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This paper aims to describe the archival holdings of the History of Advertising Trust Archives as a potential resource for marketing historians.

This paper provides a description of the History of Advertising Trust Archives and their value for marketing historians.

The paper introduces the History of Advertising Trust Archives to the readers of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing.

This paper aims to build on Fred Beard’s study of the world’s archives to identity historical advertising and marketing ephemera, published in this journal in 2018, by focussing on resources available in Europe to augment his survey.

Online searching, supplemented by literature emanating from the business archive sector, led to the identification of 177 repositories or online sites in Europe holding advertising and marketing archives of significance for researchers. These are set out in two accompanying tables.

A wide diversity of European archives that are open to researchers is revealed in this paper. Many are the archives of the business themselves, but a number of collecting repositories are also listed, brought together for the first time.

This paper focusses solely on Europe but does not claim to be comprehensive, as the study was time-limited and readers will, no doubt, know of resources that the author has missed. The findings relate mostly to Western Europe, so there is scope for further study to encompass archives in the former eastern bloc. Exploration of sources in Africa, Asia and Latin America would further supplement Beard’s original study.

This research brings together the broadest list of advertising and marketing sources open to researchers in Europe published to date. As Beard’s focus was more on the Americas, this examination redresses the balance with an array of European sources which, it is hoped, will contribute to the greater use of many little-known or under-researched resources by researchers across the world.

Discusses aims and objectives of the History of Advertising Trust (HAT) in stimulating research into this subject in Britain. Gives details of main members and contacts and lists out the main projects with which HAT is involved.

When advertising historians began searching for substantial collections and archives of historical advertisements and marketing ephemera in the 1970s, some reported such holdings were rare. This paper aims to report the findings of the first systematic attempt to assess the scope and research value of the world’s archives and collections devoted to advertising and marketing ephemera.

Searches conducted online of the holdings of museums, libraries and the internet led to the identification and description of 179 archives and collections of historical significance for historians of marketing and advertising, as well as researchers interested in many other topics and disciplines.

The lists of archives and collections resulting from the research reported in this article represent the most complete collection of such sources available. Identified are the world’s oldest and largest collections of advertising and ephemera. Also identified are quite extraordinary collections of historically unique records and artifacts.

The online searches continued until a point of redundancy was reached and no new archives or collections meeting the search criteria emerged. There remains the likelihood, however, that other archives and collections exist, especially in non-Western countries.

The findings make valuable contributions to the work of historians and other scholars by encouraging more global and cross-cultural research and historical analyses of trends and themes in professional practices in marketing and advertising and their consequences over a longer period than previously studied.

A series of online searches of the Harvard University Library System – which includes the Baker Library, Houghton Library and the Radcliffe Institute’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library – on the History of Women in America revealed nearly 1,000 archive and manuscript holdings on advertising and related topics. This paper aims to investigate the extent of these holdings, to assess their value to advertising and marketing historians and to explore their potential for encouraging future research on under-investigated topics and questions.

Described are the extensive and valuable special collections and other holdings related to advertising, business and marketing of the Harvard Library System. Also described are the availability of the holdings and recommendations for accessing and studying the collections and artifacts.

The research reported here supports an overall conclusion that the Harvard Library System holds an important place among the world’s repositories of valuable historical advertisements and marketing ephemera. The research also supports four specific conclusions regarding the historical value of Harvard’s collections and archives. First, some of the collections offer access to artifacts and items from an under-investigated period – the first half of the 19th century. Second, many of the collections are international in scope. Third, the collections represent a wide array of 19th century non-periodical advertisements and ephemera, such as trade cards, posters and theatrical playbills. Fourth, and most important, the collections offer significant potential for addressing, among other under-investigated topics, the important role of women in the development of modern advertising theory and professional practices.

A prior search for the world’s largest and most historically significant archives and collections of advertisements and marketing ephemera (promotional objects or media executions created for a one-time, limited purpose) revealed a handful of library and museum collections of exceptional size or topical importance meriting further investigation. This paper adds to an extensive line of research published in the marketing and advertising historical literature exploring and describing the breadth, depth and historical value of the world’s important collections of historical advertisements and ephemera.

This paper aims to describe written and visual data sources useful for researching the history of advertising and marketing that are held in the collections of the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.

Knowledge of the McCracken collections has been acquired over several years of online searches and subsequent data analyses, communications with Library staff and from a personal visit to Cody in September 2021.

Several digital collections are surveyed. The Roy Marcot Firearms Advertisement Collection visually documents industry practices and also speaks to larger issues in American gun culture. The Winchester Publications provide insights via company magazines into product and management strategies, hardware retailing and visual merchandising tactics during the 1920s. The Schuyler, Hartley and Graham archive of business correspondence illustrate business-to-business marketing from the nineteenth through the early 20th century. The Buffalo Bill Collection reveals how the culturally important Wild West shows were promoted and experienced.

