Advertising and popular culture
Introduction
Every weeknight when I
turn on the TV to watch CSI I mute the ads. I see SUV ads, Vonage ads, Pepsi
and whatever other stuff they're trying to sell me.
When I check my email (I
have a Gmail account), I usually have 1 or 2 new spam in my inbox, and about
120 new spams in my spambox. At the end of the month, my spambox auto-deletes
all spam over a month old. I currently have over 4000 spams in there. I check
any new spams as spam and then go about my business of answering
emails/hatemail.
Then I read an
interesting statistic: Advertising profits have slumped during the last three
years in the United States. That doesn't mean that advertising companies are going
bankrupt (although some of them might eventually), what it means is that
companies that are advertising don't seem to be making as many sales.
For example, if the
Widget Company spends $100 million on a new advertising campaign and usually
makes about $500 million in profits, whats happened is that instead of making
$500 M, they are only making $400 M instead.
Obviously people aren't
selling Widgets, but the principle is the same. Companies seem to be going into
an "advertising backslide", almost as if we were in a depression.
Except we're not in a
depression. True, the US economy did SHRINK 0.5% during 2005, but that’s not a
depression. It’s a minor bump on the economic radar.
These days you see
advertising EVERYWHERE. We use Google Adsense in order to make sure the Lilith
Gallery Network makes a profit and can afford to pay for its server/etc.
Admittedly we also fall into this trap of using advertising in order to pay the
bills, and we can admit to it without being hypocritical.
But what about the rest
of the world? Advertising really is seemingly everywhere. Dentist offices often
get free magazine subscriptions because the advertising in the magazine is a
good way of selling products to consumers that might not see it otherwise. It
also advertises the magazine itself simply by "being there".
During the whole history
the aim of advertising is to inform and to convince, hasn’t changed.
Advertisement which we know now is a modern phenomenon with its roots in deep
past. One of the greatest events of the history of advertisement was the
invention of demountable fonts by Johann Gutenberg in 1440. His invention gave
life to the new carrier of advertisement: printed posters, leaflets and
newspaper announcements.
Albert Lasker, the
father of modern advertisement, told that advertisement is “a printed kind of
trade”. But this definition was given before the invention of radio and TV.
Advertising is a
transfer of information, usually paid and has the characteristic of persuasion,
about production, service or ideas by famous advertiser with the help of
different carriers.
Advertising occupies a
major place in American society. Linked to the bedrock principles that shaped
American nation - free speech, competition and individual choice - it has
served the public since colonial times as a source of vital information about
their open, market-based economy.
Advertising is a
positive force in our free society. Protected by the First Amendment, it
informs the public, promotes competition, fuels economic growth, creates jobs
and fosters a wide array of media choices for consumers.
The First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom
of speech or of the press…” In a long series of cases, the U.S. Supreme Court
has conclusively extended this protection to “commercial speech.” As a result,
advertising of lawful products and services, conducted in a non-misleading way,
is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution.
According to a landmark
study conducted by the highly regarded consulting firm Global Insights under
the direction of a Nobel Laureate in Economics, advertising is a remarkably
powerful economic force. Nationally, it generates over $5 trillion in economic
activity, or approximately 20 percent of U.S. total economic activity. Sales of
products and services stimulated by advertising support 21 million jobs, or 15
percent of the total jobs in the country. In addition, another Nobel Laureate
in economics, George Stigler, also has noted that advertising is a critical force
in fostering economic efficiency and competition throughout the US economy.
Advertising enables
consumers to enjoy a vast array of media choices. Commercial television and
radio are available to the public at no cost, thanks to advertising. In
addition, advertising revenues provide substantial support for most print
publications, large portions of the Internet and cable, giving people access to
immense information and entertainment content at little cost. This support
helps democratize access to information. The public, wherever they are located
geographically and regardless of their income level, have more information
available to them than at any other time in history.
Advertising informs
consumers about product choices available in the marketplace. Increasingly, it
also educates them about issues that affect their lives. Recognizing the power
of advertising to educate, the industry annually voluntarily devotes
multi-billions of dollars worth of creative and media resources to
high-visibility public service campaigns.
Vast, affordable media
options enrich our society and underpin a core American value: the
democratization of knowledge and information. Advertising plays a critical role
in fostering this abundance of information, as it provides the financial
foundation for the immense number of media and Web services available to U.S.
consumers.
Commercial broadcasting,
both radio and television, is supported solely by revenues from the sale of
advertising time and space. Other types of media, including the Internet,
newspapers, magazines and large segments of cable television rely heavily on
advertising for a major portion of their revenues. Indeed, without advertising
dollars, many of today’s media outlets would not exist, and the cost of those
that survived would be substantially higher for the consumer.
Advertising revenue has
helped lead to a tremendous proliferation of media choices. For example,
television viewers in the early 1950’s and 60’s could watch only three
broadcast networks. Today, viewers can choose from multiple broadcast networks,
hundreds of cable channels and direct broadcast satellite programming.
The
advertising-supported business model has also fueled the explosive growth of
the Internet, creating a low barrier-to entry for an immense number of
entrepreneurial online businesses. According to research firm comScore, more
than 200 million Americans age 15 or older use search engines each month. These
consumers are going to the Internet to access - at no cost - all types of
content: from news and health, to sports and entertainment, to job listings and
travel recommendations. The most popular Internet search engines, news outlets,
entertainment portals, photo and video sharing services and social networking
sites all give consumers free access to vast content and online experiences
thanks to their advertising revenues.
The online media has
developed at an extraordinary pace. It took 38 years for radio to reach 50
million Americans; network television took 13 years and cable television took
10 years. It took only about three years for the Internet to reach 50 million
users in the U.S.
According to the
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), there was $23.4 billion spent on
advertising and paid search on the Internet in 2008. To put this in perspective,
the Internet today is a bigger advertising medium than radio, outdoor
advertising and about the same as consumer magazines. (www.iab.net).
However, policymakers
need to refrain from imposing undue restrictions that would limit the
effectiveness of interactive advertising, thereby diminishing the flow of ad
dollars into this promising new media channel.
The economic health of
most of American media, including the online marketplace, rests primarily on
the strong financial foundation provided by advertising.
You see that modern
economy, especially advertising, as a part of modern economy not only in the
USA, is much connected with pop culture: TV, Internet, literature, art and etc.
This phenomenon is very interesting. The problem of advertising is very
important for economics because you need ads for promoting your production,
especially if you only start your own business. Everybody knows that ad is
connected with the culture: TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, even films an so
on.
So in my work I’ll try
to study the problem of affecting advertising on pop culture in America. At
first we’ll learn the definitions of advertisement and pop culture.
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade its viewers,
readers or listeners to take some action. It usually includes the name of a
product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer,
to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that particular
brand. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Commercial advertisers
often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services
through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in
an effort to associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of
consumers. Different types of media can be used to deliver these messages,
including traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio,
outdoor or direct mail. Advertising may be placed by an advertising agency on
behalf of a company or other organization.
Organizations that spend
money on advertising promoting items other than a consumer product or service
include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental
agencies. Nonprofit organizations may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as
a public service announcement.
Money spent on
advertising has declined in recent years. In 2007, spending on advertising was
estimated at more than $150 billion in the United States and $385 billion
worldwide, and the latter to exceed $450 billion by 2010.
History
Egyptians used papyrus
to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political
campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia.
Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient
Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation
of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of
Asia, Africa, and South America. The tradition of wall painting can be traced
back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC. History tells us
that Out-of-home advertising and billboards are the oldest forms of
advertising.
