Files
Abstract
Excerpts: Nearly three hundred years ago this advertisement appeared in the “Publick Adviser" in England: "In Bartholomew Lane, on the back side of the old exchange, the drink called coffee, which is a very wholesome and physical drink, have many excellent virtues, closes the orifices of the stomach, fortifies the heat within, helpeth digestion, quickeneth the spirits, maketh the heart lightsom, is good against sore eyes, coughs or colds, thumes, consumptions, headache, dropsie, gout, scurvy, King's evil, and many others; is to be sold both in the morning and at three of the clock in the afternoon." This was the first food advertisement of which there is record. It probably cost the advertiser a few shillings. The advertising of coffee now costs more than 5 million dollars a year; and instead of a health appeal, much of the product is advertised with song and dance. One company alone spent 2 million dollars on a radio program last year. Some people claim that advertising is an economic waste. Those who deny this say that advertising is a builder of industry. There is much to be said on both sides of that question, but I do not propose to add to its confusion. So far as I can learn, no scientific study has ever been made of advertising in national economy.