Hello. I hold my hands up because this is what many people in the world of advertising do when you ask, what's the future of advertising? It seems that nobody's really very clear about this. It'll be around, in some form, for sure. It's not likely to go away but just what that form will be is really up for grabs nowadays. The world of advertising is in great turmoil. It's changing, literally, as we speak. From a world in which there were print ads and television commercials and those were the main things that happened in advertising to a world of social media, the Internet, all sorts of consumer involvement that didn't used to happen. Things are just very different today, and where this will be in the future is a very good question. We begin an exploration of that today in a series of three lectures talking about the future of advertising. To start this I'd like to remind you about the discussion we had at the very beginning of these lectures. About the relationship between advertising and media. If you'll remember, we had this chart, where we talked specifically about the stages of advertising, from salesmanship, through the current situation of using the Internet and various other modern media to communicate advertisements. And I had talked to you about how some of the changes that have occurred historically are more significant and transformative than others. You can see here, where I had circled those and, if you'll notice, on the bottom line, what I've described as the Internet, etc., phase has lots of things about it that are really transformative, changing things from the way they have been done in the past. And what I'd like to do today is take out that et cetera. What does it mean to talk about the Internet and other things, what are these other things? So let's move into that area and see what we can discover when we actually ask the question about what's going on and what seems to be the future direction of advertising. Well first of all, let me point out that advertising itself is ephemeral by nature. As you can see from this image, advertisements don't have a long life. They are meant to be momentary, ephemeral, to be taken down, to be thrown away. We don't normally save magazines. We don't save billboards. New ads go up in these places. And new issues of magazines come along. A newspaper has at most a day or two's life span. So lots and lots of things about advertising mean that it is momentary. And is not something we save. And frankly, this has led me to look for the places where advertising history has been archived and saved. And I'm proud to say that my own university here at Duke University we have what it seems to many people to be the world's most finest collection of advertising history. It's housed in the Hartman Center of Duke University Library. And is now more than 25 years old. This contains the archives of many large American advertising agencies, as well as some of the foreign offices, and is a rich resource for people who want to come from all over the world and to study the history of advertising. You could find, not only the advertisements, but also many documents that help explain the decisions that were made, and why things are the way that they are now, and how they came to be that way. The other place where there's a great collection of advertising history is the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.. There in the Museum of American History in the archives center, you can find another great large collection of advertising history. It's similar to the Duke collection though not quite as extensive and doesn't have as many documents supporting the actual advertisements that are there. But if you're a scholar interested in advertising history, these are two of the places that are absolute must on your lists of where to go and look at what happened in the past of advertising. Now let me point out that when we look at the history of advertising and we try to study something like for example, this television commercial from the 1950s. It's often very hard to find good examples of the advertising from that time period. The reason for it is actually quite simple. In the case of advertisements like this, the commercials themselves were not archived because videotape had not yet been invented. Sometimes there were what are called kinescope recordings which is essentially putting a movie camera in front of a television set and recording what appeared on it. the television commercials themselves were often done live, and thus because they were live and because there were no recordings, it's very difficult sometimes to know exactly what happened in the early years of television advertising. >> Geritol. G-E-R-I-T-O-L. You'll feel better fast. Within seven days or your money back. >> Now by contrast, a colleague of mine, who was a historian of Byzantine art. That is the Byzantine Empire that existed in what is modern Turkey and nearby areas for about 1,000 years from 4th century AD until, until about 1450 or so AD. That's about 1,000 years in time. Her argument is that it is actually probably easier for her to study the art of Byzantium than it is for me to study television commercials from the 1950s. That's because the art has been better preserved, people have thought it was important and they saved it. People tend not to think advertisements are important and they tend not to save them. But I suspect that if we were able to come back 200 years from now or so, and ask the question, what was going on around the early years of the 21st Century. What was happening about all that advertising that you saw in America and in most other countries in the world? It would be very difficult to document this, because there are very few places that like the Smithsonian and like to actually are saving a good archive of what this present period is like. Now that said about the past, let's look at what some of the future trends are with regard to the Internet and other things that are happening in the present. What I'd like to