Advertising series in the print media of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: uncle Mikhey's travels in advertisements of the Laferm association

The article is focused on a series of advertising texts united by a common character and story. Having emerged in print advertising of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, such series can be seen as the first manifestations of the advertising series genre, in which, along with the dominant tendency to informativeness, typical for the early 20th century, new techniques appear, these strengthening the expressive and manipulative components of the text. The advertisements analyzed in the paper are texts placed in the regional newspaper Uralskaya Zhizn (1903). In the array of the advertising texts examined, only one series united by the story and the character, published in November-December 1903, was found. It is devoted to the cigarettes of the Laferm company. Instead of the same text repeatedly published for several months, which was typical of advertisements of that period, the reader receives a new text in each issue. The texts are designed and laid out so as to resemble telegrams, and each individual text is stylized as a rayosh folk verse. Together they form a kind of travel novel or travel notes in verse. Important components of the text are the character (a representative of the company) and his interaction with the readers. It is they, not the product itself, that come to the fore. The non-provision of detailed information about the product is also an innovative feature of evolving advertising. The character uniting all the texts is presented by the authors as a symbol of the advertised products and the Association, which indicates not only a new form of advertising but also a more complex way of presenting goods, specifically the basics of brand formation.