Cognitive Evolution &
The Evolution of Advertising

Man has always responded to his environment by evolving. The belief that man has undergone three major transitions in his cognitive architecture is held by many social and cognitive scientists. Manifestation of man's most recent shift in cognitive architecture is usually thought to have become conspicuous around 300 years ago and picked up steam in the 1800's.

Advertising has always responded to its environment by evolving. The shifts in its history demonstrate that this evolution has grown at a furious pace since around the mid-1800's. I don't believe the synchronization of its evolutionary process with man's was due to chance. I also believe now that man has entered the postmodern era, advertising has become more iconic and that this juncture is not random.

This isn't a treatise on the evolution of man so I'll make the following discussion of evolution concise. However, it is necessary to include it herein in order for my theory of advertising to make any sense.

It is generally agreed that modern man made his appearance between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. Subscribing to the theory of the three major transitions, it can be said that since that time he has undergone two major biologically-based changes in his cognitive architecture. First, the ability to form structured societies established cultures based largely on patterns of mimesis. This stage was likely set into motion by encephalization (man's brain getting bigger). The second evolution included the emergence of spoken language, made possible by the physical development of the larynx, pharynx, and other language apparatus. Both of these biologically-based shifts in cognition were motivated by changes to man's physical structure and set into motion the cultural shifts that led to the third cognitive transition.

Mankind's third cognitive transition was significantly different from the first two, primarily because it was not biological in origin. This third stage of cognitive evolution still concedes the importance of environment upon man's evolution, but introduces the element that man has begun to structure and control his environment. Thus, we see that man has, through his own actions (and not random acts in nature), begun to create an environment with which he concurrently evolves.

Those social and cognitive scientists subscribing to this theory posit that this third transition has occurred quite recently, for the most part within recent centuries. They also postulate that technology has stimulated an exponential growth in this process. The mid-1800's seems to mark the time when this cognitive evolution really began picking up speed.

I believe that the emergence of advertising as a distinct profession and persuasive tool at around that same time is no coincidence. Tools aren't created until societies are ready to use them. Society was ready for the proliferation of advertising because it serves a purpose in this evolutionary process.

This third transition in man's cognitive evolution is marked by the emergence of visual symbolism and external memory as major components of our cognitive architecture. This is first illustrated by a growing availability, dependence and interest in newspapers, which gained momentum around the middle of the 19th century. And, within newspapers are advertisements crafted with care in order to persuade an individual to buy something. We see that, while print has to some degree always contained persuasive communication (i.e. Thomas Paine's Common Sense), by the mid-1800's structured mainstream proclamations have commonly become part of print in the form of advertisements.

By the mid-1800's the printed word had become available to the masses and could spread its cultural blanket over wholes of societies like never before. Societies began to rely on the printed word to connect them to their world. Individuals began to rely on the printed word to connect them to their societies.

I believe that the very act of mentally relying on this medium stimulated an internal shift inside the individual and he began to adjust his storehouse of cognitive tools accordingly. In other words, he began to rely on an external device for information in a way that he hadn't done before. Man had entered the era whereby external storage media became an important part of his individual cognitive structure.

The early advertising contained inside newspapers was presented in such a way that the individual could process it in much the same manner he processed the articles. His reason for processing advertisements was also the same as his reason for processing the articles - as a means to gather information about his society and connect to his world.

We've watched advertising evolve. It's moved from information-laden newspaper advertisements to magazines, then to radio, television and now, the Internet. It's moved from text-rich content to logos charged with content that could never be captured with text. Its evolution has been a fast one by all standards. I believe that's because technology has perpetuated the growth in our own cognitive tools. Technology perpetuates growth, we perpetuate technology - both perpetuate advertising.