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Advertising is such an influential institution in the history of modern America. But even the modern world, it is a cultural system that gives us lessons about how we should act, what we should look like, the things we should value. And of course our relationship to the

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things we consume and to brands and all of the possible meanings that brands can have. But the other thing that advertising does is it funds our media system. When you look at the history of broadcasting, radio and television, when you look at the history of the

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internet, when you look at a lot of print media, much of their revenue comes from advertising. And because of that advertising and its economics creates incentives for how media should behave, what media should provide the kind of audiences that media should appeal to and the kind

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of content that media should offer, you know, advertising because it constantly tells us stories about what kind of people we should be and what kind of things we should emphasize. I think it's tremendously influential in influencing people's self identity and influencing how people see other people.

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And again, influencing how we see consumption and what our relationships to products and brands should be. So really advertising is an amazing storyteller, but we should know that it's not a neutral storyteller. I mean, it can tell stories in particular ways that may be good for

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us in some cases and not so good for us. In other cases, the third person effect is the idea that we know that media or advertising affects people. But we tend to think that media or advertising affect other people more than it actually affects us. So

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we think for example, that television violence or advertising materialism can have an effect, but it doesn't really bother us, it bothers others. And it's, it's an interesting way of in some ways of kind of deflecting the true impact that media and advertising can have on us

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personally. But still recognizing that these are powerful message systems. Uh For me, there's so many different ways of studying advertising, you can, you can look at the ads themselves and ask, what are the meanings about gender, about race, about consumption, about the good life that advertising

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conveys. So you can analyze them as symbolic systems. But you can also look at advertising as economic systems. You can ask, you know, what sort of media do? Advertising, finance and how much money are we talking about? And when do, when does advertising create rules about

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things not to finance and what kind of audiences do advertising do? Does advertising want to attract? And how will media try to provide those audiences and you can track ratings and you can track where advertising spends its money. So you can look at the political economic

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dimension of advertising as well as the symbolic dimension of advertising. You know, J Walter Thompson is one of the most influential advertising agencies in the history of modern life. You know, it was created in the 18 sixties. It developed so many practices and so many advertising

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trends that we take for granted today, advertising, global reach uh advertising relationship to how we eat, advertising's relationship to gender portrayals, the degree to which women work in the advertising industry, all of these things J Walter Thompson helped to establish. But one of its biggest effects

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is integrating television into the practice of advertising. Jay Walter Thompson as an agency was right there at the forefront, at the beginnings of television, it influenced advertising's relationship to television. It influenced how television was produced and made and the rhythms of television. And so to really

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understand the history of television, you have to understand in large part J Walter Thompson's relationship to that history. You know, there's a lot that goes on in an ad. Uh when the ad is on television, there's the visuals, there's editing techniques, there's sound that can include

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music and sound effects and character speaking and narration. And so when you look at how one interprets an ad, it's a pretty complex text and you have to look at a lot of different factors and a lot of different elements that can change over time or

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can be static and it may depend on when an ad airs or, and what kind of medium an ad is placed that can influence how people interpret ads. So it's, you know, advertising is a complex uh symbol system and, and it really requires, I think a

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careful eye to see all that's going on. We know that advertising creators put a lot of time into it. And, you know, because of that, it takes a lot of time to really uh uh see what's going on in an ad. So J Walter Thompson is

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one of the oldest advertising agencies and it's still around it, it is a very enduring agency and it has established a lot of practices that we take for granted today in terms of how advertising operates and from the industry point of view, what agencies do. So,

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one of the first things that um uh J Walter Thompson established was a global presence, it established offices in South America, it established offices in South Africa, it established office in Europe. So it was a very uh uh visible agency globally. And so when we look

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at global advertising campaigns that we kind of take for granted now, you know, for global global brands like mcdonald's and Coca Cola, uh it's J Walter Thompson that helped establish a lot of those practices. It's uh uh a key agency and a lot of um uh

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cultural products that we take for granted. Uh For example, like food, uh Oscar Meyer and Kraft were big clients of J Walter Thompson. Um But I think one of its biggest impacts is that J Walter Thompson was right there at the very beginnings of television. So

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when you look at what we know to be true or what we assume to be true about television advertising, J Walter Thompson helped to develop a lot of those practices. And really because J Walter Thompson was a television program producer, early on as many advertising agencies

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were in those days, uh The practice of making TV shows was influenced by J Walter Thompson. J Walter Thompson was a very early advertising agency that was involved in the development of television, you know, at least from the beginning of the 19 fifties and maybe earlier

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than that. Um J Walter Thompson was not just an advertiser on early television, but it was a television program producer. It actually produced television programs in the very early or golden days of television. And so a lot of uh early practices about what we assume television

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shows should look like were established by agencies like J Walter Thompson. And definitely advertising practices, what television commercials look and sound like their rhythms, the kind of appeals they use. A lot of that was influenced by early work with J Walter Thompson. And you know, J

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Walter Thompson has continued to be involved in television as television has gotten into, you know, 50 60 70 year anniversaries, you know, J Walter Thompson is still a part of that. It's still a part, a part of modern television today. One of the things that advertising

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does is it finances our media systems and for media like radio and television, virtually 100% of a lot of television production is financed by advertising. So it's logical to assume that advertising, because it pays the bills can influence the kind of programs we see the kind

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of audiences that those programs are designed to appeal to the rhythms of those television programs. And so, yeah, I think it's, it's safe to assume that television programming and, and a lot of media programming is influenced by the fact that advertising finances it. Now is it

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the case that an advertiser will go into a TV, producer's office and say I demand you not say this or I demand, you say this or put our products in your shows that may not happen as often as television program producers know that advertisers are a

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powerful force. They know that they have to keep advertisers happy. And so they might make programming decisions early on that, go with advertising messages that don't take us out of kind of a consumption mentality that advertisers want us to have when we watch television. So I

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think it's less probably likely that specific advertisers might influence specific ideas and specific shows than it is. The logic of the system is very advertising friendly in television. You know, we have a lot of global products uh in our lives. Uh When you look at global

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brands like Coca Cola or Pepsi or mcdonald's uh Kentucky Fried Chicken, uh they are uh products that are sold across the globe. And yes, many of those ads might be produced by local advertising agencies. But a lot of these global brands use global agencies and J

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Walter Thompson is one of them. And so their strategy is to make sure they appeal to local people and local markets. But also that there's a brand consistency across these global areas because they know people are traveling, they know that, you know, there might be a

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comfort for people if they want to eat a mcdonald's that they basically know that the same mcdonald's is in India as it is in Indiana. And so global advertising is developed to train us to expect that. And you know, there are concerns about global advertising and

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how it might eradicate local culture and it might spread kind of messages of consumption uniformly across the globe. And I think those messages are, those concerns are warranted. Advertising is a global presence and it's part of our modern life.