Forum. ” Soul of trade ” in the Nineteenth century, advertising has accompanied the past two centuries the rise of the consumer society and its mass before a return, today, to a consumption more individualised. Powerful adjuvant of the economy, aiming to trigger the act of purchase, the advertising is part of the geographical spaces and diffuses through different media, of which the last-born, the Internet, is changing the game industry and its historical actors.
Then contemporary industrialization and commercial revolution that accompanies it, the advertising is first and foremost a tool to conquer the market. The increased production and lower prices provide a multiplicity of goods, including clothing and new foods. Department stores and grocery stores popularized the brands – chocolate Menier, water Perrier, by announcements in the press, but also the catalogues, and flyers. These brands, including the regulation coincides, moreover, with the rise of advertising, to be displayed in the urban space, both literally and figuratively. The lithographs adorn the walls of Paris and acquaint the French with these new products.
But, first broadcast by the grocers, the advertising of ” bad press “, particularly among manufacturers, that their technical training leads to favouring manufacturing at the expense of the sale. Two notable exceptions : the tyre manufacturer Michelin – Bibendum appears as early as 1901 – and the automobile manufacturer Citroën – the Eiffel tower is lit up to its name during the international Exhibition of modern decorative and industrial arts of 1925.
The birth of the ” housewife under 50 years of age ”
The amount of advertising spending in France remains modest until the eve of the second world war. The profession, yet it is poorly organized, always gives rise to reservations. In 1927, when Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet…