Part IV text 1. Advertising in early western history

As long as there have been concepts or goods for popular con­sumption, some form of advertising has existed to make them known. Primitive selling was face-to-face affair, but by 3000 B.C. Babylonian mer­chants were hiring barkers to shout out their goods to passers-by, and hanging signs over their doorways to represent what they sold. The Babylonians really launched advertising. Some prepared "institutional" advertising campaigns for their kings—stenciling the bricks used to build temples with letters announcing the name of the temple and the king who built it. This practice was followed by at least one Egyptian king, who has been accused of plastering his name over every worthwhile edifice in sight, whether built by him or not.

Written advertising as we recognize it today did not appear until the Romans began spreading literacy around the known world. In Roman times, announcements on town walls spread messages such as this one uncovered in the rains of Pompeii: “The Troop of Gladiators of the Aedil will fight on the 31st of May. There will be severe fights with wild animals.”

When the Barbarian hordes overran the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Western world was plunged into the Dark Ages—a period when not just advertising but commerce in general was lost. Eventually, law and order returned, and not long after, so did advertising. Merchants hired town criers to interject "commercials" for their goods amid the news of wars and executions. And, in England, inn owners and tavern-keepers raised sign-making to a fine art, vying with one another to create the most eye-catching graphics.

By the end of the fifteenth century, tack-up want ads were regularly produced by scribes to be hung in public places. These were followed by "shopbills," artfully decorated business cards for tradespeople. Then, in 1625, two Englishmen printed the first "newsbook" that contained an ad—The Weekly News. A flurry of newsbooks, all with advertising, fol­lowed.

In America, early advertising efforts appeared when colonial merchants carried on the European tradition of symbolic tavern signs, like the early sign of the Crowing Cock known to Dutch settlers of Manhattan. (There is, in fact, still a Crowing Cock tavern sign hanging in midtown Manhattan). Vehicles for print advertising also developed early: journalists ran off the first printing job on the Cambridge Press in Boston (still operating as The Harvard University Press), and in 1728 Benjamin Franklin established the Philadelphia Gazette, a newspaper that became a favorite of advertisers for plain writing and elegant typography. As commerce and newspapers grew up in America, so did advertising. By 1784, the Pennsylvania weekly called the Packet and General Advertiser had become semi-weekly, then daily, featuring an entire front page of advertising for dry goods, foods, wines, and other popular items.

EXERCISES

Exercise 1. Answer the questions.

1. Let's recollect some historic events and names. What do you know about the Babylonians, the Barbarians, the Dark Age, the Roman Empire?

2. What can you say about the Babylonians' contribution to ad­vertising?

3. When did the written advertising appear?

4. In what forms did ads exist in the 15-17 centuries in England?

5. What is the history of the American advertising development?

6. What do you thing the "tack-up want ads" can mean?

Exercise 2. Who are these people? What do they do? Explain in your own words.

Babylonians, mer­chants, barkers, passers-by, kings, gladiators, criers, owners, tavern-keepers, tradespeople, Englishmen, Dutch settlers, journalists.

Exercise 3. Match the nouns and the verbs as they are used in the text.

1. to shout out A. temples

2. to hang B. the European tradition

3. to launch C. the practice

4. to prepare D. the name

5. to stencil E. advertising

6. to build F. "commercials"

7. to announce G. town criers

8. to follow H. the bricks

9. to spread I. the goods

10. to overrun J. signs over the doorways

11. to hire K. literacy

12. to interject L. advertising campaign

13. to carry on M. the Roman Empire

Exercise 4. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate form of the verb.

1. Many of successful small companies ……in Britain in the 1980s. (to appear)

2. The United States ……the world's greatest maker of industrial goods. (to remain)

3. He said he …… on the farm for two years. (to live)

4. Some people envision a future where robots …… the farm machinery, and crops ……

green under a pollution-free sky. (to operate) (to grow)

5. The Normans …… from France in 1066. (to come)

5. For many years Italian bankers …… the English Crown. (to finance)

7. By he time he started his own car business, he …… in the car industry for ten years. (to work)

8. At the moment our firm …… more than 50 staff. (to employ)

9. She said she …… a very interesting job. (to offer)

10. By next Wednesday, they …… production. (to increase)

11. At that time he was a traveling salesman; he …… from village to village. (to go)

12. She ……. economics from 2 till 5 o'clock yesterday. (to do)

Exercise 5. Rewrite the following in the Past Tense Forms. Make all necessary changes. If needed, add the words denoting time.

Communications today between companies are becoming faster and faster. But there is still one problem that companies have not completely resolved: the problem of language. In the United States or Britain, for example, most companies deal in English. This is fine if you are buying from a German or Indian company. However, when it comes to selling abroad, American and British companies are finding that things are not so simple.

Imagine a London-based supplier of plastics. Managers are happy when they land a multi-million pound contract to supply casings for computers and other electronic equipment to a fac­tory in Iran. Everything goes well at first. However, problems begin to develop after a few months. The British company has received a large quantity of correspondence in Farsi. But there is no one in the London office who reads the letters and faxes in Farsi. So the managers send the correspondence to a firm of translators and there is a long delay in replying to it. The Ira­nian company grows increasingly frustrated at the delays and finally cancels the contract. Instead, it places its orders with a French firm which is employing a number of Farsi speakers.

The London-based company has never faced problems like this. The managers' language policy has always been to rely on their employees' individual language skills. As for the secretar­ies, the managers hope that they pick up enough foreign lan­guage at school to deal with correspondence. This time, the company decides to set up a language training programme.

Notes and Commentary

Farsi — язык фарси; персидский язык (население Ирана говорит на этом языке)