As mass production of manufactured goods grew, so did advertising budgets and the concept of brands. Brand advertising became fuel for the mass media, and profit rose. The profit motive drove the change in order to attract bigger audiences. The scene was set to allow mass media channels to turn into huge machineries of cultural production. In that context, the people who had the most wealth and power in society also had the greatest ability to produce and distribute their own ideas and culture. In nineteenth-century Europe, capitalists, such as factory owners and bankers, used their influence with newspaper owners, politicians, and some intellectuals, and were able to make liberty and freedom the dominant ideas of the age (Manza et al., 2017). In the early 20th century, the new technologies began to give hope of wider improvements and a remarkable outburst of a creativeness occurred. Marinetti published in Le Figaro in 1909 the “Manifest of Futurism”, which rejected the past and hailed progress, industry and speed as modern gods.

Car marketing began with very simple black and white adverts, produced soon after motor vehicles were invented. These simple adverts were a sign of the times, emphasizing that cars were the ultimate luxury. In the 1920s publicity became brighter with beautiful Art Deco illustrations, as ad agencies were brought in to drive the creativity of the adverts forward. Cars became more common and ads became more impressionistic, focusing less on functional features, and more on illustrating idealized scenes. Many automotive makers began to market their cars to the wealthy classes.