As the towns and cities
of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable to read,
signs that today would say cobbler, miller, tailor or blacksmith would use an
image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a
diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables
were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their
proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for
the convenience of the customers.
As education became an
apparent need and reading, as well as printing, developed advertising expanded
to include handbills. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in
weekly newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly
to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with
advances in the printing press; and medicines, which were increasingly sought
after as disease ravaged Europe. However, false advertising and so-called
"quack" advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the
regulation of advertising content.
As the economy expanded
during the 19th century, advertising grew alongside. In the United States, the
success of this advertising format eventually led to the growth of mail-order
advertising.
In June 1836, French
newspaper La Presse was the first to include paid advertising in its pages,
allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its
profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles. Around 1840,
Volney Palmer established a predecessor to advertising agencies in
Boston.Around the same time, in France, Charles-Louis Havas extended the
services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making
it the first French group to organize. At first, agencies were brokers for
advertisement space in newspapers. N. W. Ayer & Son was the first
full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content. N.W. Ayer
opened in 1869, and was located in Philadelphia.5
At the turn of the
century, there were few career choices for women in business; however,
advertising was one of the few. Since women were responsible for most of the
purchasing done in their household, advertisers and agencies recognized the
value of women's insight during the creative process. In fact, the first
American advertising to use a sexual sell was created by a woman - for a soap
product. Although tame by today's standards, the advertisement featured a
couple with the message "The skin you love to touch".
In the early 1920s, the first
radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers
who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers. As time passed,
many non-profit organizations followed suit in setting up their own radio
stations, and included: schools, clubs and civic groups. When the practice of
sponsoring programs was popularized, each individual radio program was usually
sponsored by a single business in exchange for a brief mention of the business'
name at the beginning and end of the sponsored shows. However, radio station
owners soon realized they could earn more money by selling sponsorship rights
in small time allocations to multiple businesses throughout their radio
station's broadcasts, rather than selling the sponsorship rights to single
businesses per show.
This practice was
carried over to television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A fierce battle
was fought between those seeking to commercialize the radio and people who
argued that the radio spectrum should be considered a part of the commons - to
be used only non-commercially and for the public good. The United Kingdom
pursued a public funding model for the BBC, originally a private company, the
British Broadcasting Company, but incorporated as a public body by Royal Charter
in 1927. In Canada, advocates like Graham Spry were likewise able to persuade
the federal government to adopt a public funding model, creating the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation. However, in the United States, the capitalist model
prevailed with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 which created the
Federal Communications Commission.7 To placate the socialists, the
U.S. Congress did require commercial broadcasters to operate in the
"public interest, convenience, and necessity". Public broadcasting
now exists in the United States due to the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act which
led to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio.
In the early 1950s, the
DuMont Television Network began the modern trend of selling advertisement time
to multiple sponsors. Previously, DuMont had trouble finding sponsors for many
of their programs and compensated by selling smaller blocks of advertising time
to several businesses. This eventually became the standard for the commercial
television industry in the United States. However, it was still a common
practice to have single sponsor shows, such as The United States Steel Hour. In
some instances the sponsors exercised great control over the content of the
show - up to and including having one's advertising agency actually writing the
show. The single sponsor model is much less prevalent now, a notable exception
being the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
The 1960s saw
advertising transform into a modern approach in which creativity was allowed to
shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to
consumers' eyes. The Volkswagen ad campaign-featuring such headlines as
"Think Small" and "Lemon" (which were used to describe the
appearance of the car)-ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a
"position" or "unique selling proposition" designed to
associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer's mind. This
period of American advertising is called the Creative Revolution and its
archetype was William Bernbach who helped create the revolutionary Volkswagen
ads among others. Some of the most creative and long-standing American
advertising dates to this period.
The late 1980s and early
1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV. Pioneering
the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the
consumer tunes in for the advertising message, rather than it being a
by-product or afterthought. As cable and satellite television became
increasingly prevalent, specialty channels emerged, including channels entirely
devoted to advertising, such as QVC, Home Shopping Network, and ShopTV Canada.
Marketing through the
Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the
"dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on
advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access.
At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites including the search
engine Google, started a change in online advertising by emphasizing
contextually relevant, unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than inundate,
users. This has led to a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of
interactive advertising.
The share of advertising
spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media. For
example, in the U.S. in 1925, the main advertising media were newspapers,
magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters. Advertising spending as a
share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998, television and radio had become
major advertising media. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP
was slightly lower-about 2.4 percent.
A recent advertising
innovation is "guerrilla marketing", which involve unusual approaches
such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars
that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the
viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message. Guerrilla
advertising is becoming increasing more popular with a lot of companies. This
type of advertising is unpredictable and innovative, which causes consumers to
buy the product or idea. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and
"embedded" ads, such as via product placement, having consumers vote
through text messages, and various innovations utilizing social network
services such as MySpace.
Public service
advertising
The same advertising
techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to inform,
educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues, such as HIV/AIDS,
political ideology, energy conservation and deforestation.
Advertising, in its
non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and
motivating large audiences. "Advertising justifies its existence when used
in the public interest - it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for
commercial purposes." - Attributed to Howard Gossage by David Ogilvy.
Public service
advertising, non-commercial advertising, public interest advertising, cause
marketing, and social marketing are different terms for (or aspects of) the use
of sophisticated advertising and marketing communications techniques (generally
associated with commercial enterprise) on behalf of non-commercial, public
interest issues and initiatives.
In the United States,
the granting of television and radio licenses by the FCC is contingent upon the
station broadcasting a certain amount of public service advertising. To meet
these requirements, many broadcast stations in America air the bulk of their
required public service announcements during the late night or early morning
when the smallest percentage of viewers are watching, leaving more day and prime
time commercial slots available for high-paying advertisers.
Public service
advertising reached its height during World Wars I and II under the direction
of several governments.
Types of
advertising
Virtually any medium can
be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media can include wall
paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack
cards, radio, cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone
screens, shopping carts, web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human
billboards, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, banners
attached to or sides of airplanes ("logojets"), in-flight
advertisements on seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors,
roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and
trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, doors of bathroom stalls, stickers
on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening
section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets
and supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to
deliver their message through a medium is advertising.
Television
The TV commercial is
generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is reflected
by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV
events. The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as
the most prominent advertising event on television. The average cost of a
single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached US$3 million (as of
2009).
The majority of
television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to
the product.
Virtual advertisements
may be inserted into regular television programming through computer graphics.
It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace
local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience. More
controversially, virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where
none exist in real-life. Virtual product placement is also possible.
Infomercials
An infomercial is a
long-format television commercial, typically five minutes or longer. The word
"infomercial" is a portmanteau of the words "information"
& "commercial". The main objective in an infomercial is to create
an impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the presentation and then
immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone number
or website. Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and
their features, and commonly have testimonials from consumers and industry
professionals.
Radio advertising
Radio advertising is a
form of advertising via the medium of radio.
Radio advertisements are
broadcasted as radio waves to the air from a transmitter to an antenna and a
thus to a receiving device. Airtime is purchased from a station or network in
exchange for airing the commercials. While radio has the obvious limitation of
being restricted to sound, proponents of radio advertising often cite this as
an advantage.
Press advertising
Press advertising
describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper, magazine, or
trade journal. This encompasses everything from media with a very broad
readership base, such as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more
narrowly targeted media such as local newspapers and trade journals on very
specialized topics. A form of press advertising is classified advertising,
which allows private individuals or companies to purchase a small, narrowly
targeted ad for a low fee advertising a product or service.
