The New 19th Century Wave of Advertising

These early theatre programs, dating from the 1880s, reflect the new 19th century wave of advertising. Unlike later programs, this example from Chicago’s Grand Opera House seems less focused on the theatre and its status, and serves more as a periodical, with a brief column on the second page describing the performance. Most of the program is dedicated to ad space, which a very generalized market. The research guide from Duke University Libraries’ “Advertising Ephemera Collection” provides an excellent description of the evolution of disposable advertisements.

The concept of advertising giveaways is far from a new one. Flyers and broadsides for advertising purposes have existed from the earliest days of modern printing. Early advertising, though, was often more informational than actively promotional in style. An 18th century flyer might announce, for example, that “Peter Smith, Merchant, has received a large shipment of merchandise at his shop in Market Street, which he will sell on reasonable terms; among which are buttons, wire, Bibles, hats, fine ribbons, feather beds, and pocket knives.”

It was with mass production, the branding of goods to distinguish them from their competitors, the development of national markets, and improved printing technologies in the second half of the 19th century that advertising began to assume forms somewhat more familiar to us today. In that period, advertising became a more frequent part of doing business as growing numbers of manufacturers, services, and stores competed for the consumer dollar. Newspapers and, later, magazines were the media most often used for advertising for most of the 19th century, but they were rather slow to adopt color and vividly promotional messages. Advertising began to appear in other places and in other formats: in theater programs, on maps, calendars, postcards, menus, envelopes, decals, in many forms of booklets and leaflets (almanacs, sales catalogs, etc.), and imprinted on utilitarian objects such as trays, ink blotters and can openers.