This page contains examples of group focus discipline research projects prepared by students during the Fall, 1999 semester.

BUSINESS

The History of Advertising

Group project written by:

Karrie Chen
Omotayo Esseogene
Thamara Lamour
Mohammed Rahman

ESL 91
Fall, 1999

Table of Contents:

1 Introduction

2 History of newspapers and magazines advertising

3 History of radio advertising

4 History of TV advertising in the 40s and 50s

5 History of TV advertising in the 80s and 90s

6 History of Internet advertising

7 Conclusion

Introduction

Advertising is a way to sell products to the consumers. Advertising has been going on for thousands of years from the very basic "word of mouth" to newspapers and magazines, radio, television, and the Internet. The newspaper and magazine advertising medium began in the 17th century in England. This advertising medium was passed on to America during the colonial period in the early 18th century. Due to the invention of radio, people then soon used this broadcast medium for advertisement and it became quite popular in the early 1920's. The television era then came along during the middle of the 1940's and people started to utilize this medium for advertising. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, due to the advancement of the Internet and the computer technology which made home PCs more affordable, Internet advertising became one of the most cost effective advertising media for the people.

History of newspapers and magazine advertising

Print advertising was first started in England during 1450, after the movable type was invented in Germany. People who had merchandise in their house wanted to sell goods to the consumer and that is how they came up with the advertising idea. That's how advertising got started and become part of newspapers and magazines until this day.

Newspapers are very effective for advertising. If a person wants their product to be known to the public, it can appear in the next day's newspaper. A person can buy a full front page in The New York Times for approximately $16,000 a day. But the big disadvantage is that newspapers are not universal and it does not guaranteed that everybody in town is going to see the ad because not everyone reads the papers.

There are also advantages and disadvantages in magazine advertising as well. The advantages are that magazines have a very clear-cut target. A person can check who is going to read the magazine before putting his advertisement in the magazine. Magazines have a beautiful reproduction and they last a long time. It costs about 50 thousand dollars for keeping the advertising for the whole month. However, magazine advertising takes as long as three months to have the reproduction come out. If a person needs to get the message out to the public immediately, a magazine is not the way to go.

History of radio advertising

Radio is one of the ultimate personal media used for advertising and communication between a radio station and listeners. Radio has its own special strengths and contributions. Radio can be listened to any time, any place, and anywhere. Even when disaster strikes, one can still keep on working while listening to the radio. People listen to radio because it's for entertainment and in between commercial breaks. This has made advertising successful on radio stations.

Radio advertising began in 1922. The Queensboro Corporation, a developer of Jackson Heights in Long Island City, New York, paid the station WEAF for ten minutes of advertising its properties which was the first commercial advertising on radio. In 1923, more and more radio stations got their own frequency. By 1927, there were thousands of stations on the air. The federal government started to look over the radio frequencies and assigned different frequencies to each radio station. Radio stations and advertising continued to grow and improve.

History of TV advertising in the 40s and 50s

Advertising has been going on for thousands of years and people used to advertise their products by "world of mouth". However, in the 19th century, people started to utilize newspapers and magazines as a medium to recommend their products to the consumers. With the emergerce of television, people started to utilize this new medium to do advertising. Unfortunately, World War II started and the US government banned the construction of TV stations and TV sets. TV advertising was not that popular until the end of World War II when the government lifted the ban.

In 1945, the American Association of Advertising Agencies started to work on TV advertising. At that time, the number of TV stations and TV sets were very limited. There were only nine TV stations available in the whole country. At that time advertising on television was not very effective because not many people owned a TV set. CBS did research and invited advertisers to present themselves with their products. CBS provided the network TV, personnel, and studios to create and pre-test the new techniques of commercial video. They provided the preview of this commercial video to test the effectiveness under the actual condition of telecasting. This event was significant because advertisers could see for the first time how TV advertising worked and how effective it could be.

In 1946, the TV Broadcasters Association declared television as a great and new industry in the country. NBC and Gillette sponsored and produced the first sports show. Color TV was made available to the consumers and the number of TV sets and TV stations started to increase. In 1948, the number of sponsors who spent money on TV advertising increased 515% in comparison to the year before. In 1949, the number of TV stations grew up to 98 and TV gradually was substituted for newspapers and magazines. The U.S. Dept. of Commerce confirmed TV's selling power when it reported that, "Television's combination of moving pictures, sound and immediacy produces an impact that extend television as and advertising medium into the realm of personal sales solicitation." (Adage.com)

In 1951, CBS broadcast the first color program. But at that time, many people still owned black and white TV sets and very few receivers could receive the color format. During this time, U.S advertisers spent about $180 million on TV time. By the end of the 1951, the number of household TVs had grown to 20 million sets, up 33/% from the previous year and advertisers spent a record $288 million on TV time. In 1954, Castro Decorators sponsored the first color commercial ads in a local show telecast on August 6. For the first time, television was the leading medium for national advertising. By August 1957, for the first time, more countries worldwide allowed TV advertising than forbade it.