Online advertising
Online advertising is a
form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed
purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of
online advertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results
pages, banner ads, in text ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising,
online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing,
including e-mail spam.
Billboard
advertising
Mobile billboard
advertising
Mobile billboards are
generally vehicle mounted billboards or digital screens. These can be on
dedicated vehicles built solely for carrying advertisements along routes
preselected by clients, they can also be specially-equipped cargo trucks or, in
some cases, large banners strewn from planes. The billboards are often lighted;
some being backlit, and others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays
are static, while others change; for example, continuously or periodically
rotating among a set of advertisements.
Mobile displays are used
for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world, including:
· Target advertising
· One-day, and long-term campaigns
· Conventions
· Sporting events
· Store openings and similar promotional events
· Big advertisements from smaller companies
· Others
In-store
advertising
In-store advertising is
any advertisement placed in a retail store. It includes placement of a product
in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisles
and near checkout counters, eye-catching displays promoting a specific product,
and advertisements in such places as shopping carts and in-store video
displays.
Covert advertising
Covert advertising, also
known as guerrilla advertising, is when a product or brand is embedded in
entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an
item or other of a definite brand, as in the movie Minority Report, where Tom
Cruise's character John Anderton owns a phone with the Nokia logo clearly
written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the Bulgari logo. Another
example of advertising in film is in I, Robot, where main character played by
Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them
"classics," because the film is set far in the future. I, Robot and
Spaceballs also showcase futuristic cars with the Audi and Mercedes-Benz logos
clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles. Cadillac chose to advertise in
the movie The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result contained many scenes in which
Cadillac cars were used. Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches, Ford,
VAIO, BMW and Aston Martin cars are featured in recent James Bond films, most
notably Casino Royale. In "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver
Surfer", the main transport vehicle shows a large Dodge logo on the front.
Blade Runner includes some of the most obvious product placement; the whole
film stops to show a Coca-Cola billboard.
Celebrities
This type of advertising
focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain recognition
for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often
advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite
products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often
involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to
advertise specific or general products.
The use of celebrities
to endorse a brand can have its downsides, however. One mistake by a celebrity
can be detrimental to the public relations of a brand. For example, following
his performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing,
China, swimmer Michael Phelps' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as
Kellogg's did not want to associate with him after he was photographed smoking
marijuana.
Media and
advertising approaches
Increasingly, other
media are overtaking many of the "traditional" media such as
television, radio and newspaper because of a shift toward consumer's usage of
the Internet for news and music as well as devices like digital video recorders
(DVR's) such as TiVo.
Advertising on the World
Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are
dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the
traffic that the website receives.
Digital signage is
poised to become a major mass media because of its ability to reach larger
audiences for less money. Digital signage also offer the unique ability to see
the target audience where they are reached by the medium. Technology advances
has also made it possible to control the message on digital signage with much
precision, enabling the messages to be relevant to the target audience at any
given time and location which in turn, gets more response from the advertising.
Digital signage is being successfully employed in supermarkets. Another
successful use of digital signage is in hospitality locations such as
restaurants and malls.
E-mail advertising is
another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known as
"e-mail spam". Spam has been a problem for email users for many
years. But more efficient filters are now available making it relatively easy
to control what email you get.
Some companies have
proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and
the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the effectiveness of
subliminal advertising, and the pervasiveness of mass messages.
Unpaid advertising (also
called "publicity advertising"), can provide good exposure at minimal
cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"),
spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun
(in the United States, "Xerox" = "photocopier",
"Kleenex" = tissue, "Vaseline" = petroleum jelly,
"Hoover" = vacuum cleaner, "Nintendo" (often used by those
exposed to many video games) = video games, and "Band-Aid" = adhesive
bandage) - these can be seen as the pinnacle of any advertising campaign.
However, some companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object.
Equating a brand with a common noun also risks turning that brand into a
genericized trademark - turning it into a generic term which means that its
legal protection as a trademark is lost.
As the mobile phone
became a new mass media in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content
appeared on mobile phones in Finland, it was only a matter of time until mobile
advertising followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value
of mobile advertising had reached $2.2 billion and providers such as Admob
delivered billions of mobile ads.
More advanced mobile ads
include banner ads, coupons, Multimedia Messaging Service picture and video
messages, advergames and various engagement marketing campaigns. A particular
feature driving mobile ads is the 2D Barcode, which replaces the need to do any
typing of web addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain
immediate access to web content. 83 percent of Japanese mobile phone users
already are active users of 2D barcodes.
A new form of
advertising that is growing rapidly is social network advertising. It is online
advertising with a focus on social networking sites. This is a relatively
immature market, but it has shown a lot of promise as advertisers are able to
take advantage of the demographic information the user has provided to the social
networking site. Friendertising is a more precise advertising term in which
people are able to direct advertisements toward others directly using social
network service.
From time to time, The
CW Television Network airs short programming breaks called "Content
Wraps," to advertise one company's product during an entire commercial
break. The CW pioneered "content wraps" and some products featured
were Herbal Essences, Crest, Guitar Hero II, Cover Girl, and recently Toyota.
Recently, there appeared
a new promotion concept, "ARvertising", advertising on Augmented
Reality technology.
Influencing and
conditioning
The most important
element of advertising is not information but suggestion more or less making
use of associations, emotions (appeal to emotion) and drives dormant in the
sub-conscience of people, such as sex drive, herd instinct, of desires, such as
happiness, health, fitness, appearance, self-esteem, reputation, belonging,
social status, identity, adventure, distraction, reward, of fears (appeal to fear),
such as illness, weaknesses, loneliness, need, uncertainty, security or of
prejudices, learned opinions and comforts. “All human needs, relationships, and
fears - the deepest recesses of the human psyche - become mere means for the
expansion of the commodity universe under the force of modern marketing. With
the rise to prominence of modern marketing, commercialism - the translation of
human relations into commodity relations - although a phenomenon intrinsic to
capitalism, has expanded exponentially.” ’Cause-related marketing’ in which
advertisers link their product to some worthy social cause has boomed over the
past decade.
Advertising exploits the
model role of celebrities or popular figures and makes deliberate use of humour
as well as of associations with colour, tunes, certain names and terms.
Altogether, these are factors of how one perceives himself and one’s
self-worth. In his description of ‘mental capitalism’ Franck says, “the promise
of consumption making someone irresistible is the ideal way of objects and
symbols into a person’s subjective experience. Evidently, in a society in which
revenue of attention moves to the fore, consumption is drawn by one’s
self-esteem. As a result, consumption becomes ‘work’ on a person’s attraction.
From the subjective point of view, this ‘work’ opens fields of unexpected
dimensions for advertising. Advertising takes on the role of a life councillor
in matters of attraction. (…) The cult around one’s own attraction is what
Christopher Lasch described as ‘Culture of Narcissism’.”
For advertising critics
another serious problem is that “the long standing notion of separation between
advertising and editorial/creative sides of media is rapidly crumbling” and
advertising is increasingly hard to tell apart from news, information or
entertainment. The boundaries between advertising and programming are becoming
blurred. According to the media firms all this commercial involvement has no
influence over actual media content, but, as McChesney puts it, “this claim fails
to pass even the most basic giggle test, it is so preposterous.”
Advertising draws
“heavily on psychological theories about how to create subjects, enabling
advertising and marketing to take on a ‘more clearly psychological tinge’
(Miller and Rose, 1997, cited in Thrift, 1999, p. 67). Increasingly, the
emphasis in advertising has switched from providing ‘factual’ information to
the symbolic connotations of commodities, since the crucial cultural premise of
advertising is that the material object being sold is never in itself enough.
