If social networking had existed in the Mad Men era, would Don Draper have used Twitter?

Somehow, I can’t see it. But I think he would have absolutely recognised the value, and the innovation that Twitter and other social platforms inspire would have really appealed to his creative brain. Peggy would have been writing beautifully-crafted tweets minutes after she was first promoted to copywriter, and Roger Sterling – resistant as he would inevitably have been at first – would ultimately have become one of the funniest sources of one-liners Twitter would ever see from Madison Avenue.

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The history of marketing goes back a long way – probably further than you thought.

In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and his metal movable type would ultimately lead to the mass-production of flyers and brochures. Magazines emerged in the 1730s, and the first paid advertisement appeared in France in 1836.

Marketing posters on private property were banned in London in 1839, and it wasn’t until 1867 that the earliest recorded billboard rentals appeared. In 1922, radio advertising commenced, with TV making its debut in 1941. Telemarketing in the 1950s led to desktop publishing in the 1980s. Modern search engines started appearing in the mid-1990s, with Google making its debut in 1998.

MySpace and LinkedIn emerged in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. And with the enormous success of the iPhone and iPad, mobile marketing began to make serious waves just a few years ago.

So, here’s the big question: what’s next?

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