The Refinement Era (1915-Present)

There was, of course, a considerable debate as to whether radio should be supported by advertising an all. The issue was resolved more by a failure to come up with an alternative source of funding than by any ringing declaration of free enterprise. Again, advertising eventually came to seen natural- and it paid the bills!

Early broadcasts often simply mentioned a sponsor’s name at the beginning and end of a program. An event of some importance then, was the National Carbon Company’s “Everready hour”in 1923, “the first regular series of broadcast entertainment and music to be sponsored by an advertiser in this country or elsewhere.

By the late 1920s, advertisers felt that radio usage was wide enough so that more popular format could be attempted.

1905 - Dattaram & Co claims to be the oldest existing Indian agency in Girgaum in
Bombay. 1912 - ITC (then Imperial Tobacco Co. Ltd.) launches Fold Flake. 1920s –
Enter the first foreign owned ad agencies. 1920s - Gujarat Advertising and Indian
Advertising set up. 1920s - Expatriate agencies emerge: Alliance Advertising, Tata
Publicity. 1920s - LA Stronach’s merges into today’s Norvicson Advertising. 1920s
- D J Keymer gives rise to Ogilvy & Mather and Clarion. 1925 - LR Swami & Co.,
Madras. 1926 - LA Stronach & Co. (India) Pvt. Ltd., Bombay starts. 1926 - Agency called National set up for American rather than British Advertisers. 1926 - American importers hire Jagan Nath Jaini, then advertising manager of Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore. National today is still run by Jaini’s family. 1926 - Beginning of multinational agencies. 1926 - J Walter Thompson (JWT) opened to service General Motors business. 1928 - BOMAS Ltd (Formerly D J Keymer & Co. Ltd.) set up. 1929 – J Walter Thompson Co. Pvt. Ltd. Formed.

The Depression Effects (1930s)

At the onset of the Great Depression advertising volume dropped 25 percent in a single year, and by 1933 almost two thirds of the business had disappeared. One reaction was a concentration on the “hard sell”- contests, prizes, premiums, and “reason-why” appeals- in an attempt to persuade the increasingly disadvantaged consumers to part with their money in the advertiser’s direction. But there were also a number of far-reaching efforts to find out more about how advertising works in order to make it work better for the practitioners.

For years advertising had grown upon the success of firms spending great sums on printed forms of sales promotion. If the question: are we big because we advertise, or do we advertise because we are big? Was ever asked, it be always answered in favor of the former. The advertising agency, with it’s foster and perpetuates a blind faith in the efficacy of advertising.

There were a few “radical” advertising people before 1920 that were so bold as to suggest that advertising be subjected to tests to prove or disprove its ability to work the wonders climbed for it. Not until the Depression did these voices get much of a hearing. Then, with advertising appropriations receiving liberal cuts, both professional advertising people and advertisers set out to test the effectiveness of advertising as a selling tool.

The period witnessed a revision of advertising philosophy. It saw advertisers come to the realization that their business was only a part of the great field so selling, and that to be successful in their work there must be a close harmony of effort with all other factors of art, copy, layout, and typography necessary; but also thought must be given to the product to be advertised, the character of the prospective buyers, their purchasing power, where they lived, and other factors.

Research into the message itself flourished, with such devices as the Town sends brothers, secret list of 27 points against which to appraise advertising copy. Of more enduring importance were the research organizations founded by such luminaries as George Gallup, Claude Robinson, Daniel Starch, and A. C. Nielsen. They offered advertisers a wealth of data on message performance, public opinion, and sales through food and drug outlets. They were, in retrospect, very much a product of the time’s organizations to fill information void of concern to business. The “easy sell” of previous decades became most elusive indeed.

With the economy in disarray, it is hardly surprising that advertising was subject to considerable criticism as well. Consumer’s research, Inc., was founded in 1929 in an attempt to test and evaluate product consumers from advertising abuses. Books such as 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs; Skin Deep; Our Master’s Voice and Eat. Drink, and Be Wary raised a clamor over advertising and the products it promoted. Self- regulation arose again, but so did government concern. A modified Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, and the Wheeler-Lea amendments to the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 were in response to the call for tighter rein advertising.