Even those commodities providing for the most mundane necessities of daily life
must be imbued with symbolic qualities and culturally endowed meanings via the
‘magic system (Williams, 1980) of advertising. In this way and by altering the
context in which advertisements appear, things ‘can be made to mean "just
about anything"’ (McFall, 2002, p. 162) and the ‘same’ things can be
endowed with different intended meanings for different individuals and groups
of people, thereby offering mass produced visions of individualism.”[1]
Before advertising is
done, market research institutions need to know and describe the target group
to exactly plan and implement the advertising campaign and to achieve the best
possible results. A whole array of sciences directly deal with advertising and
marketing or is used to improve its effects. Focus groups, psychologists and
cultural anthropologists are ‘’’de rigueur’’’ in marketing research”.[44]
Vast amounts of data on persons and their shopping habits are collected,
accumulated, aggregated and analysed with the aid of credit cards, bonus cards,
raffles and internet surveying. With increasing accuracy this supplies a
picture of behaviour, wishes and weaknesses of certain sections of a population
with which advertisement can be employed more selectively and effectively. The
efficiency of advertising is improved through advertising research.
Universities, of course supported by business and in co-operation with other
disciplines (s. above), mainly Psychiatry, Anthropology, Neurology and
behavioural sciences, are constantly in search for ever more refined,
sophisticated, subtle and crafty methods to make advertising more effective.
“Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing which uses medical
technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) -- not to
heal, but to sell products. Advertising and marketing firms have long used the
insights and research methods of psychology in order to sell products, of
course. But today these practices are reaching epidemic levels, and with a
complicity on the part of the psychological profession that exceeds that of the
past. The result is an enormous advertising and marketing onslaught that
comprises, arguably, the largest single psychological project ever undertaken.
Yet, this great undertaking remains largely ignored by the American
Psychological Association.” Robert McChesney calls it "the greatest
concerted attempt at psychological manipulation in all of human history."
Dependency of the
media and corporate censorship
Almost all mass media
are advertising media and many of them are exclusively advertising media and,
with the exception of public service broadcasting are privately owned. Their
income is predominantly generated through advertising; in the case of
newspapers and magazines from 50 to 80%. Public service broadcasting in some
countries can also heavily depend on advertising as a source of income (up to
40%). In the view of critics no media that spreads advertisements can be
independent and the higher the proportion of advertising, the higher the
dependency. This dependency has “distinct implications for the nature of media
content…. In the business press, the media are often referred to in exactly the
way they present themselves in their candid moments: as a branch of the
advertising industry.”
In addition, the private
media are increasingly subject to mergers and concentration with property
situations often becoming entangled and opaque. This development, which Henry
A. Giroux calls an “ongoing threat to democratic culture”, by itself
should suffice to sound all alarms in a democracy. Five or six advertising
agencies dominate this 400 billion U.S. dollar global industry.
“Journalists have long
faced pressure to shape stories to suit advertisers and owners …. the vast
majority of TV station executives found their news departments ‘cooperative’ in
shaping the news to assist in ‘non-traditional revenue development.” Negative
and undesired reporting can be prevented or influenced when advertisers
threaten to cancel orders or simply when there is a danger of such a
cancellation. Media dependency and such a threat becomes very real when there
is only one dominant or very few large advertisers. The influence of
advertisers is not only in regard to news or information on their own products
or services but expands to articles or shows not directly linked to them. In
order to secure their advertising revenues the media has to create the best
possible ‘advertising environment’. Another problem considered censorship by
critics is the refusal of media to accept advertisements that are not in their
interest. A striking example of this is the refusal of TV stations to broadcast
ads by Adbusters. Groups try to place advertisements and are refused by
networks.
It is principally the
viewing rates which decide upon the programme in the private radio and
television business. “Their business is to absorb as much attention as
possible. The viewing rate measures the attention the media trades for the information
offered. The service of this attraction is sold to the advertising business”
and the viewing rates determine the price that can be demanded for advertising.
“Advertising companies
determining the contents of shows has been part of daily life in the USA since
1933. Procter & Gamble (P&G) …. offered a radio station a
history-making trade (today know as “bartering”): the company would produce an
own show for “free” and save the radio station the high expenses for producing
contents. Therefore the company would want its commercials spread and, of
course, its products placed in the show. Thus, the series ‘Ma Perkins’ was
created, which P&G skilfully used to promote Oxydol, the leading detergent
brand in those years and the Soap opera was born …”
While critics basically
worry about the subtle influence of the economy on the media, there are also
examples of blunt exertion of influence. The US company Chrysler, before it
merged with Daimler Benz had its agency, PentaCom, send out a letter to
numerous magazines, demanding them to send, an overview of all the topics
before the next issue is published to “avoid potential conflict”. Chrysler most
of all wanted to know, if there would be articles with “sexual, political or
social” content or which could be seen as “provocative or offensive”. PentaCom
executive David Martin said: “Our reasoning is, that anyone looking at a 22.000
$ product would want it surrounded by positive things. There is nothing
positive about an article on child pornography.” In another example,
the „USA Network held top-level ‚off-the-record’ meetings with advertisers in
2000 to let them tell the network what type of programming content they wanted
in order for USA to get their advertising.” Television shows are created to
accommodate the needs for advertising, e. g. splitting them up in suitable
sections. Their dramaturgy is typically designed to end in suspense or leave an
unanswered question in order to keep the viewer attached.
The movie system, at one
time outside the direct influence of the broader marketing system, is now fully
integrated into it through the strategies of licensing, tie-ins and product
placements. The prime function of many Hollywood films today is to aid in the
selling of the immense collection of commodities. The press called the 2002
Bond film ‘Die Another Day’ featuring 24 major promotional partners an
‘ad-venture’ and noted that James Bond “now has been ‘licensed to sell’” As it
has become standard practise to place products in motion pictures, it “has
self-evident implications for what types of films will attract product
placements and what types of films will therefore be more likely to get made”.
Advertising and
information are increasingly hard to distinguish from each other. “The borders
between advertising and media …. become more and more blurred…. What August
Fischer, chairman of the board of Axel Springer publishing company considers to
be a ‘proven partnership between the media and advertising business’ critics
regard as nothing but the infiltration of journalistic duties and freedoms”.
According to RTL-executive Helmut Thoma “private stations shall not and cannot
serve any mission but only the goal of the company which is the ‘acceptance by
the advertising business and the viewer’. The setting of priorities in this
order actually says everything about the ‘design of the programmes’ by private
television.” Patrick Le Lay, former managing director of TF1, a private French
television channel with a market share of 25 to 35%, said: "There are many
ways to talk about television. But from the business point of view, let’s be
realistic: basically, the job of TF1 is, e. g. to help Coca Cola sell its
product. (…) For an advertising message to be perceived the brain of the viewer
must be at our disposal. The job of our programmes is to make it available,
that is to say, to distract it, to relax it and get it ready between two
messages. It is disposable human brain time that we sell to Coca Cola.”
Because of these
dependencies a widespread and fundamental public debate about advertising and
its influence on information and freedom of speech is difficult to obtain, at
least through the usual media channels; otherwise these would saw off the
branch they are sitting on. “The notion that the commercial basis of media,
journalism, and communication could have troubling implications for democracy
is excluded from the range of legitimate debate” just as “capitalism is
off-limits as a topic of legitimate debate in U.S. political culture”.
