Barker, Charles

Definition:
(1791-1859). Setting himself up in the famous year of 1812 as an 'advertising agent', having previously prospered by delivering military intelligence from Europe to the Duke of Wellington, Charles Barker bought blocks of ADVERTISING SPACE from newspaper and magazine proprietors and resold it in smaller units at a marked-up price to individual advertisers. He thus performed the classic functions of entrepreneurial intermediary and professional service provider, in combination. The media owners enjoyed the advantage of dealing with one selling agent instead of many separate buyers; the advertisers could consult and instruct one expert intermediary instead of dealing with the many different sellers of advertising space. The important and enduring concept of the ADVERTISING AGENCY was thus invented and established. Fragmentary historical records show that there had been advertising intermediaries 30 years before, but they seem to have charged a fee for their services to the advertiser, who paid the media bills direct, rather than making their living by marking up the media owners' wholesale prices. They were 'advertising agents', whereas Charles Barker - despite his own description - was really a 'space broker'.
During the twentieth century, his company developed into three distinct divisions, providing professional expertise in advertising, public relations and 'human resources'. The Charles Barker advertising agency built up a significant specialisation in the financial sector. By a nice coincidence, it merged in the nineteen-eighties with the London office of one founded by an equally significant figure in the history of American advertising, F.W. AYER. Although Ayer Barker became the thirtieth largest agency in Britain, it was soon after sold off along with the rest of the European advertising network when the American holding company ran into financial troubles. This seminal name was not thereby consigned to the dustbin of history altogether, however. The new owners preserved the surname, at least, in the Barkers recruitment-advertising agency, with headquarters in London and local offices throughout the UK, and in the Barkers Regional Communications network in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Meanwhile, in the public relations field, the Charles Barker agency negotiated a successful management buy-out from its ailing parent and remains a force in British PR, now without any ownership links to the advertising wing of the old firm. In short, the name of the man who invented the advertising agency has lived on in one form or another for 185 years as this dictionary goes to print.

Cross-References:
[advertising agency] [advertising space] [Ayer, NW and FW]

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