Big Moments In Marketing History

BY ALEX JOSEPH

ARKETING is an ancient practice. As early as 2500 BCE, Mesopotamian bakers stamped bread with logos to identify the maker and assert quality. In Pompeii, mosaic advertisements for a certain manufacturer’s fish sauce date from the first century BCE. Over millennia, the field has transformed immeasurably, producing thousands of groundbreaking moments. Neil Brownlee, a 40-year veteran of the advertising industry who has created campaigns for ESPN, MTV, and Reebok, discussed six of his favorites.

Brownlee, who teaches advertising and direct marketing, says it’s all about enhancing the relationship between the customer and the promoted item. “Don’t make a promise with your marketing message that your product can’t live up to,” he says. “It’s a relationship built on trust.”

Sometimes honoring that trust requires an adjustment in tactics or the choice to scrap a new product altogether. Once, for example, Brownlee was working with a major soft drink company that planned to introduce flavored root beer. “We did focus groups all over the country. An older guy in one group asked, ‘Why are you messing with root beer? It’s perfectly good.’” The criticism resonated with others, and the new sodas never materialized.

Today’s marketer faces formidable challenges. Ancient bakers never had to contend with callouts on social media if a loaf was soggy. Netflix and other streaming services offer commercial-free upgrades, while digital platforms like Facebook allow users to block ads they dislike. Audiences are atomized and attention spans are shrinking. “We’re dealing with a cluttered world,” Brownlee acknowledges, yet he says certain fundamentals still apply. “To succeed in marketing, you have to understand two things: One, the product itself. What does it do? Where and how was it made? And two, the consumer. Who are they? We are trying to motivate consumer behavior, so what problem are they trying to solve?”

That’s not to say good marketing necessarily targets logic. Coca-Cola, for example, attained legendary status in the ad world with its 1993 campaign featuring cuddly polar bears. “Pepsi is about the individual experience ‘Be cool’ but Coke’s premise has always been about sharing,” Brownlee says. The bears were inducted into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame in 2011. Then there’s “Make America Great Again,” a slogan that helped catapult an unlikely candidate into the White House. “That line was stolen from Ronald Reagan,” Brownlee says, “but it spoke a language Trump’s audience could understand.”

In American history, the term “Black Friday” originally referred to the panic of 1869, in which the stock market crashed and ruined many investors. The phrase’s association with shopping evolved over time. Until 1939, Thanksgiving was celebrated the last Thursday of November, but that year it fell on the last day of the month. President Franklin Roosevelt, hoping to jump-start an economic recovery to end the Great Depression (and placate retailers who wanted a longer holiday shopping season), issued a Presidential Proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday. Congress ratified the change in 1941. In the 1960s, Brownlee says, the Philadelphia Inquirer began referring to the day after Thanksgiving as Black

Friday because that’s when stores would get “in the black,” i.e., turn a profit, by advertising huge sales that bargain hunters couldn’t resist. Some sources, however, claim the term was negative, invented by Philly police overwhelmed by a wild influx of shoppers. Many retailers didn’t want to be associated with black because, Brownlee says, “it sounded like mourning or something depressing.” Either way, by 2005, Black Friday was officially the biggest shopping day of the year, accompanied by nowlegendary scenes of frenzied hordes grabbing