An early critic of the
structural basis of U.S. journalism was Upton Sinclair with his novel The Brass
Check in which he stresses the influence of owners, advertisers, public
relations, and economic interests on the media. In his book “Our Master's Voice
- Advertising” the social ecologist James Rorty (1890-1973) wrote: "The
gargoyle’s mouth is a loudspeaker, powered by the vested interest of a
two-billion dollar industry, and back of that the vested interests of business
as a whole, of industry, of finance. It is never silent, it drowns out all other
voices, and it suffers no rebuke, for it is not the voice of America? That is
its claim and to some extent it is a just claim...”
It has taught us how to
live, what to be afraid of, what to be proud of, how to be beautiful, how to be
loved, how to be envied, how to be successful.. Is it any wonder that the
American population tends increasingly to speak, think, feel in terms of this
jabberwocky? That the stimuli of art, science, religion are progressively
expelled to the periphery of American life to become marginal values,
cultivated by marginal people on marginal time?"
Popular culture
Popular culture (commonly known as pop culture) is the totality of artistic
products, ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena
that the average person of any nation or group is likely to have encountered or
been influenced by. In developed countries, cultural products are often
disseminated by market-driven mass media (at least from the early 20th century
onward). For this reason, it sometimes comes under heavy criticism from various
scientific and non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and
countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist,
and corrupted.
It is manifest in
preferences and acceptance or rejection of features in such various subjects as
cooking, clothing, consumption, and the many facets of entertainment such as
sports, music, film, and literature. Popular culture often contrasts with the
more exclusive, even elitist "high culture", that is, the
culture of ruling social groups, and the low or folk culture of the lower
classes. The earliest use of "popular" in English was
during the fifteenth century in law and politics, meaning "low",
"base", "vulgar", and "of the common people";
from the late eighteenth century it began to mean "widespread" and
gain in positive connotation. (Williams 1985). "Culture" has been
used since the 1950s to refer to various subgroups of society, with emphasis on
cultural differences.
Definitions
Defining 'popular' and
'culture', which are essentially contested concepts, is complicated with
multiple competing definitions of popular culture. John Storey, in Cultural
Theory and Popular Culture, discusses six definitions. The quantitative
definition, of culture has the problem that much "high culture" (e.g.
television dramatizations of Jane Austen) is widely favoured. "Pop
culture" is also defined as the culture that is "left over" when
we have decided what high culture is. However, many works straddle or cross the
boundaries, e.g. Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Storey draws attention to the
forces and relations which sustain this difference such as the educational
system.
A third definition
equates pop culture with Mass Culture. This is seen as a commercial culture,
mass produced for mass consumption. From a Western European perspective, this
may be compared to American culture. Alternatively, "pop culture" can
be defined as an "authentic" culture of the people, but this can be
problematic because there are many ways of defining the "people."
Storey argues that there is a political dimension to popular culture;
neo-Gramscian hegemony theory "... sees popular culture as a site of
struggle between the 'resistance' of subordinate groups in society and the
forces of 'incorporation' operating in the interests of dominant groups in
society." A postmodernism approach to popular culture would "no
longer recognize the distinction between high and popular culture'
Storey emphasizes that
popular culture emerges from the urbanization of the industrial revolution,
which identifies the term with the usual definitions of 'mass culture'. Studies
of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber or Bristol, for example) locate much of the
characteristic vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance
popular culture, while contemporary practitioners like Dario Fo and John
McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk
traditions (the commedia dell'arte for example).
Popular culture changes
constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies,
and represents a complex of mutually-interdependent perspectives and values
that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example,
certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a
subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture
has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to
a broad spectrum of the public.
Institutional
propagation
Popular culture and
the mass media have a symbiotic relationship: each depends on the other in an
intimate collaboration."
-K. Turner (1984),
p.4
The news media mines the
work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often
emphasizing elements that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For
instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become
well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater
practical importance, have not. Both scholarly facts and news stories get
modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright
falsehoods.
Hannah Arendt's 1961
essay "The Crisis in Culture" suggested that a "market-driven
media would lead to the displacement of culture by the dictates of
entertainment." Susan Sontag argues that in our culture, the most
"...intelligible, persuasive values are [increasingly] drawn from the
entertainment industries", which is "undermining of standards of
seriousness." As a result, "tepid, the glib, and the senselessly
cruel" topics are becoming the norm. Some critics argue that
popular culture is “dumbing down”: "...newspapers that once ran foreign
news now feature celebrity gossip, pictures of scantily dressed young
ladies...television has replaced high-quality drama with gardening, cookery,
and other “lifestyle” programmes...[and] reality TV and asinine soaps," to
the point that people are constantly immersed in trivia about celebrity
culture.
In Rosenberg and White's
book Mass Culture, MacDonald argues that "Popular culture is a debased,
trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure,
tragedy) and also the simple spontaneous pleasures.... The masses, debauched by
several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and
comfortable cultural products." Van den Haag argues that
"...all mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and
though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other,
from reality and from themselves."
Critics have lamented
the "... replacement of high art and authentic folk culture by tasteless
industrialised artefacts produced on a mass scale in order to satisfy the
lowest common denominator." This "mass culture emerged
after the Second World War and have led to the concentration of mass-culture
power in ever larger global media conglomerates." The popular press
decreased the amount of news or information and replaced it with entertainment
or titillation that reinforces "... fears, prejudice, scapegoating
processes, paranoia, and aggression."
Critics of television
and film have argued that the quality of TV output has been diluted as stations
relentlessly pursue "populism and ratings" by focusing on the
"glitzy, the superficial, and the popular." In film, "Hollywood
culture and values" are increasingly dominating film production in other
countries. Hollywood films have changed from creating formulaic films which
emphasize "...shock-value and superficial thrill[s]" and special
effects, with themes that focus on the "...basic instincts of aggression,
revenge, violence, [and] greed." The plots "...often seem simplistic,
a standardised template taken from the shelf, and dialogue is minimal."
The "characters are shallow and unconvincing, the dialogue is also simple,
unreal, and badly constructed."
Folklore
Folklore provides a
second and very different source of popular culture. In pre-industrial times,
mass culture equaled folk culture. This earlier layer of culture still persists
today, sometimes in the form of jokes or slang jargon, which spread through the
population by word of mouth and via the Internet. By providing a new channel
for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of
popular culture.
Although the folkloric
element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the
public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold.
Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture (for
example: "My favorite character is SpongeBob SquarePants") spread by
word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that
folklore evolves.
Owing to the pervasive
and increasingly interconnected nature of popular culture, especially its
intermingling of complementary distribution sources, some cultural
anthropologists literary and cultural critics have identified a large amount of
intertextuality in popular culture's portrayals of itself. One commentator has
suggested this self-referentiality reflects the advancing encroachment of
popular culture into every realm of collective experience. "Instead of
referring to the real world, much media output devotes itself to referring to
other images, other narratives; self-referentiality is all-embracing, although
it is rarely taken account of."
Many cultural critics
have dismissed this as merely a symptom or side-effect of mass consumerism,
however alternate explanations and critique have also been offered. One critic
asserts that it reflects a fundamental paradox: the increase in technological
and cultural sophistication, combined with an increase in superficiality and
dehumanization.
Examples from
American television
Long-running television
series The Simpsons routinely alludes to mainstream media properties, as well
as the commercial content of the show itself. In one episode, Bart complains
about the crass commercialism of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while
watching television. When he turns his head away from the television, he is
shown floating by as an oversized inflatable balloon. The show also invokes
liberal reference to contemporary issues as depicted in the mainstream, and
often merges such references with unconventional and even esoteric associations
to classical and postmodernist works of literature, entertainment and art.
