THE SITE

Interning at such a celebrated advertising agency allowed me to watch 80 years of advertising in the making: everything from Timex “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” to Mazda’s “Zoom Zoom” advertisement. Though I had never heard of Doner growing up, I had watched these advertisements on television and can still vividly remember them in my head. It was not about what they were selling, but more so the way they went about selling. While not every advertisement gains as much visibility as these two did, knowing I could have a role in creating content that would still be recognized decades later got me thinking. I wanted to experience all aspects of advertising for myself. Specifically, I wondered how advertising had changed over the years, since before my father joined the business so many years ago. I kept this thought in mind throughout my time at Doner. Time ran out too quickly and I left my internship with still so many questions. It was with these

questions that I attempted the Minor in Writing Capstone project.

Coming into this semester, I envisioned a sociohistorical analysis based project on advertising and with countless hours of research and help from professionals in the industry, I had the opportunity to follow that vision all the way through. Particularly, I wanted to understand the changes that advertising has undergone over the years. By analyzing a series of advertisements that were released over the years, I began to notice a pattern. The advertisements were not just staying the same, but they were instead evolving to correspond with the changing technology. With each new decade came bigger and better advertisements that responded to culture of the time. From the newspaper advertisements, to the Internet advertisements and everything in between, it was incredible to see how the course of history changed since advertising first began. I began to think of the industry as some sort of advertising evolution.

Ad Evolution was designed with these thoughts in mind. I had intended to both introduce audiences unfamiliar with advertising to the industry and to build upon the knowledge of those who already have experience with it. By combining two central ideas, the history of advertising and the creation of advertisements, I hoped that Ad Evolution would mimic the advertising website AdWeek, which more broadly touches on similar themes. I bounced ideas around that I found from navigating other popular sites like Ad Age and BusinessInsider, which helped me ground much of the information I present through the site. It is through this multimedia project that my questions were answered. Advertising is complex and is an industry that will constantly be evolving to respond to human behavior. Hopefully your questions will be answered through Ad Evolution too.

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