This paper familiarizes advertising and marketing historians with the primary sources in the McCracken Research Library and suggests some potential areas for study.

This paper aims to clarify whether J. Walter Thompson (JWT)’s planning and research tradition gave rise to the concept of Account Planning. In addition, it seeks to analyse the different planning methodologies that preceded Account Planning to highlight how it emerged at JWT London. A further goal is to understand the impact of Account Planning, which sought to achieve effective advertising through detailed consumer insight and has transformed the multinational JWT as a whole and the advertising sector in general.

The methodology is based mainly on the analysis of primary research conducted on original files donated to Duke University Library (North Carolina, USA) by the multinational J. Walter Thompson.

Account Planning emerged in 1968 in London as a consequence of the research and planning tradition that already existed at JWT. JWT’s corporate culture established the importance of the Account Planning approach that was valued by advertisers and spread to all offices. The planning tools used by the multinational today are updated versions of those that were designed from 1960 onwards.

The historical approach taken here precludes an analysis of the current reality of Account Planning. In future research, it would be useful to carry out in-depth interviews with professionals to explore how they apply planning tools that represent updated versions of those that were developed 50 years ago.

This paper’s main interest lies in the fact that it is based on original, unpublished sources, an approach that makes it possible to reassess previous findings.

The study which this paper documents aimed to test nine hypotheses through the use of content analysis of gender stereotypes within the advertising of educational/non‐educational children's games.

A total of 130 UK adverts, fitting the time period of 1970‐2011, were used. Then 17 dimensions of each advertisement were coded and chi‐squared analyses were carried out. Additional comparisons were carried out examining differences in pre‐1990 and post‐1990 adverts, age and game categories.

Nine hypotheses were tested and most were supported, including: males being shown as the main characters in educational adverts compared to non‐educational adverts; gender stereotypes occurring within advertising ‐ adverts aimed at males consisted of males being the main characters, female‐orientated adverts consisted of females presenting the majority of adverts; and young males were displayed alone whereas females were either alone or supervised by another female.

This study is possibly the first to conduct a thorough content analysis of television advertisements for games aimed at children. It reveals the amount of stereotyping found in general advertisements aimed at adults in many western countries.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the theme of this special issue. In doing so, the paper argues that marketing historical research is in need of a paradigmatic shift. Rather than privilege primary and secondary sources that preserve the perspectives and actions of corporate managers and of marketing academics, marketing historians need to open the historical narratives they construct much more than before to the experiences and voices of ordinary consumers, i.e. of those who actually shop and buy and choose. They also need to do more to incorporate into their narratives examples of the value-creation that consumers themselves enact, both inside and outside the sphere of the market.

By reviewing the state of the marketing historical literature, this paper introduces the “History from Below” school of historical thought into marketing historical research. It also tests to what extent a stronger consumer focus might be able to enrich historical research in marketing.

Although contemporary marketing historiography is characterized by a richness of themes and methodological approaches, there is still a marked difference between the way marketing academics and historians write the history of marketing and consumption. While, surprisingly, the former often tend to ignore the voices of ordinary consumers, the latter often lack the marketing-related “technical” knowledge to fully understand the significance of specific archival sources they discuss. This means that a genuine “People’s History of Marketing” has yet to be written.

Findings from the paper will be of value to marketing historians who wish to expand the scope and agenda of their research and help historical research move away from narrow managerial perspectives and other “privileged” accounts of marketing.

This paper makes two original contributions. First, it introduces historiographical innovations associated with “History from Below” (social history) into marketing historical scholarship. Second, it attempts to help marketing historians identify alternative sets of primary and secondary sources, e.g. oral history archives, which would allow them to be much more optimistic about their own ability to reconstruct the perspectives of those whose voices are all too often ignored.

This study aims to provide a historical understanding of conspicuous consumption phenomena in the context of the UK, between 1945 and 2000. It considers how status-driven consumption has been shaped by economic, technological and cultural factors.

Adopting a periodization scheme, concerning two time structures between 1945 and 2000, this paper is based on research stemming from a wide range of data such as academic studies, research articles, narrative history books, past advertisements, novels and biographies. Rich interdisciplinary data from the realms of political economy, sociology, cultural geography and consumption studies have been synthesized so as to provide a marketing-oriented historical outlook on conspicuous consumption phenomena.

Status-driven consumption in the UK has been heavily influenced by economic policies, cultural changes and public perceptions towards wealth during the second half of the twentieth century. Post-war rationing, youth-driven fashion, free-market economics and technological advances have played a crucial role in forming consumers’ tastes and engagement with ostentatious economic display.

Although the vast majority of marketing studies have approached luxury consumption through a psychological angle, this examination identifies the capacity of historical research to uncover and highlight the interrelationships between socio-economic factors and status-motivated consumption.