Advertising in
Literature, Art, Film, and Popular Culture
What is advertising?
Advertising is a means of conveying information to consumers about a product or
service that exists in many different media. Advertising serves to persuade and
inform a consumer base in order to influence them and their purchasing power.
No matter the channel by which the advertising is communicated, be it in print,
video, or sound-all advertising seeks to accomplish the same goal.
Is advertising a direct
affect Popular Culture, or is it a direct effect of Popular Culture? Through
the exploration of advertising history in the 20th century, brand identities
and their development, along with the examination of Popular Culture, and
historical events occurring during the same time frame, we can hope to find an
answer to both of these questions.
Lowering of prices and
the beginning of mass production made products more widely available to the
public, and thus carrying with it, the need to bring their attention to the new
items on the market. With the creation and development of the transcontinental
railroad, a national market for products opened.
Although the first
advertising agency was developed in 1841 by Volney B. Palmer, it wasn't until
the 20th century that advertising agencies began to offer a full spectrum of
services ranging from branding and logo design, to concepts, and implementation
of the campaign. Originally, the agency served to secure the ad space in a
newspaper. By the time the 20th century began there were several agencies for
companies to choose from. Experts started coming out of the woodwork left and
right to share their thoughts on advertising and the best methods to use,
writing book after book on the subject.
Literature and Advertising
Scholars and literary
critics differ over what constitutes literature. The once revered canon of
texts (such as The Canterbury Tales, The Merchant of Venice, and Wuthering
Heights) has given way to the study of a much broader range of texts (including
popular romances, soap operas, and advertisements) and voices (especially kinds
of voices that had not been included among canonical texts such as African-,
Asian-, and Latin-American writers). Some definitions of literature specify
criteria that a text must have in order to qualify as literature whereas others
emphasize acceptance by a reading community as the primary marker. The
following two definitions of literature represent these differing approaches:
In antiquity and in
the Renaissance, literature or letters were understood to include all writing
of quality with any pretense to permanence. [focuses on textual criteria]
... literature is a
canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines
itself throughout the course of its history. It includes works primarily
artistic and also those whose aesthetic qualities are only secondary. The
self-defining activity of the community is conducted in the light of the works,
as its members have come to read them (or concretize them). [focuses on
community acceptance]
Whether one of these or
yet another definition of literature is preferred, there is a widely shared
sense that literature stands apart from more ordinary texts such as telephone
books, shopping lists, operating instructions, and advertisements. A practical
approach to understanding literature might enumerate some widely shared
characteristics:
- Literature consists of
written texts.
- Literature is marked
by careful use of language, including features such as creative metaphors,
well-turned phrases, elegant syntax, rhyme, meter.
- Literature is written
in a literary genre (poetry, prose fiction, or drama).
- Literature is intended
by its authors to be read aesthetically.
- Literature is
deliberately somewhat open in interpretation.
Are advertisements
"writings of quality with pretenses to permanence"? Are
advertisements widely understood to be a form of literature? Are they careful
in their use of language, written in a recognizable literary genre, intended to
be and actually read aesthetically, and deliberately open in interpretation? In
fact, advertisements fail by any of these definitions to qualify as literature.
It is this difference that gives rise to the sense that literature is a part of
"high" culture while advertisements are something else and belong to
"low," or mass, culture.
However, this binary
division does not reflect the real relationship of literature and advertising
either in the present or the past. The literary theorist Jennifer Wicke argues
that neither the novel as a literary genre nor the advertisement as a text can
be properly understood alone but rather share a long and intimate history. She
notes that prior to Gutenberg, scribal manuscripts contained advertisements (or
notices) that explained the circumstances of the copying. For example, a notice
that copying had been done during holy days would signify that the text was not
to be sold. At first, such notices appeared at the end of manuscripts. Later,
after the printing press was invented, printers began placing them as prefatory
material before the main texts. The content of these notices expanded to
announce, describe, and indicate ownership of the texts that followed. Thus,
the very technology of printing spurred the development of advertisements of
printed texts.
Elizabeth Eisenstein,
investigating this historic relationship of the book and the ad, writes:
"In the course of exploiting new publicity techniques, few authors failed
to give high priority to publicizing themselves. The art of puffery, the
writing of blurbs and other familiar promotional devices were also exploited by
early printers who worked aggressively to obtain public recognition for the
authors and artists whose products they hoped to sell."
This promotion of
printed works by printers also led to the significant identification of texts
with authors. The crediting of the author had not always occurred previously
when oral stories were written down. These new techniques established books as
intellectual property and made many authors into celebrities.
These early
advertisements eventually became separated from the texts themselves. "By
the late seventeenth century... [these] publicity techniques called
'advertising' had slipped out from the covers of literary works and helped to
create the newspaper-The Advertiser became a generic name for journalistic
offerings." At this point, advertisements as we know them today began to
develop separately from books, appearing not only in newspapers but in public
spaces as signs and posters as well.
In the 19th century, the
novel emerged as the most important literary genre and remained so until film,
radio, and television challenged its popularity it in the 20th century. After
advertisements became separate and independent texts in their own right, the
relationship between literature and advertising did not cease. Rather, it
assumed complex new forms, as Wicke shows in her masterful analysis of three
classic novelists-Charles Dickens, Henry James, and James Joyce.
In several of the novels
by Charles Dickens (Sketches by Boz, Pickwick, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin
Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend), advertising figures
prominently. In Sketches by Boz he wrote: "...all London is a circus of
poster and trade bill, a receptacle for the writings of Pears and Warren's
until we can barely see ourselves underneath. Read this! Read that!"
Dickens knew intimately
of what he wrote. Before establishing himself as a novelist, he worked in
Warren's blacking factory where shoe polish was manufactured. It seems that he
sometimes helped write the copy for advertisements and that for a while he was
placed in a window polishing shoes as a form of advertising. Later, when he
wrote his novels, the power and presence of factory work and the promotion of
goods played significant roles.
In addition, Dickens
engaged with advertising yet another way by taking great interest in the
advertising of his own novels-choosing or writing ads for them. The great
popularity of his stories led to the incorporation of many of his characters
into a broad range of advertisements in ways that are familiar today. Player's
cigarettes issued in 1912 a set of trade cards (one inserted in each pack of
cigarettes) for Dickens's characters. Various commercial products mimicked the
style or used the name of one or more of his characters-from Dolly Vardon
aprons to chintz fabrics emboldened with Dickensiana. This trend continues even
today as various brands make reference to "A Christmas Carol" or ask
"Oliver Twist."
The American author
Henry James similarly engaged advertising in his novels. The American stage for
spectacle, exaggeration, and outrageous claims was set earlier in the 19th
century by P.T. Barnum and his extravagant and outlandish publicity for his
traveling shows, circus, and museum. An America that succumbed to Barnum and
unchecked advertising claims of every sort fascinated James. This fascination
is reflected in his novels. According to Wicke, James's own style of fiction
"bears a confessed kinship to the melodramatics of advertising." His
late work The American Scene (1907) takes up the subject of the consumer
society.
His book
commemorates the trip he took in 1904, after returning from twenty years in
Europe, a "pilgrim" come to see his own native land. The patchwork of
places and sights-St. Augustine, Newport, the Waldorf-Astoria, Hoboken-may seem
impressionistic renderings of his journey, but above all the text explores the
phenomenon of a capitalist culture that has come into its own since his
departure.
Irish author James
Joyce, like Dickens before him, wrote advertisements at an early stage of his
career. (He ran a film theatre and often wrote the ads for it.) It is his
masterful Ulysses (1922) that directly conjoins literature and advertising.
