Abdukadirova S.S.

Academic Innovational University, Kazakstan

Cognitive Aspects of the English Advertising

There is nothing more importunate, noisy and inevitable than advertising in the American life. One can know it by its tone even before he understands the topic of the advertisement; it is hold in our memory, though sometimes it is impossible to remember when it was first heard or seen. All our life is surrounded by advertisements and we get accustomed to it from our childhood as we get used to the sun and air.

Volny Palmer was the first American who started his advertising business in Philadelphia in 1841. Palmer’s brokerages were twenty five percent when he sold the place in his newspaper to different companies for the advertising purposes. S.M. Pettingel writes in his book ‘Commemorating the Advertising Business’: ‘Palmer was a genuine businessman. He was a very tactful, kindhearted man with pleasant manners. He was a nice communicator, a profound narrator; he could make any company laugh. At the end he usually asked for a permission of one of those present to make a preliminary estimate to the goods’ advertisement placement in the newspaper. Jorge Rowell was one of the largest advertising agents of the nineteenth century; he was raised in a farm in New Hampshire and he founded his agency in Boston in 1865. it took pains to get some information of a newspaper circulation for the advertising agents. The first edition of the ‘Rowell’s American Newspaper Reference Book’ was published in 1869, which enumerated the approximate circulation data of more than five thousand of American and Canadian newspapers. That Rowell publication is considered to be the most competent and commonly used reference book, treated as the precursor of the current ‘Newspaper and Magazine Reference Book’ by N.U. Ayer. Francis Wayland Ayer, a son and a partner of the company founder contributed to the formation of the advertising business greatly, when he put into operation the so called ‘open contract’. According to the contract the brokerages for the agents was stated to be first 12,5 and then 15 percent of the sum of money which the publisher got. The contract was called ‘open’ because the publisher set the price not in secret from the businessman who ordered the advertisement with Ayer as a middleman. Finally this contract type was commonly used in the advertising business all over the country.

Wide spreading of the cheap packed up goods was one of the factors of the American life which promoted the advertising development in the end of the nineteenth century. It in its turn provided for the life style of the twentieth century, which was satiated with a lot of advertisements.

Many companies which are still functioning as the leading flagmen appeared in the last years of the nineteenth century. They are: ‘Pillsbury’ (finished pastry for the buns and confectionery), ‘Quaker oats’ (oats and other cereals for breakfasts), ‘Eastman Kodak (photo goods), ‘Borden’ (diary produce), ‘Heiinz (tinned soups and other types of the finished products), ‘American Tobacco (tobacco goods), ‘Carnation (child’s diary nutrition), ‘Campbell soup’ (tinned soups), ‘Procter and Gamble’ (soap and detergents), ‘Colgate – Palmolive (detergents, toothpaste, tooth brushes and other goods for the tooth care). Advertisement customers were mostly interested to discover a suitable trade mark, a title, or a logo for their new products to be remembered by the buyers. Many labels that are familiar to us nowadays appeared at that period.

Henry Parson Crowell chose an emblem with a picture of a grey haired gentleman in the quackery’s dress for his oats cereal ‘Quaker oats’ in 1877. It was the first registered trade mark for the dry finished cereals for breakfasts. ‘Harley T. Procter’ company manufactured the new un sinking soap ‘Ivory’ (‘Ivory Bone’) in 1882 year. Two phrases of the advertisement have become the advertising history as the most memorable. They were: ‘It swims’, and ‘Clean for the ninety nine and forty four percent’.

George Eastman also invented a memorable advertisement logo for the photo camera which provided for their sale in 1888. It ran as follows: ‘You press the button – leave the rest for us’. This advertisement phrase attracted the people who were forced to manipulate with the camera.

Fast development of the consumer goods advertisement provided for the appearance of the mass circulation magazines in the end of the nineteenth century. There were only four magazines in 1885 with the 100 000 copies circulation. There were twenty in twenty years with circulation of more than five million. Two magazines published by Siros Kertis were the largest – a magazine for ladies –‘Ladies’ Home Journal’; by the middle of the nineties it had as twice more subscribers than any other magazine for the adults; the second was a magazine for mostly men’s audience ‘Saturday Evening Post’. Editor-in-chief George Larimer increased its circulation from two thousand and two hundred to two million during the period of fifteen years.

