History of advertising in Britain

The History of advertising in Britain has been a major part of the history of its capitalist economy for over centuries.

Pioneers

In London Thomas J. Barratt was hailed as "the father of modern advertising". Working for the Pears Soap company, Barratt created an effective advertising campaign for the company products, which involved the use of targeted slogans, images and phrases. One of his slogans, "Good morning. Have you used Pears' soap?" was famous in its day and into the 20th century.

An advertising tactic that he used was to associate the Pears brand with high culture and quality. Most famously, he used the painting Bubbles by John Everett Millais as an advertisement by adding a bar of Pears soap into the foreground. (Millais protested at this alteration of his work, but in vain as Barratt had bought the copyright.) Barratt continued this theme with a series of adverts of well groomed middle-class children, associating Pears with domestic comfort and aspirations of high society.

Barratt established Pears Annual in 1891 as a spin-off magazine which promoted contemporary illustration and colour printing and in 1897 added the Pears Cyclopedia a one-volume encyclopedia. From the early 20th century Pears was famous for the annual "Miss Pears" competition in which parents entered their children into the high-profile hunt for a young brand ambassador to be used on packaging and in consumer promotions. He recruited scientists and the celebrities of the day to publicly endorse the product. Lillie Langtry, a British music hall singer and stage actress with a famous ivory complexion, received income as the first woman to endorse a commercial product, advertising Pears Soap.

A 1900 British ad for Pears soap

Barratt introduced many of the crucial ideas that lie behind successful advertising and these were widely circulated in his day. He constantly stressed the importance of a strong and exclusive brand image for Pears and of emphasizing the product's availability through saturation campaigns. He also understood the importance of constantly reevaluating the market for changing tastes and mores, stating in 1907 that "tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them. An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale, and unprofitable if presented to the public today. Not that the idea of today is always better than the older idea, but it is different – it hits the present taste."

20th century

Second World War

As millions of American soldiers passed through Britain during the Second World War, there were fearsof an "Americanization" of British commerce and culture. The Marshall Plan explicitly required and upgrading of the marketing and organizational skills of British industry. There were fears among the leaders of the London advertising world of what the brash, rich Americans would do to them. Radio and television was off limits to advertising, because BBC relied on fees paid by owners of radio receivers. The question was whether the heavily funded American methods would prove irresistible. JWT London was an American owned advertising agency controlled by J. Walter Thompson in New York City. JWT London avoided being the bold apostle of the American style. Instead it it relied on soft persuasion, shedding its Americanness to adapt to the British understated style.

See also

• Advertising Standards Authority (United Kingdom)
• Campaign (magazine)
• History of advertising
• History of Advertising Trust
• London International Awards
• Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising

Agencies

• Bartle Bogle Hegarty
• Crawford's Advertising Agency
• DDB Worldwide
• FCB (advertising agency)
• J. Walter Thompson
• Mullen Lowe Group
• Ogilvy & Mather
• WPP plc

Further reading

• Fullerton, Ronald A., and Terence R. Nevett. "Advertising and society: a comparative analysis of the roots of distrust in Germany and Great Britain." International Journal of Advertising 5#3 (1986): 225-241.
• Briggs, Peter M. "'News from the little World': A Critical Glance at Eighteenth-Century British Advertising." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 23#.1 (1994): 29-45.
• Church, Roy. "New perspectives on the history of products, firms, marketing, and consumers in Britain and the United States since the mid‐nineteenth century 1." Economic History Review 52.3 (1999): 405-435.
• Furdell, Elizabeth Lane. "Grub Street commerce: advertisements and politics in the early modern British press." Historian 63#1 (2000): 35-52. online
• Henry, Brian, ed. British television advertising: The first 30 years (1986)
• Loeb, Lori Anne. Consuming Angels: Advertising & Victorian Women (1994) 224pp
• Nachum, Lilach, and Jean-Daniel Rolle. "Home country and firm-specific ownership advantages: A study of US, UK and French advertising agencies." International Business Review 8#5 (1999): 633-660.
• Nevett, Terence R. Advertising in Britain: a history (1982)
• Oram, Hugh. The advertising book: The history of advertising in Ireland (MOL Books, 1986)
• Richards, Thomas. Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising & Spectacle, 1851-1914 ( 1990) 306pp
• Schwarzkopf, Stefan. "Discovering the consumer market research, product innovation, and the creation of brand loyalty in Britain and the United States in the interwar years." Journal of Macromarketing 29.1 (2009): 8-20.
• Schwarzkopf, Stefan. "They do it with mirrors: advertising and British Cold War consumer politics." Contemporary British History 19.2 (2005): 133-150.
• West, Douglas. "Multinational competition in the British advertising agency business, 1936–1987." Business History Review 62#3 (1988): 467-501.