Even if the history of advertising begins in ancient times (primordial forms of advertising can be traced back to the Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations), the first advertising in the modern senseintended as an advertisement for the purpose of sale, was born in England in 1479when the publisher and printer William Caxton distributed a flyer to promote the purchase of a book he printed.
Certainly from 1479 onwards the evolution was increasingly rapid, also thanks to new technological discoveries which allowed ever more extensive communication: in 1600 they appeared toPaid advertisements in magazines, and at the beginning of the 20th century the Fratelli Lumiere they inserted the first commercial in one of their projections.
The first truly modern advertising, in England in the late 1400s
There first advertising in the modern sense – therefore understood as a communication that aims to influence the public to choose a certain product – sees the light in England in 1479. In London, the printer and publisher William Caxton he had recently introduced movable type printing in England, and decided to distribute it in the city flyers in the format of 7×12 cm with the aim of promoting a prayer book he printed.
Caxton was certainly a visionary: not only did he first print “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer – today considered the work that started the use of modern English – but he also lent his idea of the promotional leaflet to other activities. In fact, after promoting his prayer book, Caxton also printed flyers for advertise spa treatments in Salisburygiving life to what is considered the first advertising poster.
From the first paid ad to the first cinema commercial
The first paid advertisement it was instead published in France in the magazine The Gazettefounded in 1631 by the doctor and journalist Théophraste Renaudot, trusted figure of Cardinal Richelieu at the court of Louis XIII. Renaudot, realizing the potential of the idea, opened a real office to collect different types of advertisements, thus inventing an ancestor of the advertising agencies. Twenty years later, in England, the gazette was published Mercurius Britannicuswhich collected different types of advertisements.
From that moment on, the advent of the press opened new channels of communication and therefore sales, and thanks to technological discoveries and the industrial revolution, advertising became increasingly widespread.
With the birth of cinema, then, advertising immediately moved to that channel too: in 1904, in Paris, the Lumière brothers they introduced a champagne advertisement Moet et Chandon during a hand-cranked projection, causing quite a stir. In the following years, the evocative power of moving images transformed cinema into a privileged means to tell not only stories, but also brands. The first cinema commercials – short advertising films screened before the main films – they focused on emotion and spectacularity, creating a direct link between dreams and consumption. Since then, advertising has continued to reinvent itself, following the evolution of media and languages, until it became a form of storytelling capable of influencing tastes, fashions and collective imaginations.
