The evolution of marketing language

The many strategies and type of language that marketers use today is different in so many ways than it was back the 1800’s and 1900’s. When the Industrial Revolution took place in the early 1800’s, brands had the opportunity to produce more products in a short amount of time. Consumers had the possibility to buy more products than the ones that were actually necessary. However, buying products that weren’t necessary in the household were still considered as luxury to the consumers. With that being said, marketers really needed to convince consumers that they needed their product in their lives.

You can imagine that advertisements in these days would look different than we are used to them nowadays. Marketers tried to convince consumers that they needed their products in their lives, but this led to big advertisements with humongous texts!

Marketers also wrote detailed descriptions about their products in their advertisements. For instance: the materials that the products were made of and the shape and the colours of the product. Marketers also wrote about the purpose of the product and why the product does what it does. This already is much more of a detailed ad than we are used to now, but another thing that was common was the recommendation of someone with a social status or profession that has a high ranking. In the ad on the right, you can see that a professor is mentioned.


At the beginning of the 20th century, a change had come. Marketers reduced the amount of words in theirs ads and tried to work with striking images. They came up with brands and logos and tried to win the attention of customers by using logos. In a study by Gisbergen, M. S., Ketelaar, P. E. & Beentjes, H. it was shown that on print advertisements in the year 2000 less words were used than on the advertisements in the year 1980. This study also showed that advertisements became more visual. Ads were no longer more of a guidance and marketers used less words so that consumers could interpret the ads and the meaning of it the way they wanted it.

Of course, not all advertisements are printed. There are also radio commercials for instance. In 1922, the first commercial was pitched on the radio. This pitch was aired in the WEAF station, which is a radio station in New York. This pitch was a commercial of Hawthorne Court Apartments. Sadly, there is no actual recording of this pitch, but this pitch took 10 minutes. Nowadays, that would be considered way too long. Radio commercials nowadays are mostly between 30 and 60 seconds.

 

The biggest influence of marketing language is the internet. The reason why the internet has such a big influence on the marketing language is because the ads are adjusted to its medium. For instance, think of the maximum of 140 characters on Twitter. An ad from the 1800’s wouldn’t have any chance. Also, think of the rise of the internet. A study by Media Dynamics, Inc. in 2014 shows that an average adult sees 350+ ads per day. Out of 350+, only 150-155 ads will be noticed and stimulates the consumer to take action.

With an quick evolving worldwide web and many information that humans nowadays are exposed to, Microsoft also speculates that the attention span of humans have fallen. Microsoft executed a survey in the year 2000 and determined that the attention span by Canadian media had fallen from 12 to 8 seconds. Time Magazine said that this is a side effect of being connected to a digitally connected world and because of the digital world, marketing language is nowadays adjusted to the short attention span, which means: shorter sentences, language is easier to sink in, quicker and stimulates to take action immediately.