Steven Fouke, an advertisement historian in America wrote in 1910: ‘Magazine world has completely changed: it was a revolution, pushed, glorified and paid by the advertising’. The advertising agencies staff was not numerous in the second half of the nineteenth century in comparison with the modern agencies. Among the full-time employees there were no authors of the advertisement texts, no illustrators, no sale’s professionals, no coordinators. The agencies did not create the advertisement announcements; they just placed them in the newspapers and magazines.

George Batten founded the first advertising agency ‘with complete service’ in New York in 1891 year. His agency not only suggested the customers to place an advertisement, but provided the text compiling, artificially decorated it and prepared for publication. Batten Company (‘Batten, Barton, Derstein, and Osborn) had turned into the advertising giants of the twentieth century. It occupied the fourth place in the world among the advertising agencies having a year turnover of 3, 26 milliards dollars. As far as the advertising agencies ’with complete service’ increased in number there was need in a middleman providing services between the customers and creative employees of the agency. A position of the project coordinator was established. This position which was introduced in the Walter Thomson advertising agency appeared to be of top priority in the Albert Lascar Company, one of the legendary advertising performers of the twentieth century. His contribution to the advertising phenomenon was indescribable, so the first decades of the twentieth century were called ‘the Lascar epoch’ in the advertising history. Lascar was born in 1880 in the family of a German Jewish in Texas. Being twenty four he joined as a partner the Company ‘Lord and Thomas’ in Chicago, where he distinguished by his ability to invent different things and by his strong belief in his own unique capability to be the best in every activity. It is considered that owing to his movements the Company ‘Lord and Thomas’ turned into the prototype of the modern agency aiming the advertising texts creation. As Lascar said in 1906 ‘Advertising text creation consumed the ninety percent of our energy, budget and creative thought of our agency’.

Lascar himself did not write any advertising texts, he hired two the most distinguished advertisement authors. One of them was John A. Kennedy; Lascar offered him a great salary of sixteen thousand dollars per year in 1904. Kennedy followed the advertising principle, focused at selling. He insisted that a good advertisement ‘is a trade business on a newspaper sheet of paper’. It was but logical to motivate a potential buyer a reason ‘why’ he is to buy the advertised goods. Goods sale is the only aim of that advertisement.

The Company ‘Lord and Thomas’ supervised by Lascar was following the above mentioned principle and turned into the largest advertising agency in the USA. As it was written in ‘Advertising and Selling’: ‘Kennedy is one possessed by the only fixed idea, but it’s amazing, for his style appeared to be the mile stone of the prosperous advertising’.

Clod Hopkins, the other advertising creator of Lascar treated the advertisements as the ability to demonstrate the goods with the help of the printed word. He said: ‘I treat the advertisement as an artistic trade form. The advertisement should be more effective than the usual reasons, just like a play should be brighter than the real life’. And he continued: ‘The advertising activity should attract a customer’s attention only on a singular characteristic feature of the goods. Owing to Hopkins the customers got to know that the corn flakes of the ‘Quaker’ Company ‘ gun shoot’, that the tooth paste ‘Peps dent’ is fighting the scales, and that the ‘Schlitz Brewery’ Company washes the bottles with the acute vapor (we can mention that all other breweries did the same, but nobody guessed this fact). As a rule, the Hopkins advertisements secured the money return, if the goods quality did not meet the requirements of the buyer; they offered some discount or a coupon for free or cheap specimen. A lot of discount coupons were attached to the advertising materials compiled by Hopkins himself or in his style.

The coming twentieth century made it clear that the advertising fashion is not developing straightforward, but on a cyclic basis. ‘Frontal’ advertising was shifted by a insinuating advertising. The period of hyperbolical praising advertisement was changed by the period of its merits reticence. The businesslike dry advertisements were changed by the highly artistic and refined and keen advertising; the advertisements were aiming the emotional perception, atmosphere and artistic image instead of the logics and ‘why’ principle. Finally the advertising professionals came to the conclusion that every style should correspond to its time.

