by Jef I. Richards
464 pages, hardcover, $147
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
rowman.com
By Jef I. Richards, chair of the department of advertising and public relations at Michigan State University, A History of Advertising: The First 300,000 Years collects his extensive research of historical trends in advertising into “a portable museum of advertising,” as he describes the textbook in his introduction. Richards’s broad perspective on advertising includes any declaration, visual or verbal, that was intended to get the public’s attention. The first brands, as we understand the idea, date from 2300 BCE when traders in the Indus Valley stamped goods with wax seals conveying their guarantee of quality. Reexamining the innately human acts of making artifacts or engaging in rituals through this lens hammers in that advertising has its roots in some of the deepest recesses of what makes us human.
The modern era–to-contemporary history of advertising charts the rise of copywriting and media like moving type, stamps, OOH, product placements and mascots, alongside the founding dates of major ad agencies. Chapter by chapter, Richards uncovers the connection between advertising and culture, such as evolving social mores—the treatment of people of color, women and the LGBT community in advertising in the West, or attitudes toward dangerous products like cigarettes. This wide range of topics assures that Richards’s treatment of each is somewhat perfunctory, something he apologizes for in his conclusion, but as a history textbook, it’s necessary to open the doors for further study into the why behind advertising. —Michael Coyne ca