ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the early stages of the digital and information technology revolution in the advertising industry in the 1990s and early 2000s. Drawing on interviews with staff working in Australian advertising and media agencies, it argues that the advertising industry’s public image of being technologically savvy was not necessarily accurate. Its contribution to business history is to demonstrate hitherto undocumented organisational and cultural factors that actively worked against the implementation of new technologies in the workplace. Its most unique aspect is its demonstration of the strengths of oral history and its capacity to illustrate and help address the inherent weaknesses of other sources, notably the trade press. Oral history is shown to be an important historical source – equal to any other in terms of strengths and, indeed, weaknesses.