Theodor McManus became famous in the twenties of the twentieth century by introducing a new style of ‘atmosphere’ or ‘image, he was called ‘Insinuating Advertising Clod Hopkins’. His most distinguished advertisement fulfilled by the order of ‘General Motors’ Corporation was published only once. Autumn of the 1914 was characterized by the advertising activities of the rivals against ’Cadillac’ the most expensive car of the ‘General Motors’. Its 8-cylinder motor performance was not perfect. McManus fought the battle by placing an announcement without any illustrations; there was only text in the advertisement headed ‘Atonement for the Leadership’. Neither Cadillac no other cars were mentioned: ‘The flagman is attracting the social attention in every field of the human’s activity. If a person or an item is a leader they are usually followed by envy and jealousy. The leader is always attacked, because he is a leader, and all the attempts to catch him only confirm his leading role. A rival blames and attacks a leader, if he is unable to catch him. There is nothing new in it. It is as old as the hills. These attempts are futile. If a leader is leading he is a real leader. Every great poet, every distinguished master is usually attacked, but they still remain laureates in the centuries. That is why everything that is good or perfect speaks for itself, in spite of the loud shouts of protest. Everything that deserves to live – lives!’ The advertisement ‘Atonement for the Leadership’ convinced with the atmosphere, not with arguments. ‘Cadillac was surrounded by some halo, surpassing any logics, instead of the logical basement why it was necessary to purchase it.

In contrast to Clod Hopkins who was declaring that the style in the advertising was a disadvantage, McManus provided a reader with a poetical image. Though the advertisement was published only once (December 1915, ‘Saturday Evening Post’ magazine) it influence the Cadillac market greatly. Besides, the ‘General Motors’ Corporation had been overwhelmed by different requests to reproduce that advertisement for many years. (1:232) When the ‘Printers Inc’ magazine asked his readers to name the best advertising the majority named ‘Atonement for the Leadership’.

A new advertising style, which combined ‘why’ and ‘atmosphere’ was developed by the husband and wife Stanly and Helen Razor in the advertising agency ‘J. Walter Thompson’. When Stanly was president of the agency and his wife Helen was the head author of the advertising texts, this company was a financial leader in the twenties years of the twentieth century and they managed to keep it for fifty years. (1: 195)

Owing to Razor such goods as ‘Crisco’ oil, ‘First Class’ soap flakes, ‘Uban’ coffee, ‘Cutex’ nail polish, ‘Fleishman’ Company yeast enjoyed wide popularity. Advertising the face cream ‘Pond’s’ Helen created a famous series, in which the world celebrities testified the face cream qualities, Romania queen included. Toilet soap ‘Woodbury’ advertising glorified Helen mostly. The advertisement atmosphere was created by a picture, depicting a nice couple of fashion going to a ball. There was a heading under it ‘A skin pleasant to touch’, accompanied by the seven paragraphs of the text (reasons ‘why’) and a very attractive coupon offer. Hopkins would appreciate it: only ten cents one should pay for the weekly soap supply and a colored reproduction of the picture. Success was tremendous. An intimate theme intruded into the advertising. ‘Woodbury’ soap sale had increased by one thousand percent during the period of eight years.

Rosser Reaves (1: 296), the head of the ‘Ted Baits’ agency, was considered the most well-known authors of the advertising texts during the last years. He made himself popular with ‘M&Ms’ candies advertising (‘melt in the mouth, but not in the hands’) and tooth paste ‘Colgate’ (‘refreshes your mouth while you brush your teeth’). ‘Anacin’ aspirin advertising was made owing to his intention. A man suffering from a headache was having a hammer beating in his skull, the compressed spring was broken outside and the lightning stroke.

In a summary we may state that the English advertising is characterized by the following: a successful trade mark, a name, or a logo to be remembered by the customers and buyers.

Reference:

1. Филип Котлер, Гари Армстронг Основы маркетинга. М.: Вильямс. 2008. - 400 с.