The Advertising Handbook

Radios at the bedside; letters on the doormat; billboards at bus stops; magazines at the hairdresser’s; newspapers on the train; faxes at work; videos in hospitals; stickers in newsagents’ and TV in the living room: at every point of the day we are bombarded with commercial messages. Researchers in the United States have estimated that by the age of 18 the average American will have seen around 350,000 commercials (Law 1994:28). Love them or hate them, you cannot avoid them. Aside from advertisements being viewed, read and listened to, advertisers try to get us to practise advertising as well as consume it—and they often succeed. When I was a child my parents and neighbours were compelled to indulge in a commercially inspired ritual: when I burst through the door in a cowboy outfit brandishing a cap gun, they had to shout, “It’s the Milky Bar Kid!” There is nothing new in this. In the late nineteenth century Victorians replied to “Good morning” with the advertising slogan, “Have you used your Pears Soap today?” Though some may claim that this displays the power of advertising to influence our behaviour, there is little evidence that such acts resulted in increased sales of Milky Bars, or Pears Soap for that matter.

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