50 Fun Facts About Advertising

Which company's ad campaign, begun in the late 1930s, turned the diamond engagement ring into an American custom?

De Beers faced a market where, before World War II, only 10% of American engagement rings held a diamond. US diamond sales then rose from $23 million in 1939 to $2.1 billion in 1979.

Which Christmas character did copywriter Robert L. May create in 1939 for a Montgomery Ward giveaway booklet?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer began as a free storybook for shoppers' children, and the department store handed out 2.4 million copies in the first year.

Which children's author drew advertisements for Flit bug spray before publishing his first book in 1937?

Dr. Seuss, then plain Theodor Geisel, said he got the Flit job after an ad executive's wife spotted one of his magazine cartoons at her hairdresser's.

Which candy's sales soared after it was used to lure the alien in Steven Spielberg's 1982 film E.T.?

Reese's Pieces got the part only because Mars turned down an offer to feature M&M's. Hershey said yes, and sales of its fairly new candy rose by perhaps as much as 300%.

The Energizer Bunny first appeared in the late 1980s as a parody of which rival battery brand's drumming rabbit?

Duracell launched its pink drumming bunny in 1973 and still uses it across most of the world, though not in the United States or Canada.

Which pop star's hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in Los Angeles in January 1984?

Michael Jackson suffered second-degree burns to his scalp when pyrotechnics went off during a staged concert at the Shrine Auditorium. His family's Pepsi deal was a record $5 million.

Which British director shot Apple's "1984" commercial, in which an athlete hurls a sledgehammer at a giant screen?

Ridley Scott had released the dystopian Blade Runner in 1982. Agency Chiat/Day first ran the ad in Twin Falls, Idaho, on the last night of 1983.

Which television drama follows Don Draper, creative director at the fictional 1960s New York agency Sterling Cooper?

Mad Men took its title from a supposed nickname for the admen of Madison Avenue. Its agency pitches real brands, among them Lucky Strike, Hilton hotels and Life cereal.

Which mouthwash, once sold as a floor cleaner, took off in the 1920s when its ads warned of "halitosis"?

Listerine turned bad breath into a medical-sounding condition, and its maker's revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million in seven years.

Madison Avenue, shorthand for the American advertising industry since the 1920s, runs through which New York borough?

Manhattan's best-known street of admen takes its name from Madison Square, itself named after the fourth US president. It runs north from 23rd Street to Harlem.

Which watchmaker paid a few dollars in July 1941 for what is counted as the first American TV commercial?

Bulova's spot ran on New York station WNBT before a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game. It showed a test pattern dressed up as a clock, with the second hand sweeping for one minute.

Which company paid for the first banner ad sold by the web magazine HotWired in October 1994?

AT&T's rectangle is usually remembered as the first banner ad, although Time Warner's Pathfinder site had gone online with banners three days earlier.

Which cigarette brand, first marketed to women, was relaunched for men in the 1950s with rugged cowboy ads?

Marlboro changed course after 1950s studies linked smoking to lung cancer. Filters were thought feminine, and the cowboy made a filtered cigarette acceptable to worried men.

Which Kellogg's breakfast cereal has cartoon mascot Tony the Tiger promoted since his debut in 1952?

Frosted Flakes launched with rival mascots including Katy the Kangaroo, Elmo the Elephant and Newt the Gnu. All were dropped within a year, leaving Tony the box to himself.

Which championship game sold 30-second commercials for about $40,000 when it was first played, in January 1967?

The Super Bowl was shown on both CBS and NBC that day, the only time two big networks have carried it at once. By 2000, a 30-second spot cost around $2.2 million.

Which candidate's 1964 "Daisy" campaign ad, showing a small girl and a nuclear blast, officially aired only once?

Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign pulled the spot after one broadcast, but news programmes kept replaying it for free. The three-year-old in the meadow miscounts as she picks the petals.

Which future pop artist won awards in 1950s New York for his shoe advertisements for the I. Miller company?

