This study examines the status of advertising posters in the context of the first half of the 20th century by comparing the art-science approach to the discourse of advertising theoreticians and executive advertising graphic designers. It draws from the literature of the time, from advertising theory and from publications regulating advertising communication in public space. It documents the poster as the exclusive mass medium of its kind in the first decade of the 20th century and presents its evolution in response to the development of other public communication tools. It captures changes in the lifestyle of the new Republic as reflected in advertising content as well as the form of poster creation.

It is often difficult to understand the current communication realities without having enough information about the historic development in the concept. This study is aiming to analyse the very beginnings of building the independent, national, Czech theory of advertising, which, right from its start, wanted to capture the role and function of advertising in broader socio-cultural and economic connections defining its actual role in the social system. It is remarkable that all predecessors of our marketers from the first three decades of the 20th century correctly see the role of advertising not only as a communication tool to achieve the economic targets of their investors - advertisers but also as a tool to create the consumer culture of their time and a tool to create the lifestyle. And it is inspiring that they understood the meaning of findings of social sciences in outlining the strategy and creativity of advertising activities as the key basis predetermining their effectiveness.

The paper is focused on some more general trends in marketing communication of nonprofit organizations in the Czech Republic. It is based on some public opinion surveys regarding the effectiveness of marketing communication in the nonprofit organization sector, specific knowledge and awareness of the program of the nonprofit sector and willingness to be personally engaged in this area, analyses of communication practice of the nonprofit sector. The goal is to find the way to a more rational and long-term grounds on which to improve the current situation.

The paper describes the characteristics of target groups with respect to historical development of their segmentation in the first half of the 20th century and today. It examines the relationship of marketers to real facts - information about the relevant target groups - as the starting point to set out a correct marketing communication strategy. It shows data on market research in the past 10 years in the Czech Republic and on the example of two different target groups - the generation: Baby Boomers and the generation: Y/Z - documents how research surveys make it possible to analyse that target group in detail and create a sufficient thesaurus of initial findings to formulate an effective marketing communication strategy.

The topic of advertising effectiveness is strongly present in the entire development of advertising in the world as the institutionalized communication activity from the half of the 19th century. We can see a systematic effort to make communications that would bring advertisers the desired effect in the Czech advertising history of the first half of the 20th century right from the first theoretical books written and published. The paper analyses views and stances on the topic of effectiveness regarding commercial communication in the form of advertising (publications by Z. Sindler, V. Holman, J. Brahec, M. Sutnar and J. Solar).

Communication Today ABSTRACT: Our academic literature about the history of Czech and Slovak advertising has been sketchy at best, often written under the influence of impressions rather than based on a real scientific analysis of historic reality, facts and development tendencies; in many cases it lacks thorough knowledge on the background of advertising, i.e. on the socio-economic, media, cultural, and creative environment in general. This study intends to analyse the beginnings of objectivization of analyses reflecting on the conditions for effective advertising at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, i.e. on the stages of development from the first dictionary definitions of the concept in 1868 up to the year 1927. It comes out of the contemporary local books, particularly, dictionary compendia – Slovník náučný (in English The Rigger’s Dictionary) published in 1868 and Ottův slovník naučný: ilustrovaná encyklopedie obecných vědomostí (In English The Ottó s Dictionary) in 1904. The author studies in detail two key books – monographs written by Zdenko Šindler (Moderní reklama, in English Modern Advertising, published in 1906), and by Vojta Holman (Reklama a život, i.e. Advertising and Life published in 1909) – and by doing so concentrates on their concept of an effective advertising activity. However, most attention is paid to Jan Brabec and his book published in 1927 under the title Zásady výnosné obchodní reklamy – na základě amerických studií a zkušeností, i.e. in English The Principles of Profitable Commercial Advertising – On the Basis of American Studies and Experience.1 The study comes to the conclusion that this book published by Jan Brabec actually laid the foundations for building a scientific theory associated with a specific communication activity, i.e. with the Czech advertising.

There is no doubt that an adequate amount of valid and comprehensive information provided by a client to a communication agency through a client brief is the key prerequisite for an effective creation of communication strategy, for the development of main contents of advertising communicates, for the choice of relevant advertising tools and all other forms of communication not implemented through the mass media. The paper is looking into an important precondition for a quality and effective activity in the stage of preparation and incubation in creative process and analyses some approaches of advertising agencies and more prominent advertising creators and copywriters to cooperation between an agency and its client on the basis of the typical characteristics of a client brief used in interwar Czechoslovakia.

The brand in history of advertising as an institutionalized commercial communication activity in the territory of the Czech lands from the beginning of the 20th century; it was advertising performed as a systematic, deliberate and goal-orientated communication activity that played an important role in identifying the manufacturing company, entrepreneur and his production. It was, and still is, an etalon for the particular quality of a product and offered service, a guarantee for trustworthy practices of the business person and symbol of value. The paper - on the basis of the specialized literature and opinions of advertising creative professionals or theoreticians of that time - describes the gradual evolution in opinion of the brand and its function in advertising communicates and advertising as a more global, socio-economic phenomenon.

Analysis of the current global and local trends in the use of digital communication forms in the commercial types of marketing communications. It concentrates on interpreting the results of studies conducted in the Czech environment and is aiming to answer the question: what changes in digital mass communication, generally, and in digital marketing communication, specifically, do we witness and also make? What human society is formed by these changes, what they mean and where they are most likely to lead, and, last but not least, are we able to effectively influence them?

The Czech theory even at the time of its isolation from foreign information sources and development trends perceived the imperfections and weaknesses of partial and non-systemic promotional activities, particularly, in the aspect of a little effective and little efficient commercial communication. As a consequence, at the start of the 70s a group of theoreticians involved in the field of study: promotion at the Faculty of Journalism, Charles University in Prague comes up with the concept for complex promotional action as a higher level of a concentrated and systemically conceived promotional activity. The paper is aiming to cover the sources and roots of this innovative approach and its practical implementation to promotion practice.