Business
People distrust advertising's jargon and double talk, yet the same money funds a free, varied and democratic press and broadcasting. The industry people scorn is also what keeps much of their information free to read and watch.
How much advertising a country has, and how well it works, rises and falls with the size and health of that country's whole economy. Advertising is less an independent force than a mirror of how much there is to buy and sell.
Advertising sits between what factories make and what households buy, joining the two so that goods find buyers. In this view it is not decoration but a working part of economic activity, needed for prosperity to grow.
Because advertising is so tied to culture, its makers assume their struggles are unique to their own country. In fact the same battles have been fought across many countries for decades, so lessons travel well between markets.
Whatever the medium or market, the basic struggle of advertising stays the same. It must make work that leaps the gap between a product and a person and actually connects.
Advertising as an industry was born with industrialisation. Once goods were made in bulk, someone had to create demand on the same scale.
Advertising from different countries, such as Britain, France and the United States, has distinct styles of persuasion rooted in each culture. Understanding a market means understanding how its people like to be addressed.
A few prosperous agencies, and the new firms started by people who left them, carried advertising methods around the world. In time these firms merged into giant communication groups that dominate the industry.
Advertising has reinvented itself with each new channel, from printed copy to radio, television and digital media. Digital media, with viral spread and near-unlimited space, is the latest round of the same reinvention.