COMM 1174 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Patent Medicine
Learning objectives
-understand why magaines have been crucial for advertising
-know the main features of advertising in
-emergence, entrepreneurial, mass, and convergence era
-characteristics, industry player, influence on content
Features of Advertising
I. Emergence
a. Newspapers and magazines
i. Beginning of mass media era (print era) of human history
ii. Largely for local ads
iii. Mostly pint announcements
iv. Primarily stores, not brands
v. Ships and run-away slaves (newspapers made a lot of money trying to catch run
away slaves)
vi. Impact of content was minimal, and reliance was minimal
II. Entrepreneurial stage
a. Advertisers and editorial content
i. Raise of spae rokers’
1. Evolve into ad agencies
2. Space brokers buy the space for newspapers and then resold the ad
space
ii. Patent medicine dominates
1. Things that have questionable health impact, little science behind them.
2. A lot of money to be made to sell to people
3. Red clauses (a lot of anxiety about patent medicines)= red clause
4. Laws started to become passed against these patent advertisements
iii. Impact on content
1. Silence, active campaigning against such laws (red clauses)
2. Investitgavitve reporting did not report on red clauses
iv. Packaging
1. Strategy: quality (by brand identity)
2. A brand is supposed to guarantee a certain quality of the good
3. Allowed the manufacturer to set prices. Prior to this, it was the retailers
that could set prices
4. Advertising: could put prices in advertisements. People would come in
and specifically ask for certain brands.
5. Started to give control over pricing to manufactures rather than
retailers
III. Mass era of advertising
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