Forgotten classics: The Business of Advertising, by Earnest Elmo Calkins (1915)

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review and summarize Earnest Elmo Calkins’s The Business of Advertising and to assess its status as a legitimate forgotten classic of the marketing literature.

Design/methodology/approach

The Business of Advertising is reviewed, summarized and placed in an historical context.

Findings

Written during a key period in the history of mass marketing and national brand advertising, Calkins’s work represents a valuable primary source for marketing and advertising historians, especially those interested in marketing industry structures and relationships. Calkins was an influential figure in the development of the modern advertising agency, and his beliefs and approaches in regard to marketing research, campaign planning, branding, message strategy and creativity anticipated some late-twentieth-century approaches and remain highly relevant.

Originality/value

The Business of Advertising was the object of a single-paragraph review at the time of its publication in 1915, and a short trade journal review appeared not long ago (Lamons, 2000). A more thorough and historically sensitive assessment of Calkins’s forgotten classic reveals some fresh insights into the book and the influential beliefs of the man who was eulogized by trade journal Advertising Age (1964) as a “giant of creative advertising”.

Citation

Beard, F. (2015), "Forgotten classics: The Business of Advertising, by Earnest Elmo Calkins (1915)", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 573-583. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHRM-06-2015-0017