A Letter to John Dixon Sr. (1740 – 27 April 1791)
Dear John,
In 1776, advertising in America was quiet.
…Not morally quiet.
…Not politically quiet.
…But…literally…quiet.
No glowing billboards screamed across highways.
No phones vibrated with personalized promotions.
No algorithms tracked private desires through invisible digital corridors.
No videos interrupted songs every four minutes asking colonists if they wanted “better sleep,” “faster shipping,” or “one weird trick doctors hate.”
In Revolutionary America, a person might go days, weeks, or even months without encountering a formal advertisement at all.
That fact alone feels almost impossible to modern minds.
And there you stood, John Dixon Sr., printer and publisher of newspapers like The Virginia Gazette, helping shape one of the earliest advertising environments in American history.
In 1776, advertising remained mostly local, text-heavy, and practical.
Most ads appeared inside newspapers, often squeezed tightly between political essays, shipping notices, runaway announcements, and public declarations. They did not attempt to become “viral.” They simply informed readers:
which goods arrived on ships,
which merchants sold fabrics or tools,
which books had become available,
or where auctions would occur.
The tone was functional rather than emotional:
“Recently arrived from London…”
“Fine tea and imported fabrics…”
“Buttons, pewter, sugar, dry goods…”
Advertising had not yet fully learned how to invade psychology.
At least not commercially.
Politically, however, 1776 absolutely understood persuasion.
Pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense spread aggressively through the colonies, promoted heavily in newspapers and public discourse to stir revolutionary sentiment.
In many ways, Revolutionary America was already discovering one of advertising’s deepest powers:
the ability not merely to sell products…
but to shape public imagination itself.
And some of the advertisements from that era remain profoundly disturbing to modern readers.
Runaway slave advertisements appeared constantly in colonial newspapers. Human beings were described physically, priced, pursued, and marketed as property. Notices offered rewards for the capture of escaped enslaved people with the same transactional tone used to advertise livestock or imported goods.
Advertising always reveals something about the moral structure of the society producing it.
Even in its earliest American forms, marketing reflected both commerce and cruelty simultaneously.
Beyond newspapers, advertising in 1776 also emerged through:
town criers,
street hawkers,
painted shop signs,
trade cards,
word-of-mouth recommendations,
and auctioneers shouting through crowded streets.
The advertising ecosystem remained deeply human and local.
No corporations existed with global branding strategies.
No national agencies orchestrated campaigns across continents.
No one optimized “engagement metrics.”
The first true American advertising agency would not open until 1841.
Then industrialization arrived…
and everything changed.
The 19th century transformed advertising from occasional information into a sophisticated industry designed to support mass production and national commerce.
Factories produced more goods than local markets alone could absorb. Railroads connected distant regions. Suddenly businesses needed ways to persuade strangers hundreds of miles away to buy:
their soap,
their flour,
their stove,
their tonic,
their sewing machine.
And thus the age of branding was born.
Americans gradually shifted from purchasing generic products to purchasing identities attached to products:
Ivory Soap,
Quaker Oats,
Campbell’s Soup,
Coca-Cola.
A profound psychological shift occurred.
Advertising stopped merely saying:
“This soap cleans.”
It began saying:
“This soap says something about YOU.”
That transformation still shapes modern consumer culture today.
The late 19th century also introduced colorful trade cards, illustrated posters, collectible packaging, and increasingly emotional appeals designed to attract attention. Advertising became more artistic, more persuasive, and more psychologically ambitious.
And by the 20th century, advertising exploded into one of the dominant cultural forces in American life.
Newspapers gave way to magazines.
Magazines gave way to radio.
Radio gave way to television.
And television changed everything.
Advertising no longer merely appeared beside life.
It entered the living room itself.
The post-World War II economic boom created the “golden age” of American advertising, with Madison Avenue agencies crafting campaigns that sold not merely products, but lifestyles, insecurities, aspirations, and emotional fantasies.
The Marlboro Man did not merely sell cigarettes.
He sold rugged masculinity.
Perfume ads sold seduction.
Cars sold status.
Kitchen appliances sold idealized domestic perfection.
What did Calvin Klein sell? What else?! Sex.
Advertising became emotional engineering.
