In times past, advertising and marketing were different beasts altogether. Created for a different kind of person to market a different kind of product, it’s difficult to see how marketers today are able to relate. Take the 1950s - a decade of prosperity and booming economic growth. With many countries coming out of a post-war mentality, signaling the end of a thrift-based consciousness that was held since the Great Depression, it could be said to have been a golden age for marketing and advertising.

The Advent of TV

When television sets first debuted in 1941, it heralded a change in global advertising media. Up until this point, print and radio media were the kings of the castle - affordable, efficient, yet static and two-dimensional. While the initial cost of advertising through TV was steep ($10,000-20,000 for one minute), the wide incorporation of the TV into most households quickly changed minds.

This is similar to the social and digital market of today, the dynamic of the industry being affected by the introduction of a new medium as seen in social media.

Is there anything of value that we, as modern marketers can learn from those who came before, or are we to consign them to the dust of the ages?

The Multi-Channel Mystery

Back in the golden era, marketers faced a dilemma - which channel to employ? With radios being in every household, newspaper readership being at an all-time high and TV quickly catching up, marketers had to choose between these channels for their products.

A parallel can be drawn with the channels of today. What used to be Radio, TV and Print is now the Email, Website, and Social Media of modern digital marketing, and you’ll find many of the same concerns plaguing the marketers of then, versus the marketers of now.

Modern marketers might be able to learn from studying and analyzing how the issues of channel marketing were solved then - drawing upon the lessons learnt to apply it to their own product and audience.

Psychology and Audience Targeting

In 1961, advertising executive Rosser Reeves highlighted the popular concept of the Unique Selling Proposition (or USP, as you may have heard of it) in his best-seller Reality of Advertising. Setting a new tone for the industry that reaches into today, marketers had a new way to consider their audiences.

One of the biggest proponents of this was Lucky Strike and the It’s Toasted, campaign, the tagline of which is still used in certain packaging today. While Reeves’ ideology still influences today’s marketing, it also gave way to a new approach within the advertising spheres - the creative revolution of the 1960’s.

With the 1960s came a decade of revolution in many arenas. Considering entries both social and political, it seems only fitting that the hardworking men and women of Madison Avenue would undergo a revolution of their own, creative in nature.

Focusing on younger audiences (the ones with the disposable income at this point), marketing took a more psychological turn than before, capitalizing on well-written copy and overturning negative stereotypes as was done with Volkswagen’s ,Lemon ,campaign, helping bring about change to automobile and advertising industries alike.

Today, there has been a return to a minimalistic style of speaking to audiences. In some cases, this can’t be helped - letting the product speak for itself, the “show-don’t-tell” method is but the standard for many a niche product or website.

However, there is some wisdom to selling with clever messaging and an expertly-written phrase. The charm and power of a single sentence can be enough to turn a bad stereotype or a negative connotation to brilliance in a consumer’s mind.

Segmentation and Native Adverts

As marketers today focus on the big picture, delivering a steady message and looking for ways to maintain revenue, we as consumers have noticed a return to sponsored content - integrating with the natural experience of the consumer as they browse their relative spaces.

What is normally known as native advertising, was a feature that goes back to the ‘50s as well. Big brands such as P&G sponsored television operas (birthing the term “soap operas”) as a new way to market to their consumers without interrupting their experience.

In addition to this kind of sponsored content, marketers also brought in the concept of segmentation. Post-war advertisers began seeing the importance of women, both as maternal figures and as homemakers. While limited by the scope of its time, it still saw the proliferation of the audiences being segmented by lifestyle, an approach expanded upon and perfected until today.

As the buying and selling spaces of the world today become more harmonic and in tune with what we normally experience, it is almost natural to see some parallels with times past. There is evidence to suggest that marketing and advertising landscapes have not changed as much as we would like to believe.

Considering such facets as multi-channel marketing and audience segmentation, we can see that marketers and advertisers of the past faced similar, if not identical issues wrapped in different packaging.

These issues are similar enough that it’s worth looking back and analyzing the problems faced by the giants of this era to help solve the issues of the now. However, it’s not just the issues that we should analyze, but also the successes - consider the most famous advertising and marketing campaigns of that era to see what made it as successful as it was, and how it addressed the core issues and related to the clearest identities of that time.