Essay on Advertisement: What Were Advertisements Focusing In The 70’s?

The advertisements made in the 70’s are very interesting by the structure. There were no common principles, standards or concrete knowledge of what the advertisements should be focused on to increase the sales of the companies and therefore, every country had its own special manners of the advertising process (Laird, 1998).

In the 70’s the advertisements were like “mini movies” about the product and were focused on the product itself and its history.

These “movies” were shown mainly in the cinemas before the start of the big screen movie, so that the spectators could properly concentrate on what was advertised and the advertisement’s effect would be the highest.

The essential part of the advertisement was a slogan – a text or a short phrase which carried the idea of the advertisement. The success of the sales of the product and of the advertisement itself was dependant on the slogan, its easiness to remember, clearness and ability to associate with the defined product (Goodrum & Dalrymple,1990).

One more detail that the advertisements were focused on was the participation of the celebrities in them. If a pop singer, a well-known sportsman or actor had taken part in the advertisement company of the product, the success of the advertisement was guaranteed. That is why it became quite popular in the 70’s to invite movie or pop stars to advertise a product.

In the first half of the 70’s the scenarios and places of the advertisement shooting varied depending on the needs of the companies which distributed what was to be advertised and the necessity to impress the audience with beautiful landscapes, interiors and the mystique of the unknown places (Caples, 1974).

What else needs to be mentioned is that the advertisements also focused on the process of making usual and ordinary things unusual to astonish the spectators with creativity and make them remember the advertisement from the first till the last second. For instance, advertisers tried to do difficult horse racing tricks, to make the advertised product fly, to make successful life stories which happened in a glance with the use of the product etc. It was amazingly difficult to do all these actions because there were no computer graphics or editing, modern studios with lights, requisites and technical facilities.

In the second half of the 70’s the course of advertisement bears some changes. Due to the economic decline, the creativity of the advertisements needed to be seized: a consumer demanded persuasive, but not originative advertisement (Applegate, 1998). Moreover the clients of the advertisement companies became more exacting and insisted on serious marketing studies before the release of the advertisements.

The advertisements started focusing on the products’ differences and comparison, which was usually called “positioning.” Comparative advertisement was aimed on the quality of the rival’s product and facts about its good and bad characteristics (Smythe & John, 1994). It generated the so called “wars” between the concurrent companies trying to make their products look better or different form the competitor’s product. Such wars, for instance, occurred between “Pepsi,” “Coca-Cola,” and “7UP.”

To make a conclusion, advertisement focusing in the 70’s varied from the beginning till the end of the decade. First it was creative and spectacular in the form of the movies and then it had to be challenging, persuasive and competitive. At the same time, 70’s was a period of searching and finding new ideas and concepts to make the advertisements more effective, to draw the consumer’s attention and to promote the sales of the distributed goods.

Works Cited

Applegate E. (1998). Personalities and Products: A Historical Perspective on Advertising in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Caples J. (1974). Tested Advertising Methods.4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Goodrum C., & Dalrymple H. (1990). Advertising In America. The First 200 Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Laird P.W. (1998) Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing. Baltimore: The J. Hopkins University Press.
Smythe T.C., & John E. Powers (1994). The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.