OUGD401 - Lecture Notes: Beginning: A History of Creative Advertising

• Robin Wright - creative behind 118 188 & the future bright, the futures orange

• William Hesketh Lenor (1851 - 1925)
• Bill Bernbach (1911 - 1982)

• Lever Brothers - first multinational - lever & james darcy
• Unileaver - Ben & Jerry's, Birds eyes - owns over 900 brands
• First British tycoon
• Port sunlight - village he commissioned for his workers - lady lever gallery

• colour printing was developed & invented for 1851 great exhibition - first 3D

• 1860's cereal companies figured out how to print, fold & fill cardboard boxes

• Lever was first to advertise extensively - tablet of soap - mass production

• Advertising aided by tax cuts]on newspapers 1855 & paper in 1861
• Press owes much to advertising - news of the world ended because 1880's colour images in magazines
• Advertisers pulled out during phone hacking
• Printing book - technological progress

• Colour, innovative advertising was crucial to Levels success 

• Started using contemporary art in their advertising - usually women, children & white linen - high mortality rate at this time so use of children with technology - signify joy, health etc
• Added simple end lives to change the meaning of images
• Encouraged consumers to collect vouchers etc to get prints for their homes

• Ad agencies sold space of newspapers - stated offering creative services in early 21st century when sales got a fixed rate

• Product placement - Lever brought painting & replaced items in the picture with soap

• Innovative events - organised a washing competition
• Soap got royal endorsements in 1892

• used international agencies as trade routes were there - 'Britishness' suited all

• Lever spent £2 million in first 2 decades of making soap
• Purchased a Philly soap firm - art director Sidney Gross

• Lever - first ECD
• collaborative creatively
• employed international expertise
• Overseer of advertising
• constantly researching

• First ambient - innovative spaces - ads designed for specific places - doors left open at train stations etc

• Many of his early ads emphasised that sunlight would save women from drudgery - text spoke to working-class housewives

• To convince people all over the world that they did not want the product, that they 'needed' it. - high-feeling strategy.

• First soap operas - Ivory soap led the way & sponsored a drama radio show

• Unilever still sponsors art these days
• Highly critical in interwar years
• Left wing critics appalled by products of capitalism & mechanisation.