Advertisment (Almanac)

This announcement for law services appears in several almanacs. This one is from William Jones's Almanac in 1627 (STC 429) . Print advertisements are normally thought of as a product of newspaper culture that would not develop until the middle to the end of the seventeenth century, when weekly or even daily periodicals were widely available and mass produced. Although this culture had started to emerge in the 1620s, most scholars locate the invention of newspapers on the continent, mostly in Holland.

In this document, we see an early form of print advertisement in a mass media format. As Adam Symth argues, almanacs were widely read and cheaply produced, and should be thought of as a form of mass media. And since this exact advertisement appears in several different almanacs, it seems that it was inserted by the provider of the law services to drum up business and not written by the author of the almanac. Thus, this advertisement works similarly to modern forms of marketing. However, it isn't known if the business owner paid the almanac writer for the privilege of inserting his document in his product. Today, we understand that businesses pay media outlets for the opportunity to advertise their products. It is unclear if that process was in place or clearly understood by the audience in the seventeenth century.

There are other key differences. Unlike newspapers, almanacs were only published once a year, so this form of advertisement could not respond quickly to changing demands or services. The author couldn't tailor their message to any change in consumer behavior or shift in business strategy. Also, the name of the business or the price of the services offered does not appear in the document, only the location. Nor is there any real effort to sell the services. That is, there is no indication that the author of the advertisement wanted to convince the audience that their services were superior or cheaper than other similar services. It seems that the author was not concerned about name recognition or branding in the way that we would expect. This perhaps suggests a lack of competition or a competitive spirit. The author seems to assume that all they have to do is tell the public where they are located, and customers will come. At the same time, they would not have gone through the trouble of printing and inserting this announcement if they didn't think it would increase business. There is then an effort to expand the market in a way that corresponds to modern forms of capitalism, even though other key elements of modern capitalism are missing, such as competition and self-promotion.