Leopold Bloom, the central character in the novel, works as an advertising
canvasser thus occasioning many references to advertisements in the novel. More
profoundly, "the constantly unfurling 'stream of consciousness' that is
Bloom's narrative style is largely made up of his 'mind' wending its way
through the eddies, currents, and shorelines of advertising or advertised
goods."
Many literary theorists
have recently noted connections like those above between literature and the
culture of consumption for which advertising is the mouthpiece. The James Joyce
Quarterly asserts that advertising influenced the writer at least as much as
Thomas Aquinas, Dante, or Shakespeare did. Other writers like George Eliot and
Sherwood Anderson have been studied for their connections to advertising
discourse as well. Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-2) contains passages reflective of
Bloom's interior monologues about consumer goods in Ulysses. Anderson himself
had a long career in advertising before writing his many observations about its
practices.
Thus, what all these
connections between literature and advertising show is the impossibility of
maintaining any strict division between the "high" culture of
literature and the mass culture of advertising. Some writers of great
literature were also authors of many advertisements to which and from which
they took their style of writing. More importantly, many influential writers
have brought advertising into their stories in order to analyze the role of
advertising in society. Finally, the study of literature has opened itself to
the examination of many kinds of non-canonical texts such as advertisements in
order to understand the culture that generates them.
Advertising and Art
The relationship between
advertising and art is even more intimate than that with literature. Over the
centuries, artists have been hired to paint signboards, shop walls, and other
kinds of images in the service of commercial promotion. However, it was in the
19th century that a much closer relationship between advertising and art
developed.
In London, the
well-known illustrator Cruikshank was commissioned in 1820 by Warren's blacking
company (the same company that Dickens worked for as a boy) to illustrate an
ad. The drawing he produced-a cat frightened by its own reflected image in the
sheen of a highly polished boot-clearly added spark to the long-copy
advertisement it accompanied. Such relationships were typical 19th-century
interactions between the art world and advertising.
In addition to the
drawings and other images produced directly for commercial use, a second
relation of advertising to art was the appropriation of high art for use in
advertisements. For example, John Everett Millais's sentimental painting
Bubbles (1886) became a poster for Pears soap, but not without considerable
critical uproar from those who wanted to keep "art" on a high
pedestal above the crassness of everyday commercial appeals.
Even more significant,
however, was the close connection between advertising and modern art that
developed in the later years of the 19th century. Both advertising and the
artistic movement known as modernism emerged about the same time-around 1860 to
1870. The stage for their collaboration was set by at least two factors: the
development of techniques supporting the mass production of images, and an
abundance of consumer goods hitherto unknown. Modernism dismissed literal
representations in favor of freer modes intended to evoke the sorts of
fantasies and emotions that marketers were coming to realize would help move
products. By the final years of the 19th century, modern art and modern
advertising were freely borrowing from and influencing one another.
The French advertising
poster of the late 1800s marks the beginning of this crossover between advertising and art. For example, Henri
de Toulouse-Lautrec produced advertising posters, as did many other artists who
are usually thought of as belonging to the "high art" tradition. It
was Jules Chéret, however, who invented and perfected the advertising
poster as a new genre that had no real precedent in earlier artistic
traditions. His poster for the Folies-Bergère in Paris privileges
movement over literal representation. Its bright colors also depart from
literalism to convey the excitement of the spectacle of the
Folies-Bergère.
Despite widespread use,
the advertising poster did not always meet with universal acclaim. There were
those who felt that filling the streets of Paris with advertising was a sure
sign of cultural decay rather than progress. A conservative writer, Maurice
Talmeyr, published an article entitled "The Age of the Poster" in
which he assessed its impact on society.
[The poster] does not
say to us: "Pray, obey, sacrifice yourself, adore God, fear the master,
respect the king..." It whispers to us: "Amuse yourself, preen
yourself, feed yourself, go to the theater, to the ball, to the concert, read
novels, drink good beer, buy good bouillon, smoke good cigars, eat good
chocolate, go to your carnival, keep yourself fresh, handsome, strong,
cheerful, please women, take care of yourself, comb yourself, purge yourself,
look after your underwear, your clothes, your teeth, your hands, and take
lozenges if you catch cold!"
The artist Georges
Seurat became a great fan of
Chéret and the style of his posters. He drew inspiration for some of his
later work from them. Chéret's high-stepping dancers in Les Girard:
Folies-Bergère, a lithograph from 1879, reappear a decade later in
Seurat's Le Chahut (1889-90). Many similar links between "high" artists and the popular cultural
artists producing advertising are recognized by historians of art.
In 1990, the Museum of
Modern Art in New York mounted an exhibition entitled High and Low: Modern Art,
Popular Culture that explored the relation in such areas as words, graffiti,
caricature, comics, and advertising. The exhibition catalogue noted:
"[T]he story of modern artists' responses to advertising, and vice versa,
is the most complex and tendentious of the various histories [the exhibition]
addresses." The exhibition traced the link between art and advertising
from the French advertising poster to the present.
An artistic movement
based around "found objects" spilled over into advertising itself.
The now familiar Michelin Man (1898)
emerged from Édouard Michelin's observation that a stack of tires might
resemble a man with the simple addition of arms. It was in such moments, where
art and life come together, that many great advertising ideas of the 20th
century were born. Another example
is the RCA dog inspired by a real pet and an actual incident.
The influence between
advertising and art moved the other way as well. Picasso, in his Landscape with
Posters (1912) and Au Bon Marché (1913), and many Dada avant-garde
artists incorporated images of ads or actual parts of advertisements into their
productions. In the 1920s, Fernand Léger modeled his painting The Siphon
(1924) on an ad that appeared in the French newspaper Le Matin. Examples such
as these abound in 20th-century art.
The social theorist
Michael Schudson has termed American advertising "capitalist realism"
in order to indicate the similarity of advertising art in the 1930s to the
propagandistic art forms that grew up in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at
that same time. According to Schudson, each of these states celebrated the
different local ideas of heroism (communist, national socialist, or capitalist)
in styles that were "reassuringly legible and impervious to
ambiguity."
After World War II,
artists like Andy Warhol commented on modern life through references to
advertisements. Warhol painted cans of Campbell's soup repetitively to comment
on modern life-a world in which endless copies of mechanically produced
products are available and serve to homogenize experience. (Ironically, Andy
Warhol was later commissioned by Absolut Vodka to produce an image of its
famous bottle in the Warhol style as an actual advertisement.) Artistic
commentaries on the nature of capitalism, consumption, and a world populated
with advertising imagery are mainstays in contemporary art.
The omnipresence of
advertising imagery in contemporary society is surely one of the hallmarks of
this period in history. When future generations look back on 20th- and
21st-century life, they will surely marvel at how little care we took to
preserve the popular art of advertising-most of which disappears quickly. TV
commercials are intended to evaporate, billboards to come down, and magazines
and newspapers to be recycled. Yet, the mutual influence of high art and
popular culture is one of the most salient characteristics of contemporary
expressive culture.
Advertising and Film
Since the end of World
War II, first Hollywood films and later TV scripts have frequently included
advertising as one of their themes. The Hucksters (1947) and Mr. Blandings
Builds His Dream House (1948) tell stories about the lives of men who work in
advertising, but the stories they tell are not flattering. In fact, they constitute
the beginning of a long tradition in Hollywood to use advertising (often as a
backdrop to a story rather than its central focus) in a highly stereotyped
manner. The establishment of this screen version of advertising and its
perpetuation even into the present has provided for members of the public-most
of whom have never been inside an advertising agency and do not know anyone who
works in one-their primary source of information about the inner workings of
advertising. It is no different really from how the mass media has constructed
images of lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, airline pilots, movie stars, and a
host of other professions. Although these representations develop mythologies
through repetition and are usually secondary to the main themes of stories,
they nonetheless leave after-images that linger in our minds about what we have
seen.
