In the first decade of the twentieth century, the advertising agency developed close to its present form. The innovations of the late 1800s suggested the business toward an emphasis on the ad itself instead of the selection of media or the size of the advertisers' budget. Specially, the larger agencies began to emphasize on copy writing. Artists and designers joined copywriters on agency staffs and started to assert that the look of an ad meant as much as its message. With writers and artists grasping for more responsibility in the ad, the account executive's role expanded as a mediator was needed between business realism of the client and touchy egos of the creative staff (Fox, 1948).
Another large shift in American advertising in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the development of national markets for the branded, standardized products of large-scale manufacturers. As mass production of manufacturers became possible due to innovations in technology, increasing selling quantities of goods often required intensive advertising (Pope,1983).
According to Marchand (1985), as an economic force, advertisements functioned as efficient mass communications that justified and lubricated impersonal marketplaces of vast scale. Advertising also incited the popular belief "that what was new was desirable." Thus advertising is adapted comfortably to the concept of "the modern" as expressed in the term modernization.
In content and technique, American advertisements transformed to be "modern." Gradually, advertising content and style changed during the first two decades of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the century, advertisers pursued simple brand-name publicity through advertising jingles and poster-style displays. Then copywrite turned into "salesmanship in print" with hard selling copies full of reasons and arguments in place of rhymes and slogans. The new "reason- why" approach started from the assumption that the audience is not just an anonymous crowd, but an individual customer. In order to persuade consumers to read advertising copy that was often long and contentious, the advertisers were encouraged to use imagination and a "human-interest" approach to appeal to their emotions (Marchand,1985).
Increasingly during the 1920s, personal endorsers in the advertisements acquired a new sense of realism. A few years ago, typical character types such as standardized doctors, businessmen, druggists, and housewives were represented, but they have evolved to be more familiar-looking and friendly. Advertising copy also created ordinary folks as "real people" to personalize the helpful advice. For example, Procter and Gamble advertisements for laundry soap report in chatty informality on a series of "Actual Visit to P& G Homes." "Mrs. Lewis" in P&G home no.3 recalled her experiences with "little Dorothy's rompers, and "Mrs. Moore" in home no.5, offered friends an ironing hint (Marchand,1985). In this sense, advertisers try looking into new ways to personalize their relationship with the consumer.
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