Future of the Journal of Advertising in the Rapidly Changing World

I am excited and honored to assume the role of Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the Journal of Advertising (JA) and grateful to the prior editor, Shelly Rodgers as well as all of the previous editors before her, for their dedicated service in leading the Journal and invaluable contributions to the growth of JA. Under the competent and dedicated leadership and hard work of prior editors, JA has grown and prospered over the years, in terms of the number of issues per year, number of articles published, number of submissions, number of different countries from which manuscripts come, number of readers and citations, SSCI impact factors, and stature considered by scholars both inside and outside the advertising field. As I was putting together this first issue as EIC of JA, I began by reflecting on the history and the current state of the advertising discipline and JA as the preeminent journal in our field. The origin of the academic discipline of advertising can be traced back to the 1890s when scholars in the psychology and business fields started conducting advertising research and teaching advertising courses at universities (Ross and Richards 2008). The first scientific advertising research is claimed to have been conducted by Harlow Gale, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota in 1895 (Ross and Richards 2008). However, firm establishment of advertising as an academic discipline devoted to generating and sharing serious and systematic research didn’t occur until the American Academy of Advertising (AAA) was formed in 1958. In January 1966 AAA began publishing a collection of papers designed to enhance and enlarge our knowledge of how advertising is created, functions, works, and with what effects. These appeared at irregular intervals under the title of Occasional Papers in Advertising. In 1972, after 4 issues, Occasional Papers in Advertising was replaced by a more formal and consistent publication by the American Academy of Advertising and renamed the Journal of Advertising (Sandage 1992). The first issue published in 1972 articulated the Journal’s aims and scope. It stated, “A discipline is measured in terms of its theoretical foundations in conjunction with their implied verifiable consequences. Therefore, because advertising is, generally, a communication industry, this Journal aims to encourage the discovery and development of, (a) valid theory and relevant facts regarding the psychological and philosophical aspects of communication, and (b) the relationship between these and other components of the advertising process” (Journal of Advertising 1(1) 1972, “Front Matter,” p. iv). The Journal’s Introduction entitled, “Some Institutional Aspects of Advertising” offered philosophical reflection on the goals and functions of advertising. It viewed advertising as a crucial social institution that is “responsible to inform and persuade members of society in respect to products, services, and ideas” (p. 6). This editorial also addressed the prevalent public criticisms of advertising and emphasized the critical social need and opportunities for advertising scholarship (Sandage 1972). Such vision and philosophical reflection for JA still ring true today. In the ensuing five decades, the Journal of Advertising has been “the premier journal devoted to the development of advertising theory and its relationship to practice” (current Journal of Advertising Aims and Scope), playing an instrumental role propelling the evolution of the advertising field as a serious scholarly discipline and fostering innovative and rigorous advertising research and theory building. JA has defined and redefined advertising and the boundaries of advertising scholarship, highlighted important research topics and helped set the research agenda, and pioneered research innovations and theory development in advertising. My vision for JA is continuing to fulfill these crucial intellectual leadership roles in our field.