History of TV advertising in the 80s and 90s

TV advertising in the 80s continued to grow and encouraged mass advertisers to support TV commercials. This also helped to make cable TV grow stronger. Furthermore, TV advertising encouraged people to create different kinds of networks, TV shows, programs and more. For example, some networks created in the 80s were the following:

1. in 1980, Ted Turner created Cable News Network (CNN).

2. in 1986, Reliance Capital launched Spanish language network Telemundo group.

3. Music television known as MTV was born in August.

4. Home Shopping Network was launched.

In the 90s, TV advertising increased prices for the entire network and TV shows. Programs increased the price of commercial ads according to the duration of minutes and seconds. However, this increase in cost never stopped companies from using TV advertising to recommend their products to the consumers. For example, Coca-Cola Co. promised its sponsorship of the 1992 Olympic telecasts.

By 1993, 98% of people owned at least one TV set and 64% owned two or more sets. This number is very significant because more and more people could watch different kinds of TV programs and commercial ads. From that time, it has been like a war like between TV networks to fight for higher ratings. Higher ratings mean more people watch their shows. Advertising customers would like to spend their money on the network that got the highest ratings. During the David Letterman show, which begins at about 11:30 PM, CBS charges $60,000 per 30 seconds for any TV ads. NBC also got their good rating as well on the sitcom "Cheers," which attracted 93.1 million viewers. ABC meanwhile launched an hour-long police drama "NYPD Blue" which was the only new series to crack the Nielson top 20 ratings. Fox TV network obtained their broadcast rights to National Football League which earned $1.58 Billion over four years.

History of Internet Advertising

In the late 20th century, Internet advertising became popular in the U.S. Internet advertising continues to grow and capture the attention of traditional and new direct marketers. The size of the Internet market is enormous and growing at double-digit rates as both individual companies and growing Internet service provider's rush to make their connections.

On-line stores can do many of the things like the real stores such as display products, offer special deals, take orders from customers, process credit card transactions, calculate applicable taxes on purchases. The only thing that is extra is to add a shipping charge and then process the shipping. Behind all of this functionality is the software that manages product catalog and transactions, and uses the web's building materials- HTML code to construct the online store.

The good news is, we all can create an Internet storefront and have it hosted for us on the web at very affordable prices and with an equally small investment in technological know how. "Online marketing has the potential to become our most profitable marketing vehicle because it can provide detailed sales tracking data (which has been lacking with other marketing vehicles). But it also requires a substantial investment. Because it is interactive and online, customers expect it to be kept up to date and refreshed substantially every few weeks. Online data can be seen as an electronic version of the company catalog complete with pictures that entice the eye, words that inspire the imagination and prices that don't make customers think twice.

Electronic information is less expensive to deliver than catalog because there's no printing or postage cost involved. Online marketers with senses of humor are fond of saying they don't like to spend money to deliver trees to customers. The field of online marketing is new and constantly changing. As new tools develop and evolve so will the strategy marketers use to win new customers and to build long lasting relationships with existing consumers."(Online Marketing Handbook, pp. 21-22) Conclusion Advertising is the best way to recommend products to the consumers.

Newspapers and magazine advertising began in the early 19th century. They provided static pictures of the products to the consumers and they were very popular at that time. Radio advertising came along which provided people with live news, programs, and advertisings. Radio advertising is still very popular. Many people still like to listen to the radio while commuting or working. TV advertising was made available in the mid 20th century and became successful because watching news, movies, and sports has become American's favorite pastime ritual. Internet adverting then came along and was made available to many young and old people. It is called the "Information Super Highway" and has been expanded virtually without boundary. It is available to anybody in the world who can get access to the Internet.

There is so much information available on the Internet. Whatever information you want to find, you will most likely get it and get it quickly. People take advantage of this medium to advertise their products for a very little cost. Huge returns result because the Internet is made available to every body. Although advertising media have changed over the years, none of the media mentioned in this paper is considered useless or obsolete. There will always be someone who picks one medium over the other due to his or her circumstances, such as traveling, remote working location, vacation, etc.

Kasper, Loretta F. (1998). Interdisciplinary English. New York: McGraw. Hill. 90-94.

Silverman, Eric J. (1996). I-Highway- Road to Success. Direct Marketing Association, Online: http://www.smartbiz.com/sbs/arts/dma61.htm. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on October 11, 1999.

