Volume 3, Issue 8 August 2026
The Discovery Platform for today’s PR Tech Ecosystem
History of Marketing & PR (Short Version)
Summer, Vacation & a Little Marketing History
August is traditionally vacation month, and even I got the memo! I decided to escape to Palm Springs without realizing that August is not exactly peak tourist season. (Who knew 115 degrees might discourage visitors?) The upside? It was wonderfully quiet, and we had a great time doing absolutely nothing by the pool (in the shade).
With things a little quieter this summer, we decided to have some fun with the history of marketing. And what a wild ride it’s been! From the days of Mad Men and radio advertising to a $10,000 “Kitchen Computer” designed to store recipes (spoiler alert: not one was sold), marketing innovation has produced some wonderfully strange and surprisingly important milestones.
I also wrote this series with some of our younger PR practitioners in mind. If you’ve grown up with Google, social media and smartphones, you may not realize just how dramatically the profession has evolved, or how many innovations had to happen before we got here.
Our From Billboards to Bots: Marketing’s Wild Evolution series is a quick, entertaining trip through the big moments, breakthroughs and occasional oddities that shaped modern marketing and communications.
Because PRToolFinder is more than a database of tools. It’s a learning and discovery platform that we’re all building together.
So, whether you’re back from vacation, still dreaming of the beach, or simply trying to stay cool, come take a fun little trip through marketing history with us.
Enjoy!
- Part 1: From Billboards to Bots: Marketing’s Wild Evolution
- Part 2: The Dawn of Computing—the 1950s
- Part 3: The 1960’s (and 70’s): Women flex their marketing muscles
- Part 4: 1980–Y2K: Marketing’s Big Bang
- Part 5: 2000-2010 – the Year the DOT-COM Bubble Burst
There are three more episodes to take us through September 18 and the official end of Summer! Don’t miss the next one!
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Catch Up on PRToolSchool
If you’re looking for something a little more current, all of our Spring/Summer PR Tool School posts are now available on the PRToolFinder blog. With 30 categories of tools in the database, Tool School is our opportunity to take a deeper look at the technology available to PR pros and communicators.
Each week featured a Monday Deep Dive into a tool category, followed by a new Thursday Comparison Guide. We even put AI to the test to see how well it could identify the tools in each category—and consistently found that it surfaced only about 50% of the tools in the PRToolFinder collection. For some, that may be “good enough.” But what if the tool it missed would have been perfect for your business, your needs and your budget?
Whether you’re researching a specific category or just want to see what’s out there, you can catch up on the posts in our blog—or get the quick version by watching our two-minute category overviews in the Video Resource Center. Each is packed with bite-sized insights and tool highlights designed for busy communicators.
What’s New in PRToolFinder?
Tools Added:
Reportable.co (Discover Reportable in the Newswires/Press Release Distribution category and the Media Monitoring category!)
Tools Removed:
None
PR Tool News & Trends
Notified and Hearst Media Expand Press Release Reach Across Trusted U.S. Publishers – Full-service clients of GlobeNewsWire can now increase the reach of press releases across three trusted Hearst Media publications with local, regional and national audiences: SFGATE, the San Francisco Chronicle and SeattlePI.
Insights From the 2026 PR Newswire Partner Experience Survey – “We began our survey by asking our partners how their clients define success. Through our questioning, our partners explored what constitutes a successful offering, what services are in demand and what goals their clients want to achieve. In the process, we found some interesting insights, including: Measurable Outcomes Are Essential for Agency Clients, but Performance Visibility and Differentiation Are Also Key
Featured launches media monitoring to track brand mentions and competitor coverage – Media Monitoring is a new capability enabling communications teams to track media mentions and competitor coverage across online publications. Users can ask Featured’s chat questions like “Where has my company been mentioned recently?” to discover recent coverage.
Reportable Launches Version 2.0 of Its Interactive News Release, Adding AI and Search Optimization for Communications and PR Professionals – New version helps organizations surface accurate company news in AI platforms while continuing to meet reporters’ needs for summaries, visuals and downloadable assets.
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