ABSTRACT
While some argue that globalisation began with colonialism, in the case of global advertisers, agencies and media it is, of course, a much more recent phenomenon, though not quite so recent as might be thought. The last two decades of the twentieth century may have been the era when ‘globalisation’ became a common discourse, a way of thinking and talking about the world, but the emergence of what we have called the manufacturing/marketing/media complex on an international basis developed over the whole of the twentieth century. Indeed, the US advertising pioneer J Walter Thompson opened up a London office as early as 1899 (Mattelart 1991: 3), but then as now, it was the advertisers who were the real prime movers. This chapter will outline the stages by which advertising came to be a global industry, looking at the globalisation of the advertiser clients, media and agencies, but with an emphasis on the recent past, and the changes under way in the present.