Andy Warhol spent a decade as a commercial illustrator, starting with shoe drawings for a magazine in 1949. His I. Miller ads earned an Art Directors Club award in 1956.

Which German carmaker's plain-spoken Doyle Dane Bernbach ads sold Americans on a small, odd-looking car in the 1960s?

Volkswagen's ads used plain black-and-white photographs when rivals favoured flattering illustrations. In 1999 Advertising Age voted the series the best campaign of the century.

Which British-born adman, often called the Father of Advertising, wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man in 1963?

David Ogilvy came to the business sideways: he had been a kitchen hand at the Hotel Majestic in Paris, sold AGA cooking stoves door to door and worked in polling for Gallup.

Which adman's Chicago agency, founded in 1935, created Tony the Tiger and the Pillsbury Doughboy?

Leo Burnett opened in the middle of the Depression with eight employees and three clients. His agency later added the Maytag Repairman to its cast of characters.

Which independent agency, based in Portland, Oregon since 1982, is best known for its long run of Nike advertising?

Wieden+Kennedy was founded on April Fools' Day 1982 by two admen who took Nike on as a client. One of them, Dan Wieden, later coined the brand's famous three-word tagline.

Which London agency, founded in 1970, worked on the Conservative Party's 1979 election campaign?

Saatchi & Saatchi was started by Baghdad-born brothers Charles and Maurice, and went on to long-running campaigns for British Airways and Silk Cut cigarettes.

Which advertising giant, built by Martin Sorrell from 1985, began as a British maker of wire shopping baskets?

WPP stands for Wire and Plastic Products. Sorrell wanted a small listed company to build on, and within two years it had bought J. Walter Thompson for $566 million.

Which American city was home to both Volney Palmer's pioneering advertising agency and, from 1869, N. W. Ayer & Son?

Philadelphia's Palmer wrote no ads himself: like other early agents, he dealt in newspaper space. Francis Ayer was 21 when he started his agency, which he named after his father.

Which thriller writer was an advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson until leaving the business in 1996?

James Patterson was a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt when he took the agency job. He published his first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, in 1976 while still an adman.

Which nephew of Sigmund Freud staged a 1929 Easter parade stunt in which women lit cigarettes as symbols of freedom?

Edward Bernays was working for the maker of Lucky Strike, which wanted more women to smoke in public. He is often called the father of public relations.

Which French Riviera city became the permanent home of advertising's annual Lions awards festival in 1984?

Cannes shared the festival with Venice for decades, which explains the trophy: the Lion was inspired by the winged lion statue at the Piazza San Marco.

Which adwoman behind Braniff's brightly painted jets became the first female CEO of a New York Stock Exchange company?

Mary Wells Lawrence founded her own agency in 1966 after being denied a promised promotion. By 1969 she was reported to be the highest-paid executive in advertising.

Which of the seven classic propaganda devices tells shoppers that everyone else is already buying a product?

Bandwagon appeals take their name from the wagon that carried the musicians in a circus parade. The seven devices were listed by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, founded in 1937.

Which technique did James Vicary claim in 1957 to have tested on filmgoers, before admitting it was a gimmick?

Subliminal messages flashed for 1/3,000 of a second had, he said, lifted popcorn and soft drink sales at a cinema. In 1962 he admitted his data was too small to be meaningful.

Which sales fraud advertises a bargain that turns out to be unavailable, then pushes the shopper toward a pricier item?

Bait and switch counts as fraud because the advertised deal was never really for sale. A loss leader is different: the cheap item is truly on the shelf, in the hope shoppers buy more.

Which legal term covers a seller's exaggerated boasts that no buyer is expected to rely on?

Puffery works as a defence because such praise cannot be proved true or false. It is treated as opinion, which is why a diner can claim the best coffee in town.

Which term for unconventional publicity stunts did Jay Conrad Levinson popularise with a 1984 book of the same name?

Guerrilla marketing borrows its name from guerrilla warfare, where small forces rely on surprise rather than size. It suits small businesses with tight budgets.

