Global Advertising Histories: an Australian Perspective

This article surveys the historiography of the global advertising industry, identifying the key challenges and debates raised by American and British scholars, and then discusses two important questions for historians of Australian advertising. First, if advertising is a globalised and 'Americanised' industry, exactly how Australian is the Australian advertising industry? Second, can we understand how advertising works by analysing advertisements, or are new forms of analysis required? The article introduces a fresh analytical approach that seeks to answer these questions before discussing the scope, methodology and preliminary findings of a historical study of the Australian advertising industry that is currently utilising this approach.