Contemporary advertising is very different from traditional forms.
Today's more powerful communication techniques need to be differentiated from earlier and more traditional forms of hawking goods.
Early and traditional advertising efforts almost always focused on the product itself, dealing with its real or claimed merits—"none better," "search the world over," "accept no substitutes," and the like.
They could overtax credulity—as in the case of television commercials claiming that breakfast cereals would help kids build strength, based on the premise that after eating it and getting sufficiently sugared up, kids would want to run around and play, and would thereby build muscles.
But in the end, such advertising was still making claims about the product itself, and properties that such a product might arguably be said to possess.
(c) COPYRIGHT 1998 ROBERT WINTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
