Launch of the book “History of Advertising in Portugal”

The first “History of Advertising in Portugal” will be presented at the conference on the “History and Future of Advertising”, an initiative of the Amélia de Mello Foundation (FAM), to be held at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) in Lisbon on 7 November.

Written by CEIS20 researcher Eduardo Cintra Torres (Group 6 - Communication, Journalism and Public Space), the two-volume work is the result of almost five years of dedicated research. Published by Princípia Editora, the two volumes complement each other, one with text only and the other with images only:

I – History of Advertising in Portugal – with a case study of the CUF Group

II – Illustrated History of Advertising in Portugal

This unique study is part of a wide range of research that the Amélia de Mello Foundation (an institution named after Alfredo da Silva’s daughter) decided to support 2020 and 2021, as part of a series of vast and diverse initiatives to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Alfredo da Silva’s birth.

Vasco de Mello, President of the Amélia de Mello Foundation, points out that “the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Alfredo da Silva’s birth has served to support various Portuguese universities and their researchers in carrying out scientific work on the subjects they consider most relevant, always with an eye to the future!”.

This study by Eduardo Cintra Torres is the first of its kind on the history of advertising in Portugal. It covers the period from the Middle Ages to the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.

In the book, which runs to is over a thousand pages, Eduardo Cintra Torres’s research includes a detailed case study of the advertising initiatives of the former CUF Group. In the preface, the author emphasises that the “systematic case study of CUF could not be more appropriate for a general history of Portuguese advertising, since, under the early leadership of Alfredo da Silva, it became one of the largest business groups in the country and in Europe, with a very interesting relationship with advertising and marketing. Moreover, CUF can easily serve as an example and illustration of the impressive variety of productions and services in which it was involved, covering a broad and fundamental period in advertising”.

In The History of Advertising in Portugal, Eduardo Cintra Torres proposes a chronology based less on politics than on the material, cultural, social and professional conditions in which advertising takes place.

The first chapter begins in the Middle Ages and ends with the press, posters and signs on the eve of the liberal revolution. Then the second chapter begins, with the explosion of the free press. The birth of the modern popular and business daily press in 1865 coincided with an explosion in advertising activity. This took on a more scientific and systematic character from 1914, as we will see in the third and fourth chapters. A From 1960 onwards, the rapprochement with Europe, the arrival of television and the internationalisation of agencies marked the beginning of a new cycle, which the author brings to a close in chapter five in the year 2000, in order to conclude the research in the digital age by 2022, at the end of chapter six.

The Illustrated History of Advertising in Portugal follows the chronology, exclusively in images, with explanatory captions. The volume aims to visually present advertising in all its diversity, with more than 700 images from the 14th century to 2023.

Eduardo Cintra Torres was born in Lisbon in 1957. He has a doctorate in sociology, a master’s in communication and a degree in history, and has published 19 books between 1998 and 2018. He is the author of more than 20 academic articles with scientific reviews and more than 40 book chapters in diverse and converging areas based on sociology, communication and history. He has been a university lecturer for more than two decades and a journalist since 1983. He promoted the first cycle on Portuguese film advertising, currently on show at the Batalha Cinema Centre, and is one of the authors and curators of the accompanying exhibition.