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A Look Back in Time
How two business geniuses long ago, changed modern advertising and brand marketing forever
By David Leckie
It’s difficult to conceive in this Twittering, Facebooking, instant-messaging, digital billboard, texting, emailing day and age, but a long time ago, scholars and governments were concerned with overloading the public with too much advertising.
We’ve come a long way thanks to two geniuses and their discoveries of lithography and chromolithographic, four-colour, mass-produced poster printing. Few brand-marketing strategies have influenced the entire sign industry as deeply.
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The beginning of brand advertising has its roots in 1796, when Alois Senefelder, the inventor of lithography, and Godefroy Engelmann, who patented chromolithographic printing in 1837, made their indelible marks on the sign and image making industry.
Their discoveries were the beginning of mass advertising and kicked down the doors to creativity.
Before their printing process discoveries, black and white posters with simple text and illustrations were the only means of getting messages to the public, aside from newspapers, which at the time lacked creativity.
By the mid-1800’s, European artists were augmenting their incomes with advertising art for the newly mass-produced four colour poster medium.
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The Advertising Poster Boom
The incredible French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec plied his talents to promote the Moulin Rouge, while Alphonse Mucha, Eugene Grasset and other renowned artists of this vibrant, fine art era created works for a variety of products.
The man behind this new media was a true entrepreneur and arguably, the world’s first advertising genius. In 1866, Jules Cheret opened a small print shop in Paris and set about hiring artists to create advertising poster art for a variety of clients. He and his artists changed the face of advertising forever.
There were other advertising pioneers at work during this boom, including Thomas J. Lipton and William Hesketh Lever, who used their creative genius to grow Lipton teas and Sunlight soaps into the international successes they are today – all through the use of art in creative brand advertising.
“Any fool can make soap. It takes a clever man to sell it.” ~ Thomas J. Barrett
One of the finest examples of the use of art in advertising was when Thomas Barrett married into the Pears soap family business. The sedate and formal business was quickly changed in the 1860’s when Barrett, often referred to as the father of modern advertising, purchased the use of John Everet Millais’ famed painting of a young relative, titled Bubbles.
Barrett had a bar of Pears soap painted into the foreground of the portrait and faithfully reproduced chromolithographic fine art posters of the work. The use of this new advertising medium virtually guaranteed the future success of Pears soap worldwide.
The new poster medium quickly spread throughout Europe and to North America, where advertisers began using the creative talents of artists to promote their brands.
North American companies incorporated this new style of poster art into their advertising campaigns. Coca-Cola, Quaker Oats, Campbell’s Soup, American Tobacco and many others called on the skills of such artists as Haddon H. Sundblom, Andrew Wyeth, Norman Rockwell to help build their brands into the worldwide franchises they are today.
In 1889, the first 24-sheet colour billboard was used at the Paris Exposition, followed in 1893 by the first American billboard at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The potential for this new medium was soon recognized by advertisers and used around the world to become a multi-billion dollar business.
By the turn of the 20th century, chromolithographic printing had spawned burgeoning industries comprised of advertising agencies, printing companies, designers, and sign and image makers, launching a brand new era of the art of advertising persuasion that has never looked back.
Where is the digital age taking us? In the next issue, we will look at amazing new developments in the advertising industry.
David Leckie is a former advertising executive and producer. He is now a business and travel writer.
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