Which TV advertising format boomed on overnight US television after limits on commercial time ended in 1984?

Infomercial blends the words information and commercial. A half-hour film pitching the Vitamix blender, made in Ohio in 1949, is counted as the first of the kind.

Which type of paid newspaper content is written and laid out to look like the paper's own articles?

Advertorial blends advertisement and editorial. Its online cousin is native advertising, which copies the look of the website around it.

In the AIDA model of how an advert works, what does the letter D stand for?

Desire is the third of the four steps: an advert must first win awareness, then spark interest, then create a wish to own the product, and finally prompt action.

Which three-word concept did Ted Bates adman Rosser Reeves coin for the single benefit that sets a product apart?

Unique selling proposition was his rule that an ad should hammer one claim rivals could not match. His 1952 Anacin commercial repeated its key point three times.

Which intrusive web format did Ethan Zuckerman create at Tripod.com in the late 1990s and later apologise for?

Pop-up ads began as a fix: advertisers had complained about appearing on pages with sexual content, so he launched their adverts in separate windows instead.

Which US government agency, created in 1914 under Woodrow Wilson, enforces the country's truth-in-advertising laws?

The Federal Trade Commission grew out of the antitrust battles of the era. Wilson signed its founding act on September 26, 1914, nineteen days before the Clayton Antitrust Act.

Which everyday product featured in the first advert on British television, shown on ITV in September 1955?

Toothpaste, in the form of Gibbs SR, opened commercial television in Britain at 8.12pm on the channel's first night. ITV itself had been created by the Television Act 1954.

Which brushless shaving cream was famous for rhyming verses posted on small roadside signs along American highways?

Burma-Shave spread each poem across a sequence of signs for drivers to read in passing. The signs came down after Philip Morris bought the company in 1963.

Which soap brand turned John Everett Millais's painting Bubbles into a famous Victorian advertisement?

Pears boss Thomas Barratt paid £2,200 for the picture and its copyright, then had a bar of soap added to the scene. It set off a long debate about art and commerce.

Which advertising awards, founded by Wallace Ross in 1959, are named after the Greek muse of history?

The Clios were first presented in 1960, for excellence in American television advertising. In myth, their namesake was the proclaimer and celebrator of great deeds.

What was being sold in the 1922 WEAF broadcast from New York that is often called the first radio commercial?

Apartments in Queens were the subject of a talk lasting roughly ten minutes, praising a new development beside an elevated subway line. A few other stations may have carried paid programmes earlier.

Which copywriter's 1923 book Scientific Advertising argued that every campaign should be tested and measured?

Claude Hopkins tracked his results with coupons and free samples, and wrote the book after retiring as president and chairman of the Lord & Thomas agency.

Which General Mills cereal was sold on Minneapolis radio in 1926 with what is called the first commercial jingle?

Wheaties first aired the tune on Christmas Eve on WCCO, a Minneapolis station that happened to be owned by the cereal's maker, Washburn Crosby.

Which Paris-based advertising group was founded in 1926 by 20-year-old Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet?

Publicis joins publicité, French for advertising, to six, a number that ran through its founder's life: he was born in 1906 and opened the agency in 1926.

Which London road junction has been known for its illuminated advertising signs since the first appeared there in 1908?

Piccadilly Circus gained electric billboards on the facade of the London Pavilion from 1923. The statue above its fountain shows Anteros, though it is popularly taken for Eros.

Which teenage actress and model fronted Calvin Klein's controversial print and television jeans advertisements in 1980?

Brooke Shields had that year become, at 14, the youngest fashion model to appear on the cover of Vogue. She also starred in the film The Blue Lagoon in 1980.

Which artist designed the 1891 poster advertising the new Paris dance hall Moulin Rouge and its dancer La Goulue?

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's colour lithograph was probably printed in about 3,000 copies. Most were pasted up as street posters and did not survive, so the remaining ones now hang in museums.