The Boise Advertising Federation (BAF) is celebrating our 110 year anniversary! Over the years, we have successfully advocated for the advertising industry in Idaho. With coincidentally 110 current members, the BAF is one of the oldest trade organizations in Idaho. To thank our members for their contributions to the advertising community, we thought it would be fun to unravel some BAF throwbacks. Our team dug deep into our archives to uncover BAF content created since 1910, showing just how much we’ve done as an organization over the years. Consider this blog your own personal time capsule. Like any old yearbook, we’re excited to show off our great community, awesome work and hopefully some terrible 80’s hair. Are you ready to watch our glow-up unfold?
To start off this blast to the past, we’ll be looking at an article similar to this one: written by Jim Hawkes (BAF President 1974-75) and Tom Scott (BAF President 1994-95), it celebrates what once was an 85 year-old BAF. The article states that in 1910, W.E. Graham, John Dunham, R.G. Spaulding, George Smith and Reilly Atkinson founded the Boise Ad Club. They sought to prove the power of advertising. With the current state of our booming marketplace, it’s clear that advertising plays a critical role in a successful business. To put this decade into perspective, in 1910 Boise had a population of around 17,000 people, and we currently have around 228,000. The first Boise Ad Club meeting was held at the Owyhee building, which at the time was in the middle of nowhere. These pioneers were interested in advertising when the dominant media was traditional print. The founding of the BAF even predated broadcast radio which first surfaced in the 1920’s— radio wasn’t an established medium in Boise until the 1940’s.
Jumping back a few years and looking at the content of advertising around this time; in 1908 the influential book “The Psychology of Advertising” by Walter Dill Scott was published in Chicago. Scott urged admakers to veer from reason-why copy and to focus attention on the pleasure it would provide the purchaser. Reason-why copy, which was factual and descriptive, was said to be the norm. Around this time the psychology of suggestion and the intent of targeting emotions began to surface within larger cities and larger businesses.
Hawke’s and Scott’s article shares that the BAF had held a strong relationship with the Boise business community since the start. The BAF has been helping create lasting and impactful initiatives, even pre-dating the Boise Chamber of Commerce, while also maintaining a culture of ethical and responsible advertising. The featured article shares glimpses of what the BAF was up to throughout the decades. From the 1920’s “Boise Why” program to encourage economic and industrial growth to fighting the Boise City Council from potentially banning billboards in the 1990’s, this article covers it all.
We will be diving into a different decade each month to connect with our BAF roots. Below is a link to this amazing article. Next month we will roar into the Boise Ad Club in the 1920’s.
If you have been in the industry since “who knows when” and want to contribute to our walk down memory lane, please submit any old articles, pictures or campaigns that you have to president@boiseadfed.org. We would love to hear from you!
Preface in the 1975 Member Roster
“BAF Celebrates 85 Years” by Jim Hawkes and Tom Scott Page 1
“BAF Celebrates 85 Years” by Jim Hawkes and Tom Scott Page 2