2. Psychographics ( social class, lifestyle, personality)
3. Geographic location (nations, regions, states, countries, or cities)
4. Behavioral factors ( product usage, knowledge, attitude or responses to a product)

- The benefit the ad promised for the target audience

- Appeal ( emotional or logical appeal used to persuade the consumer)

- Positioning strategy used

- What brand image is being communicated

- Elements used to make the message or the ad memorable

- Creativity or content-driven?

This step requires you to look deeply at what the advertisement is really communicating..