do first is to focus on some recent innovations in advertising. Things that use newer technologies and newer sites that simply were not available in the past. Here's one of my favorite examples. This is actually the back of a toilet stall. What you see here is an advertisement for the All Bran breakfast cereal. And while someone is sitting on and presumably using the toilet and have, has closed the door, you'd look up and you'd see this actual poster. It says, see you same time tomorrow. I know it's for some people a difficult problem to talk about this. But they've done it in a very clever way. It's really humorous. And it simply emphasizes part of what the ad, the company has always tried to emphasize about this brand, mainly that it helps the digestive system stay regular. So they put it in a place where this message is useful and appropriate. And they colonized essentially the space of the back of the bathroom stall door. Now this is happening in other places as well where spaces like this that weren't used previously are now being used as advertising space. Here's an example of something that at one point was a fantasy of advertisers, could you buy space on a postage stamp? Well, the United States, in the year 2005, issued some stamps in what they called The Art of Disney Series. And we see here Snow White and one of the dwarfs on a United States postage stamp. Now, in one sense, this may be a celebration of a great piece of American culture. Disney is terribly important in understanding popular culture in America in the 20th century, but it simultaneously, while celebrating that, becomes also an advertisement for Disney and for Disney characters. So, the postage stamp has been colonized. Now look at what I've done here. It's possible in the U.S. today to actually have your own logo or picture put onto a postage stamp. It actually costs you more than the $0.49 that's made for postage. But you go to the company called zazzle.com. You can see it here on the side of the postage stamp. And you can put in your own image and, therefore, I could write each of you a letter and put the postage stamp on it that advertises this course. That's now available. It can be done. And this is an example of the U.S. government selling postage stamps as advertising spaces. It might be a picture of your family, your grandchild, something like this. But none the less, that space is for sale. And can be used also for commercial purposes. Now, here's something that's also happening. And this had been of few decades ago a dream of advertisers. Can we put ads in places where they've not traditionally been put? How about the floor of the supermarket? So if you look here what you see is this is an advertisement on top of the tiles of the floor of a supermarket that advertises a couple of products. So this is the kind of thing that is happening. Also grocery carts will sometimes carry small posters in them, at least in the United States, that are advertising when another brand of product that is available in the store to be bought. So these kinds of spaces are being colonized and used as well, and that's happening today. Here's another example where we see on the underground system the posters that occur near the top of the walls. This is a long standing place for advertisements on street cars and trams and various sorts of public transportation. But notice here also what's happened is that the very top, the ceiling of the train compartment is being used as well. And this one's rather clever because it's actually for a hair recovery product to grow hair, to replace hair that's missing. And this, this shows the top of a man's head when he stands under it, pointing out that he has a bald spot like I do. And therefore, this ad is a way of sort of showing this up, being amusing and funny. It's the kind of thing that people would probably chuckle about. But it's also, interestingly, the use of the space that had been previously empty to carry advertisements now. This is the kind of thing that I mean by advertising following new technologies and going into new sites, where ads had not traditionally appeared. Now, here is another example of using that space. These are the overhead bins and the tray tables of the low-cost European air carrier, Ryanair. And you'll notice that when you put your tray table down or look up in the in the top of the plane, what you see everywhere are advertisements. I've actually taken flights on this airline and, and you sit there in the middle of it, it's a kind of Times Square of airplanes where everywhere you look there seems to be yet another advertisement. Now, what the future seems to hold I suspect, based on what has happened very recently, is that we'll see the colonization of new spaces, of advertizing taking advantage of new technologies in places where ads don't currently appear. Here are some examples of things that are on the drawing boards and in the thoughts of people who write about advertizing and its future. Look at this image, this is the possibility that has come up several times of what would happen if a major company, with a very identifiable logo, were to put that logo up into the night sky so that as the world rotates this would come in and out of view. And it would literally show all over the world. This is the famous Nike Swoosh of course and it's identifiable practically all over the world. You don't need the word Nike, this Swoosh will do all on it's own to, to say Nike. And imagine that, that when we looked up at the sky at night we didn't just see stars. But we also saw the Nike Swoosh. This is a dream kind of situation for advertising to imagine that such things might actually occur. Now here's something that is also very interesting and the story broke in the US a couple of years ago about a woman who had sold advertising space on her forehead, where she'd had a tattoo put there to advertise the GoldenPalace.com, and that this was a permanent tattoo placed on her face. Well, a lot of people were horrified by this idea that