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Advertising During The Middle Ages

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In the beginning, advertising was verbal, delivered in ancient times by Greek and Roman criers in the marketplace shouting the wares of traders. Outside advertising can be traced to posted notices on papyrus in ancient Egypt for runaway slaves. Rather than something for sale, notices of runaway slaves and bond servants, with rewards offered, may have been the first advertising (Irving Fang, 1997: 61). Not many references exist to advertising of Dark Ages, when literacy was regarded of little worth; in fact, to advertise an item might bring bandits as well as customers to the door. The growing of Mercantilism during the Middle Ages changed attitude. Notices called siquis were posted in public places, the term originating from Latin si quis ("if anyone") because so many began "if anyone knows…" or "if anyone desires…". Then later, the word advertisement started to appear in the second half of …show more content…

At first, flyers were introduced, and then advertisements as newspapers and magazines were presented. Flyers were the first form of printed advertising. The British printer William Caxton issued the first printed advertisement in 1468 to support one of his books. In America, John Campbell publisher of the Boston News-Letter ran the first advertisement in 1704, a notice from somebody wanting to sell a land on Long Island (Vivian, 1997: 317). In 1729, while Benjamin Franklin established the Philadelphia Gazette, it rapidly became a preferred medium for advertisers. When the weekly Pennsylvania Packet and General Advertiser became a daily in 1784, it included an entire front page of advertisement for such things as dry goods, food, wine, and tobacco products (Wilson and Le Roy Wilson, 1998: 296). Advertising agency was another advent of advertising in the late nineteenth century, an American phenomenon which spread to Europe and then around the

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