La publicidad de los publicitarios: estudio de la autopromoción de las agencias de publicidad en revistas especializadas (2000-2007)

Abstract

The auto-promotional activity of the advertising agencies is inherent to persuasive communication in the «modern» sense – as a result of the appearance of the technical agency– and for this reason, its origin goes back to the beginning of the activity of these mentioned companies. Even existing since the beginning of the advertising activity in mercantilist sense, the attention paid to this kind of advertising from an academic perspective, has been scanty. Probably, the exiguous academic documentation on the topic in question may be due to its novelty compared to other disciplines endorsed by centuries of research.Just because of this lack, we believe that these advertising messages deserve not only attention and recognition, but also research. Beyond the commercial purpose inherent to the totality of typologies of persuasive communication, the observation of its evolution constitutes a historical testimony of the development experienced by the advertising sector and, at the same time, allows us to observe the structural transformations, the creative evolution and the professional development reached by the companies of advertising. By dipping in the initiatives of communication tackled by the advertising agencies, we aim for contributing to a better understanding of the agencies self-advertising activity and to identify the principal elements of communication. For that purpose, we take a representative sample of agencies of advertising located in Spain in its graphical self- promotional messages published in the main professional magazines of the advertising sector at the beginning of the 21st century (2000-2007).