she would be selling her face as essentially a billboard and she was ostensibly doing this to make money to send her child to school, but it turned out that this was a bit of a hoax. It's not actually real but, nonetheless, it stirred up a lot of discussion about what would happen if and it's a good question. Will we move in that kind of direction where people's bodies become advertising spaces yet to be colonized? Here's a situation where the Dragonfly Retreats which are spas are very popular. Their logo is much liked. And it turns out that people will sometimes have that logo of the dragonfly tattooed on their bodies. It's an interesting image and people like it and they have it put on their body. There's no indication that the dragonfly retreat is paying them to do this. As would have been seen in the previous situation where the argument was, she was being paid to, to carry this tattoo. In this case I don't believe that there is evidence that she's being paid to have this tattoo on her body. She's just doing it apparently because she likes them. What about this situation where a young man has tattooed on his arm the Heineken logo and the red star. Did he get paid? I don't know from the evidence I have. Or did he just do it because he likes Heineken and wanted to be identified with that brand? Whatever the answer is, his body is being used, literally, as a place to put advertisements. Whether he puts this on because he likes it or not, it becomes an advertisement also for Heineken. Now here's another fantasy of what advertising might be like. We could the logos of many different brands. Even the golden arches on the very top. And all of this would be very visible from the Earth. So that this would rotate and go around the, the Earth as it moves on its daily rotation. And the, and at the same time different sides of the space station would show itself and thus all these logos would be visible eventually as advertising from outer space. Now many people react with great horror to this sort of idea. Can't we leave the night space, night sky alone? Aren't certain spaces sacrosanct and we simply don't go there? Well, this will be a battle I believe in the future of what's legitimate for advertising space and what's not. Let me show you a situation that, if you're not familiar with, I think you'll find very interesting. This is an image of Venice in Italy. A very famous touristic site in the world. But one that's very old, and one that's in a serious state of decay. It requires constant maintenance. And it has a lot of tourists who come to see it. And it's very popular. But note, you'll see in the middle of this building, which is the Dosha's Palace or the head of the city's palace and administrative quarters. There is a scaffolding where the building is undergoing renovation. This is very costly and the question is, who pays for it? Is it the city of Venice? Is it the country of Italy? Is it contributions from companies or wealthy people? Well, here's an answer from recent years that in the case of the Bridge of Sighs which is this archway going over connecting that palace to the prison, the palace is on the left, the prison is on the right. And this is the bridge between the two of them. Very, very famous site in the city of Venice. So the issue here is how do we pay for the restoration and maintenance of this? And as you can see here, this is what it used to look like. Here's what it looked like in the year 2000. If you look at the very center you can see the bridge of Sighs. But it's surrounded on all sides by a Sisley advertisement. Why? Because the company Sisley donated the money for the restoration. And they were given the ability to use the space around it as an advertisement. Now, that ad won't stay there forever. But in the meantime, it is there, so that if you go to Venice and you visit it, you'll see the Bridge of Sighs surrounded by the Sisley ad. It's a kind of shocking difference between what it was like before, but it's a way for the city of Venice to raise the funds it needs to pay for the restoration. Now, finally, I'd like to show you someone's idea of what the future might be like. This is with the notion of Google Glass. Google Glass does not currently carry advertisements. But the technology is a significant one. And it might be possible for Google Glass to carry advertisements. Here's the idea of someone who's posted this on YouTube. Of what he thinks it might be like if such a situation occurred. [MUSIC] >> Huh, aw man, really? [MUSIC] Where's the music section? [MUSIC] Oh yes, this is it. I'm running late. Music, stop. >> [NOISE] Hi, what's up. >> Hey. >> Hey. >> You want to see something cool. >> Yeah, sure. Is that a ukulele. >> Yep. Here goes. [MUSIC] >> [LAUGH]. [MUSIC] That's beautiful. [LAUGH]. [MUSIC] >> Well, I hope you can see from the things that we've discussed today that advertising has in the past used the available technologies. There's every reason to believe that in the future it will continue to do so. And thus, as we look forward to the future, we can expect that as new technologies become available, there'll be serious questions on the part of advertisers as to whether these might become advertising vehicles as well. There will probably also be simultaneous public outcries about the idea that this is a terrible thought. And no, we shouldn't do that. But watch it, watch the action. Things like this will be happening and I think you can mark my words that the future will be filled with many questions like the ones I've raised today. You can follow this up by visiting the Hartman Center's website. The address is here or, and/or the Smithsonian website the advertising history collection there. And also I'd like to recommend that you look at the latter part of a brief history of advertising in America which appears in ADText. In all these places you'll find things about the history and the future of advertising. >> This course is a collaborative venture of Duke University and the Advertising Educational Foundation.
