Abstract
Bovee (1992) defined the phenomenon in the following popular way: "Advertising is the non -- personal communication of information usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media. In spite of the fact that marketers use blends of marketing communications and that advertising constantly invents new "appeals" (e.g., Cadbury's Gorilla), we suggest here that advertising is indeed a unique phenomenon and that important theories have been developed to help understand aspects of the phenomenon. One of the first books about advertising theory was Walter Dill Scott's (1903) The Theory of Advertising. Right on that book's heels came Edward L. Thorndike's The Theory of Advertising (1904). Both of these books were about the psychological impact of advertising. In 2004, Nan and Faber wrote a significant piece about the need for revisiting the building blocks of advertising.