A History of Advertising

This lecture just touched upon one history of advertising, there are many different ones out there but this one is about how the soap adverts came about and how much of an impact they had on society.

in 1851 Lever was born, this was also the year for The Great Exhibition. The Great Exhibition promoted colour printing and began to generate it more. The Lever Brothers, James Darcy and William Hesketh Lever, entered the soap business in 1885

Before the 1860's nothing came in any sort of packaging, but this was soon changed and pre-packaging was introduced, starting with cereals. Sunlight soap was the first to begin advertising extensively using this method and it was therefore lifted into a class by itself. In 1880, colour printing came about and this resulted in pictoral ads being printed in magazines, Sunlight soap then took advantage of this colour printing in 1890. Contemporary paintings started being reproduced and so Sunlight soap took these and reproduced them as their own, adding their own spin on the paintings. The imagery provided entertainment and it was now a product that seemed far more interesting. By adding a simple endline, Lever managed to change the meaning of the images to his own advantage.

When you look at the advertising for films, they all come with trailers, normally only lasting a couple minutes at the most. It's interesting to see how they can get the main bits of information, condense it down and try and get you interested to go see that film. Sometimes you have an amazing trailer that makes the film seem above and beyond itself, yet I've had personal experience where I have gone to see such a film and it hasn't lived up to its expectations. The trailers themselves need to get you interested without spoiling the film and showing all the good parts within that couple of minutes, there needs to be a balance. Another way to advertise films are through teasers, shorter than trailers, they give you a snipet of what is to come. These come before trailers and are a way of trying to get interest into the film before the main trailer comes out. A recent teaser that has really captured a lot of attention is Brave, Pixar's new film.

What it does well is the fact it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, yet it gives you some information for you to want to know more. It's very cinematic and visually appealing and the voiceover really drives the short. It gives it a foundation where it sets the tone and atmosphere of the scene and possibly the whole film.