The most significant date in marketing history?

I don't know the exact date, but I think the most significant date in marketing history was something like this:

Historically, merchants sold their wares from their shops, or in open markets, or traveling to a location where the need for their wares was in demand (exporting).

Then along came media. I'm guessing that the first mass media was the newspaper.

Somewhere along the line, a savy shop owner approched the newspaper and asked if he could pay for space and have his ad/sale advertised.

Now he was expanding the reach of his shop with it's regular traffic. He was reaching out to people who didn't know who or where he was/is.

He expanded his market beyound his geographical limitations. By being proactive, he drove traffic to his store. He sold more. And the rest, is history.

Coca Cola and Nike with their logo branding are extensions of this. Without this first step, the brand name t-shirts, sneakers, would of never happened.

All modern advertising and/or promotion that exsists today would not exsist without that lone entrepreuner who ran the first ad. The key word is advertising. The first ad ran is the foundation of advertising/business as we know it today.

Who was the person who ran the first ad?

All of us on this board owe him a great deal.

Tom Lascsak

> I often wonder if this was the most
> significant date in marketing history - the
> date when a producer like Coca Cola managed
> to get consumers to advertise their brand
> name on something like a t-shirt, and get
> them to pay for the privilege!

> Blows me away whenever I think about it:-)

> Anyone know who did it first?

> Cheers

> Philip