Guest Blogger Ann Mullen
When advertising began at the end of the 1800s, it was enough to just put a drawing of the item in the newspaper. Quickly, salesman started putting a pretty girl next to the item and advertisement appeals began getting complicated.
In the 1970s Jib Fowles published a paper, “Mass advertising as social forecast: A proposed method for futures research, that the abstract said, “is an attempt to develop a procedure for anticipating broad socialcultural change by a decade. . . .culled with an content analysis of mass marketing.” In the report Fowles looks at 15 of advertising’s basic appeals, for when showing a tube of tooth paste is not enough.
Shirley Biagi, wrote a textbook “Media/Impact: An Introduction of Mass Media” now in its 8 th edition, that put Fowles’ list of appeals in her book. At the time of Biagi’s 4 th edition, Frank W. Baker took the list from her book and put it on the internet at http://www.frankwbaker.com/fowles.htm. Baker’s interest is in education and media literacy.