Advertising Age's History of TV Advertising. Online. http://www.adage.com/news_and_features/special_reports/tv.html. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on October 22, 1999.

Janal, Daniel S. (1998). Online marketing handbook: How to promote and sell your products and services on the internet. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 21- 22.

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Topic: In your group research project, you should discuss the psychological and physiological aspects and factors involved in human memory. You should discuss both normal memory as well as memory disorders such as amnesia and Alzheimer's disease.

Memory is the process of storing and retrieving information. Without memory, life as we know it would vanish. We would have no names, no knowledge of ecstasy, or love. In order to know anything at all, we are dependent on the process by which the brain stores and retrieves information.

However the brain works, one thing is for sure: It's nothing so accurate as a computer. Where a computer encodes data in strings of 0s and 1s, the brain forms models of chemical and electrical impulses. Where computers record information in serial order like an index-card file, the human brain creates wide communications; more than a hundred billion nerve cells each connect to hundreds of thousands of others to form a billion connections. The human brain is far more extraordinary than any mechanical device; from a single lock of hair, it can reconstruct an entire love story. The mind can make leaps of insight no computer can.

Memory is very complicated issue. It includes semantic memory, procedural memory, sensory memory, short-term memory and long term memory. Those memories contain different part of our memory. For example, semantic memory is conscious recall of facts, information, and ideas. Procedural memory is memory for motor skills and behavioral habits. Sensory memory is the memory system that includes very brief memories composed of lingering traces of information sent to the brain by the sense organs. Short-term memory is the memory system that holds information up to 30 seconds and then the information is either forgotten or transferred to long-term memory. Long-term is a memory system in which information is held more or less permanently.

A variety of studies show that memory is managed primarily in the association areas of the cortex, especially in the frontal lobe (Goldman-Rakic, 1992). Here resides the capacity to store newly gained information and to link it to relevant information stored long ago (Baddeley, 1986). For example, patients suffering from damage to the frontal lobe display an inability to use the knowledge they gain to guide how they behave from moment to moment.

The complex task of storing and retrieving information seems to require the cooperation of other parts of the brain as well, however most notably the hippocampus. The hippocampus lies beneath the cortex close to the area involved in processing speech, but it is difficult to illustrate clearly. It appears to be essential in transforming new information into long-lasting memories. In animals like birds, when the hippocanpus is destroyed, old memories do not vanish, but newer ones cannot be retrieved.

From studies of both animals and humans, it appears that the hippocampus is essential for semantic memory; this includes memory for people's names, and for words, facts, and ideas. However, the hippocampus is not essential for procedural memory, which includes the ability to remember motor skills and habits such as tying shoelaces or playing golf or tennis. A primary role of the hippocampus is to consolidate new memories and relate separate events, especially to relate an event to the place where it occurred. The frontal cortex is more essential for the retrieval of prior facts, names, and rules from long-range storage in the association cortex in order to help solve a problem at hand.

The memory system that holds information up to 30 seconds and then the information is either forgotten or transferred to long-term memory. Unless some processing takes place within short-term memory, however, information held there deteriorates and seems to be forgotten completely within 30 seconds. So much information is lost in this way that one psychologists has described short-term memory as a " leaky bucket". However, this is not entirely a disadvantage.

It appears that much of the forgetting we do from short-term memory is intentional. We have no need to remember the information. We do not want to remember it-and it would only get in our way, for the contents of the short-term memory is quite small in terms of amount of information as well as time span, as portrayed. On the average, in the adult, it holds seven unrelated items-exactly the number of digits in a phone number-although for some people the limit is only five and for others it is as many as nine. When short-term memory is near capacity with its five to nine items, new information can be added only by dropping some of the old. We often throw out the old items deliberately. We do so by manipulating the processes that go on in short-term memory (Sperling, 1967).

How long is long-term? As we have all surely discovered to our sorrow at times, it is not always as long as we would wish. Nevertheless, it is longer than we might assume. A recent experiment, showed that forgetting in long-term memory can be gradual, and continue for many years. Indeed many long-term memories persist for a lifetime. An elderly person may hear a tune and remember the lyrics learned decades earlier. As for how much information we can store in long-term memory, there is really no way of knowing. Certainly the capacity is very large.

Most people have the meanings of tens of thousands of words stored in memory. Some have vocabularies that run into the hundreds of thousands. With the help of these words we accumulate all kinds of facts about the world. It has been estimated that the items of information and relationships held in memory must number in the tens of millions, and all of these pieces of information are somehow represented in the brain. It may even be that the memory storehouse has an unlimited capacity-though this is a matter of debate. This much seems clear: Long-term retention depends to some degree on the nature of the material learned earlier. In a study, especially relevant to students of psychology, nearly 400 former students in a psychology course retention of the material. As expected, the longer the elapsed time, the poorer was the retention-although overall, even after 10 years, the students did fairly well.

A mnemonic (from Greek mnemon or mindful; pronounced neh-MAHN-ik) is a word, rhyme, or similar verbal device you learn or create to remember something. The technique of developing these remembering skills is called "mnemonics." Mnemonics is used to remember phone numbers, all your new friends' names and many other things.

The basic principle of mnemonics is to use as many of the best functions of the human brain as possible to code information. The human brain using images, color, structure, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, emotion, and language.

Mnemonics are additional cues to help retrieve the appropriate information. For example, a mnemonic for remembering the order of the lines of the G-clef in music--E, G, B, D, F--uses the sentence "Every good boy does fine." The letters are elaborated into a meaningful sentence, providing a sequential organization not present in the order of the letters themselves.

Most people believe that their memories get worse as they get older. This is true only for people who do not use their memories properly: memory is like a muscle - the more it is used, the better it gets. The more it is neglected, the worse it gets. While in education most people have to use their memories intensively - simply to remember facts and pass exams. When people leave full time education, they tend to cease to use their memory as actively, and so it starts to get worse.

Memory works by making links between information, fitting facts into mental structures and frameworks. The more you are actively remembering, the more facts and frameworks you hold, the more additional facts and ideas will slot easily into long term memory.

Another reason for memory getting worse is that outside academia information tends not to be as clearly structured as it is in education. The clear presentation and organization of a good lesson or training course provides a structure that is almost a mnemonic in its own right. Where information drifts in as isolated facts, it will normally be forgotten simply because it is not actively fitted into a mnemonic. Again, as people grow up they are trained out of spontaneous, imaginative behavior: most peoples' jobs depend on them being predictable and reliable far more than on them being imaginative. An important feature of memory, though, is the imagination that allows you to construct the strong mnemonic links between things to be remembered and the cues for their recall. Of course be reliable, but keep your imagination fresh at the same time!

So memory in most people does get worse with age, but only because it is allowed to. By continuing your education throughout your life, by cultivating your mind and keeping it open to new experience, by actively fitting facts into clear and flexible frameworks, and by keeping your imagination working, your memory can get better and better as you get older.

Doing this not only gives you a better memory: think how many times you have heard this message in connection with other self-improvement methods! An important thing to realize is that different people learn in different ways. The way in which people learn is often a factor determining the subjects they choose to study, instructors they relate to, and careers chosen in life.

There is another problem that appears as we get older. We are beginning to realize that something is going on in our memory. We notice that we forget things more often that we did before. It is normal to forget, because we usually forget those things, which we don't really need to remember.

Obviously we are worrying about our memory, because as we get older most of our powers weaken and the memory is not exception .It takes us more time to get the information from our memory when we need it. This may be partly because we have more memories than when we were young, but it can also be the onset of an illness called Dementia.

Dementia is the loss of intellectual abilities to the extent of interfering with normal social or occupational function. Memory, judgment, abstract thought, and personality are diminished or altered. Memory impairment ranges from difficulty in remembering names of things to inability to recognize close relatives. Impaired thinking includes inability to cope with new situations. Personality changes include lack of personal hygiene, coarse language, lethargy, and irritability. Alzheimer's disease is the best-known cause of dementia, but stroke, concussion, exposure to toxic substances (including legal or illegal drugs), and neurologic diseases also contribute. Dementia is more common in older persons.

The causes of dementia are unknown however, the researchers believed that several factors, such as genetic predisposition and advanced age plays an important role. A severe head injury may increase the risk of memory disorder.

Memory is very complicated. It involves many different parts in our brain. We install all new information in our short-term memory. Then the information will store in our long-term memory. Some diseases will damage our brain system such as dementia. These disease usually occur the elder. Dementia is the loss of social or occupational function. A mnemonic is a word, rhyme, or similar verbal device can learn or create to remember something. There are so many different ways to improve our memory. Without memory, life as we know it would vanish.

Groiler's Multimedia Encyclopedia, CD-ROM 1998.

Kasper, Loretta F. Interdisciplinary English. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1998, p. 97-103.

Myers, David. Exploring Psychology, Fourth Edition. New York: Worth Publishers, Inc. 1999, p. 231-234.

Memory and Dementia, Online, Internet. http://repsych.al.uk/public/help/memory

Memory, Online, Internet. http://www.psych.org/public_info/schizo.html

Mnemonics , Online. Internet. http://www.mentalhealth.com

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