Flyers can fly into your life in many ways. Local take-out restaurants are always putting them in your mailbox, they can hand you flyers as you walk through a mall, and you can even pick them up at a church service. They are a cheap and simple mass marketing tool that can generate local interest quickly and efficiently. But why are they called ruffles? In fact, they are brochures, circulars, and flyers as well, but for some reason the name stuck, and that reason is actually quite interesting.

Small advertising brochures have been around since the invention of mass printing over 400 years ago, and they have been used as a way to spread commercial, social and political messages to a wide population throughout that time. But they had to surrender, and this took time and often the effort of a large group of people. However, the development of flight offered a completely new way of getting the message across to large numbers of people. As early as October 1870, when Paris was under siege by the Prussian army, pamphlets were collected on a balloon that flew out of the city and crossed the Prussian lines. The brochures proclaimed:

“Paris defies the enemy. All France unites. Death to the invaders. Foolish people, will we always strangle each other for the pleasure and pride of kings? Glory and conquest are crimes; defeat brings hatred and desire of revenge. Only one war is just and holy, that of independence. “

Once upon the enemy, the printed brochures were released by the thousands in the hope of discouraging the troops on the ground, whom their commanders could not prevent from seizing the message as they covered the fields below. So with the birth of this form of airborne propaganda, the term “flyer” was born.

The invention and development of airplanes in the early 20th century allowed the practice to expand in proportion to the range and capacity of the airplanes that carried them. The printing of flyers became a key activity for those responsible for getting a message across and, in addition to being used to send messages to enemy forces, they were used to inform, encourage, discourage and threaten the civilian population, depending on the objective. of propaganda. Those targets were often humanitarian, as in the case of American planes that dropped flyers over Japanese cities in WWII before the bombings to give civilians a chance to leave the area before they bombed factories and military bases.

The printing and distribution of flyers was also seen as an effective way to counteract the propaganda that civilian populations received from their own governments. Dictatorships, in particular, paint a picture of an attacking force as a devastating evil bent on destruction that can only be kept at bay by the regime in power, and use this fear as a means to keep a disgruntled population at bay. . In turn, the force that seeks to remove the dictator tries to reassure the population that they are actually liberators who are making great sacrifices for them to free them, and the world in general, from their oppressors. We said it recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. As modern aircraft allow flyers to spread across the country without much interference from the dictator and his forces, they are a low-cost and peaceful way of encouraging dissent in the hope that it will lead to increased support from the population. local. is willing to offer the invaders.

This method of using printed brochures has been used with varying degrees of success over the past hundred years, covering all major conflicts, from the world wars to the last occupation of Afghanistan. So the next time someone hands you a flyer, think about why the name on that little piece of paper can have so much meaning.