Join us on FACEBOOK LIVE on May 10, at 7 pm., as historian Matt Maley will present a light-hearted look at man’s attempt to get others to buy (or buy into) something. The first known advertising occurred in Egypt around 2500BC and around 1700BC there was a Cuneiform ad for a stew recipe . When Pompeii was excavated a 100BC political ad was observed on building walls - it was a negative ad - nothing new. The first “plate print” ad came from China in 1200AD for sewing needles. The first “movable type” ad for a prayer book occurred in 1472, in England. From that point advertising showed up on walls, windows, on posters, in books and then radio, followed by TV. The first TV ad, in 1941, cost $9 for 20 seconds. Compare that to the Super
Bowl 2017 ad of $5,000,000 for 30 seconds.

Of course we cannot forget the Burma Shave signs, along highways, that spanned a time period from 1952 to the late 1950s or early 1960s. Now social media has introduced an entirely new and somewhat uncontrolled medium for just about everything and anything one wishes to “advertise”.