By the late 20th century, brands increasingly targeted:
youth culture,
celebrity obsession,
individual identity,
rebellion,
coolness,
and fear of social exclusion.
Marketing shifted from:
“What does this product do?”
to:
“Who will you become if you buy it?”
And then came the digital revolution.
By 2026, advertising in America has evolved into a hyper-personalized, algorithm-driven ecosystem dominated by tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon.
Modern advertising no longer waits passively for audiences to arrive.
It follows people.
Across phones.
Across laptops.
Across apps.
Across social media.
Across search histories.
Across physical locations through geo-fencing technology.
A person casually searches once for hiking boots…
and advertisements for hiking boots begin stalking them across the internet for two weeks like emotionally needy digital coyotes.
Artificial intelligence now helps analyze behavior, predict desires, optimize engagement, and target advertisements toward astonishingly specific audiences. Modern marketers study:
clicks,
pauses,
locations,
shopping habits,
viewing time,
demographics,
and emotional responses.
In some cases, advertising systems seem to understand consumers frighteningly well.
Perhaps too well.
And the scale of modern advertising exposure is almost incomprehensible.
Experts estimate the average American now encounters between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements every single day.
Every day.
A citizen of 1776 might spend an entire year seeing fewer advertisements than a modern American sees before lunchtime.
Most of these ads pass semi-consciously through modern life:
social media feeds,
sponsored posts,
streaming commercials,
billboards,
podcasts,
emails,
videos,
pop-ups,
product placements,
sports sponsorships,
influencer promotions,
and “suggested content” disguised as entertainment.
Advertising became atmospheric.
Modern Americans do not merely see advertisements anymore.
They live inside advertising ecosystems.
And yet something fascinating happened alongside this explosion:
people became exhausted.
Ad fatigue spread.
Attention fragmented.
Trust declined.
Millions now use ad blockers. Audiences increasingly crave authenticity while simultaneously drowning in persuasion. Companies attempt to become “relatable,” “human,” and emotionally intimate with consumers through storytelling and social media interaction.
Brands now seek not merely customers…
but followers.
Sometimes even believers.
John, if you could walk through America in 2026, you would surely stand speechless watching:
towering digital billboards glowing through midnight cities,
algorithms auctioning human attention in milliseconds,
influencers transforming breakfast routines into monetized content,
children marketed to before they can fully read,
and corporations studying behavior patterns with precision unimaginable in your century.
But I suspect you would also recognize something deeply familiar beneath all the technology.
Advertising still revolves around one ancient human impulse:
someone, somewhere, trying to persuade another human being to desire something.
Only now the persuasion never sleeps.
A citizen of 1776 searched actively for information.
A citizen of 2026 spends much of life defending their mind from it.
With runaway notices, neon billboards, sponsored memes, and one species forever trying to monetize attention itself,
—The Radical Left
And dear reader, perhaps the deeper question after 250 years is this:
What happens to human freedom when attention itself becomes a marketplace?
Because advertising no longer merely competes for purchases.
It competes for:
focus,
emotion,
identity,
desire,
fear,
loneliness,
tribal belonging,
and time.
And perhaps that is the strange evolution hidden inside American marketing history.
1776 advertisements mostly informed people about goods.
Modern advertising increasingly attempts to shape how people see themselves.
Not:
“Here is soap.”
But:
“Here is who you could become.”
And the more sophisticated the technology grows, the more persuasion itself becomes invisible.
Algorithms do not merely study consumers now.
They study habits,
hesitations,
patterns,
vulnerabilities,
and emotional rhythms.
Which raises uncomfortable question:
if corporations can predict behavior with astonishing accuracy…
how much of modern desire is truly spontaneous anymore?
Yet even inside this endless storm of persuasion, human beings still possess something stubbornly difficult to automate:
discernment.
People still learn to tune out noise.
Still crave authenticity.
Still seek genuine connection beneath branding language and curated performance.
After all, advertising can manufacture attention…
but it cannot fully manufacture meaning.
And perhaps that is why the modern marketplace feels simultaneously more powerful and more fragile than ever before.
The screens grew brighter.
The targeting grew smarter.
The slogans became more personalized.
But beneath all the algorithms and sponsored content…
human beings are still searching for something real enough not to feel like a sales pitch.