History

The first evidence of marketing practice are almost as old as the earliest forms of written language. Records of one of the first advertising practices have been found on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia in cuneiform writings. The enclosed picture is a cuneiform clay tablet which in this case was an early form of a customer complaint letter from Nanni to Ea-nasir complaining that the wrong grade of copper ore has been delivered after a gulf voyage and about misdirection and delay of a further delivery.

The cuneiform tablet belongs to the collection of the British Museum and dates back to 1750 BC and was found in the archaic city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia i.e. Iraq.

(Image credit: With friendly persomission of the British Museum)

Early mass produced coins in history did often also include images of emperors, battles or significant events and besides their main purpose as means of payment and goods exchange for a set value did also function as a source of information across borders.

The coin in the enclosed picture is a good example as it was produced in a royal coin shop in Macedon, Pella and Amphipolis. The gold stater coin was produced between 322–315 B.C. and shows Alexander the Great. It was minted shortly after his death and for many symbolized his achievements for the Hellenistic society.

(Image credit: With friendly permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The scene around the cup depicts four pairs of gladiators fighting. Each man is identified by name in the Latin inscription above him. Some of the names match those of known gladiators who became famous in games held in Rome during the Julio-Claudian period, suggesting that such cups may have been made as souvenirs.

(Image credit: With friendly permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The first trade shows took place in Europe e.g. in Champagne France,  Frankfurt Germany and Stourbridge UK.

The fair in the image shown is a later example from Aegidius Sadeler II and was painted in 1607. The picture is showing the interior view of Vladislav Hall at Prague Castle during the Annual Fair.

The German painter Albrecht Duerer was one of the most famous painter in his period. Due to a high demand of his paintings he was one of the first artists to develop his own trade mark logo i.e. monograph "AD" which he included in every painting. Furthermore, Albrecht Duerer was pioneering in creating a distribution network of his works throughout Europe and undertaking legal actions against thiefs of intellectual property e.g. against illegally produced copies of his paintings.

Among the first printed newspaper advertisings appeared in several different Dutch newspapers like "Jansz’ Tydinghen uyt Verscheyde Quartieren" as shown in this example from 1620.

The first advertisings in printed newspapers were often located at the bottom of the reverse page after the news section and advertised upcoming newspaper editions, similar to the featured image.

Until 1839 the famous Oxford street in London was an early adaptor of advertising i.e. in the use of stationary advertising. For politicians however the vast amount of advertising posters led to legal actions against them, as they preferred a shopping experience without too much advertising. This let to the development of so called Sandwich Men, hired people that wear advertising spaces on their body, i.e. cardboards on the front and back while handing out flyers to passengers. In the center-right of the enclosed picture a young boy is wearing a typical sandwich board as described above.

In 1854 Ernst Litfaß invented the advertising pillar in Berlin, Germany as he wanted an organized form of advertising space. Before the invention of the “Litfaß Säule” (Litfaß pillar), printed announcements and advertisments were stuck on house walls and wherever there was a free space to put them. With the advertising pillar Ernst Litfaß was providing a free space to advertisers were they could legally display their announcements.

In 1887, Coca-Cola used coupons for promotion, marking one of the earliest and most influential mechanisms in the history of sales promotion.

Edward David Jones introduced the first academic marketing course at the University of Michigan in 1902 which can be seen as a logical consequence of the development in marketing thought which was inspired by the concepts of the German Historical School in the late 19th century.

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 by the German architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany and was an influential and revolutionary design school that combined art, design and crafts leading to important developments in product design.

With Scientific Advertising, advertising is systematically framed as a testable, rule-based discipline. It is a foundational work for performance marketing, copy testing, and modern conversion logic.

McElroy’s famous memo is considered the starting point of modern brand management at the product level, making it central to the history of branding, product management, and portfolio strategy.

With the American Institute of Public Opinion and early Gallup surveys, opinion and attitude research became methodologically professionalized, shaping market and advertising research to this day.

The image above shows the test pattern of the world´s first tv ad by the watch company Bulova.

Contrary to popular belief a video showing the US map with a Bulova clock in the centre is actually not the first TV ad. The actual ad is currently belived to be lost.

(Image credit: With friendly permission of Bulova / Citizen Watch America)

The Cannes lions International Festival of Creativity is the most successful and renown festival of the advertising industry worldwide and was held in 1954 for the first time in Venice, Italy.

E. Jerome McCarthy published his book "Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach" which included the 4P´s of the Marketing Mix.

The most successful book on marketing management by Philip Kotler was first published in 1967.

Besides single sports sponsorships in several countries from the 1950´s onwards, in 1973 the German soccer club Eintracht Braunschweig lifted jersey advertising to a new level when it replaced it´s own club logo with the logo of the spirit company Jägermeister in order to bypass the German soccer league´s commercial sponsoring regulations. Thus, the Jägermeister stag was displayed on the club´s jersey and allowed the club to earn money from the sponsorship deal.

The beginnings of electronic mail (E-Mail) even goes back to 1969 with the exchange of messages in the Arpanet.

In 1971 the Digital Equipment Corp. is believed to have sent the first commercial advertising mass E-Mail for computers to approx. 400 recipients. The mailing led to a return on investment of 13 million US Dollars.

Berry introduced the term “relationship marketing” into the literature, laying the foundation for customer retention, lifetime value thinking, and later CRM approaches.

In 1992 the company Unica which today is part of IBM Campaign has launched the first Marketing Automation software.

In 1995 the platform ClassMates started as a forerunner of today's social media platforms.

Amazon’s Associates Program (1996) is widely regarded as the first scalable affiliate marketing model, shaping publisher monetization and performance marketing.

With the PageRank-based Google model, marketing shifts fundamentally toward search intent, relevance, and organic visibility—establishing SEO as a core marketing discipline.

Launched on May 5, 2003, LinkedIn marks a new era in employer branding, social selling, and B2B content marketing.

Founded in 2005, YouTube marks the platformization of video marketing, creator economies, and later influencer marketing at scale.

In 2009 the first and currently only academic journal that is fully focusing on Marketing history, the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing published its first issue.