Throughout the 1980s television commercials became more and more expensive so they cut the sales story to be told in seconds rather than minutes. In the 1970s, thirty-second commercials replaced one-minute commercials and in the 1980s the fifteen-second spot became common. In the later part of the decade, networks were broadcasting more than six thousand commercials a week, with more than a third of them being fifteen-second spots. Which produced a whole era of short, snappy taglines. M&Ms began to melt in your mouth and not in your hands, and Fairfax Cone asked the question “Aren’t you glad you use Dial?” Sayings like “ring around the collar” and “where’s the beef?” reached cultural status in America.
As cable channels grew in unbelievable numbers throughout the decade, network television lost almost a third of its share of the national audience and the effectiveness of the medium began to plunge.
Heading into the 1990s, advertising agencies were faced with a growing feeling among advertisers that advertising was no longer the central element in the marketing of branded products.