Have you ever wondered which were the first companies to use TV as an advertising medium? Today we find out together! Today, November 21, 2023, is the twenty-seventh World Television Day , established in 1996 by the UN. And for this occasion we have chosen to celebrate the first brands to appear on TV. It's now almost a century since this instrument was born and slowly began to enter people's homes. In fact, the first electronic television was created in 1927 . But we have to wait until the 1950s to see it enter almost every home in the Western world and then expand to the rest of the world. It officially arrived in Italy a few years later, in 1954, when Rai programming began. Brands did not immediately use this medium to advertise , given the lack of popularity it had during the first years, and the first commercial in history dates back to 1941. Let's see it together! 1941: The first commercial ever on TV The first commercial in history was broadcast on July 1, 1941 during a baseball game on WNBT, a New York station. It was a press release advertising Bulova watches .
The commercial was only 10 seconds long and consisted of a still profile shot of the United States with a stylized image of the Bulova watch above it. The company was also the first to do a radio commercial about 15 years earlier. First television commercial for the Bulova company Towards the end of the commercial, a voice-over could be heard declaring ' America runs on Bulova Time '. A simple claim, but certainly impactful. A curiosity about this commercial is that only 9 dollars were enough to create and broadcast it , corresponding to around 155 dollars today. As a result, it's interesting to see how this medium has evolved. In fact, today brands spend tens of millions of dollars to create commercials. An example is certainly the night of the Super Bowl during which some of the most expensive commercials run. If you want to delve deeper into this topic, you can find an article from our blog that talks about it here . TV and the economic boom The war significantly Croatia WhatsApp Number slowed the rise of this new means of communication. In fact, we had to wait until the early 1950s to find new examples of television advertising. With the economic boom, brands began to understand the influence of this tool and created the first commercials, but not only that.
Let's see which strategies Coca Cola and Vitamix have exploited in particular . 1949: Vitamix airs the first teleshopping Unlike all the other companies that we will see in this article, Vitamix chose not to create a commercial but a real demonstration. The company had been selling appliances since 1921, and the founder, William “Papa” Barnard, had already begun touring the nation showing customers his products . With the birth of TV he decided to propose the same format on television on a Cleveland channel. The teleshopping lasted about 30 minutes and showed its flagship product, the blender. Papa Barnard during a TV sale for the Vitamix blender It was the first teleshopping in television history . It was a huge success, bringing many sales to the company. The Cleveland station began airing Papa Barnard's infomercials weekly. Subsequently they