The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.
The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.
The first use of the tagline ‘Have a Break. Have a Kit Kat’, written by the agency’s Donald Gilles, can be traced to May 1957. A year later it was used on the first television spots for the brand and ever since has been a staple of campaigns for the chocolate bar.