The Promotional Marketing Association is celebrating its 100th year. To mark the occasion, Promo talked with PMA president Bonnie Carlson, just before the trade group’s big annual meeting in Chicago this April 5-7 to find out how much about promotion has changed, and how much is still on marketers’ to-do lists.
PROMO: So what was promotion like in 1911, and how did that lead to the formation of the PMA?
CARLSON: Researching this history has been a real learning experience. For example, promotion was very single-purpose in those days: generally involving a premium, a sample or a coupon as the main currency. The integration of multiple media and the whole complexity that we’re faced with today couldn’t even have been dreamt of in 1911.
PROMO: Do you find any difference in the way premiums were used?
CARLSON: While premiums have been around since the early 1800s, they really got a boost during the Civil War. At first, they were largely unrelated to the item they were promoting—the soap, or tobacco or whatever. The premiums were often practical or whimsical; women’s opera gloves, men’s pipes or kids’ button shoes. Then around the turn of the century, brands like Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch began offering premiums that were also adverting vehicles.
The market for premiums really grew explosively. By 1909, U.S. marketers were spending $60 million on premiums annually—the equivalent of $1.4 billion today. And by 1915, that spending had grown to $125 million, or $2.5 billion in 2011 dollars.
The other thing that happened at this time was the invention of trading stamps that consumers could redeem for premiums. [With the growth of both premiums and trading stamps], retailers began to feel that premiums were escalating their cost of doing business, and they worked in various states to get anti-trading stamp laws passed—and they succeeded. But as written, the laws were so broad that they cut into marketers’ ability to offer premiums.
Continues at: Promotions Past and Future: Q&A with Bonnie Carlson.