How does Hollywood
represent advertising? For the purposes of this unit, a list of several films
that deal with advertising in some way was developed. Then about half of these
films were studied in detail for how they represent advertising. On the basis
of this analysis, recurrent themes about advertising in the films were
identified.
The themes that will be
discussed in detail are the Hollywood representation of: (1) advertising as a
profession, (2) the impact of advertising on society, and (3) the
characteristics of people who work in advertising.
By setting a film in an
advertising agency and/or featuring people who work in advertising, the film
describes (albeit inadvertently) the profession of advertising. Films typically
make advertising appear to be easy work. Creative ideas are not depicted in
relation to strategy and research, but rather ideas seem to emerge while
throwing pencils like darts at the ceiling or in a moment of serendipity. For
example, a creative team in Nothing in Common (1986) invents skits and songs by
acting out an idea for a commercial. The scene conveys a convivial, friendly,
and fun atmosphere at work. Ray Liotta's character comes up with the perfect
jingle in Corrina, Corrina (1994) while banging out notes in a piano duo with
his housekeeper, played by Whoopi Goldberg. Many scenes show the fun aspects of
his job as a writer for commercials for Jell-O and Mr. Potato Head. In the
clip, the creative solution "just happens." In How to Lose a Guy in
10 Days (2003), Matthew McConaughey's character is engaged in a conversation
with Kate Hudson's, who uses the word "frosting" to describe
diamonds. He recognizes the originality and power of the description and
develops the tag line, "Frost yourself," for a diamond company.
None of these
representations portray the lengthy process that goes into making an
advertisement nor the strategy that lies behind it. Rather, the most photogenic
aspects of the creative process are selected and edited into the story about
advertising that gets told through movies.
Another aspect of
advertising's appearance in film is the glamorous lifestyle that surrounds the
field. The collage of images in Figures 31-34 below shows advertising
professionals dressing stylishly, working in beautiful offices, attending
elegant parties, and living in extraordinary apartments and houses. For
example, Ben Affleck in Bounce (2000) has a home whose large glass windows give
a spectacular view of Venice Beach and the waves of the Pacific beyond it.
Keanu Reeves in Sweet November (2001) lives in a high-ceiling refurbished loft
in San Francisco. This early morning scene shows the elegant furnishings that
include 12 flat-screen TVs. Mel Gibson in What Women Want (2000) lives in a
Chicago high-rise apartment with a large balcony, elegant furnishings, and a
killer view of the cityscape.
Offices are at least as
impressive as homes in Hollywood's version of the lifestyles of advertising
professionals. Offices are lively, colorful, interesting places to work. For
example, Mel Gibson's office in What Women Want is filled with award trophies, leather
chairs, and advertisements. Its dark woods and colors signify masculinity. By
contrast, Helen Hunt's office in the same film is brighter and has lots of
flowers and a more feminine feel. Her large office has not only a very big desk
but plenty of other furniture and memorabilia of her career. The interior shots
of the agency in the film show a large open space with many workstations where
mid-level employees work. The architecture of the old building, complete with
mezzanine and old ironwork, exudes style and good taste.
Advertising people
attend lots of parties in the movies. Meg Ryan is shown below in a still from
Kate & Leopold (2001). The setting is a business dinner where everyone is
well dressed, all the tables have beautiful flowers, and the room itself is
lovely. In a second clip from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the party is a gala
evening black-tie affair; the occasion is the celebration of an ad campaign for
diamonds, plenty of which sparkle in the
room. In Picture Perfect (1997), guests attend a lavish dinner where
canapés pass on trays and two models dressed as the product celebrate
Gulden's Mustard.
Not to be outdone by
their surroundings, advertising people dress exceedingly well in the movies.
Doris Day's character in Lover Come Back (1961) steps out of a convertible only
to be covered by a canopy leading to the door of a fashionable New York
building. She wears a matching dress and jacket outfit that is complete with a
fur collar. Cuba Gooding, Jr., in The Fighting Temptations (2003) is smartly
dressed in a well-tailored, fashionable suit as he addresses attendees at a
board meeting. Meg Ryan in Kate & Leopold wears an expensive crushed velvet
riding jacket to a business lunch in an uptown restaurant.
On top of the glitz and
glamour that is advertising in film is a darker image that is repeated again
and again. This is the notion that advertising is filled with lies and
manipulation. The following clips from films are typical. Each of them conveys
this idea rather directly. In The Fighting Temptations, Cuba Gooding, Jr., says
in a conversation with his boss that deception is company policy in
advertising. In Picture Perfect, Illeana Douglas's character, speaking with
Jennifer Aniston's, remarks, "I didn't lie, I sold." Even more
pointedly in Crazy People (1990), Dudley Moore describes advertising work by
saying, "We lie for a living."
This notion dates back
at least to the age of P.T. Barnum, whose exaggerated and frequently false
claims, as mentioned earlier, gave the public a bad taste for advertising. It
was not helped by traveling salesmen who drifted in and out of town in
19th-century America nor by the unrestricted claims about the benefits of
patent medicines that were common
well into the 20th century. When Hollywood began to depict advertising, all
this plus Vance Packard's exposé about motivational research had alerted
the public to the idea of deceit in advertising. This is the image of
advertisers that was laid down on
film, and these stereotypes have remained largely unchanged though there has
been little if any effort to offer evidence for them.
A second theme about
advertising in films concerns its impact on society. The idea is that
advertising generally causes people to buy things they do not need. Mr.
Blandings Builds His Dream House features Cary Grant as an advertising
executive who wants to move from New York City to the country. It is his
success in advertising that provides the means to make this decision, but the
work Mr. Blandings does is not respected by his children. In a particularly
pointed statement, one of his daughters speaks of the social evils associated
with advertising. In The Fighting Temptations, another indictment of
advertising's social policy in the willingness of Cuba Gooding's character to
exploit the public for gain and his condescending attitude toward them.
A third idea in the
Hollywood depiction of advertising is that there is a certain kind of person
who does well in advertising. This is someone who is willing to do almost
anything asked of him or her, to put job before family and personal life, and
to sell things that they might not believe in themselves.
An additional theme in
some of the films is discrepancy between men's and women's jobs in advertising.
For example, in Lover Come Back, Doris Day and Rock Hudson both work in
advertising. However, she works while he plays. In What Women Want, Mel Gibson
gets all the credit for Helen Hunt's ideas.
Advertising and Popular Culture: The Super Bowl
Each January advertising
moves onto center stage in American popular culture. The occasion is the Super
Bowl-itself one of the country's most watched TV programs. In the weeks and
days leading up to the actual event, media hype about the game and the commercials
predicts game outcome, celebrates fans, and promises ever more spectacular ads.
In 2006, viewers in more
than 45 million homes tuned in to the Super Bowl, making it the second-most
viewed program in the history of American television. More than 15 percent of
these viewers claimed to be watching primarily for the commercials. As for the
commercials themselves, they are among the most expensive to produce and air.
It was reported that airing a 30-second spot could cost as much as $2.5 million
in 2006. Having come to appreciate the appeal of Super Bowl commercials,
advertisers are making their Super Bowl offerings available for video streaming
online-for watching again, forwarding to friends, adding to personal web pages,
and even downloading to video iPods.
In return for their
investment, advertisers hope that viewers will remember their commercials and
associate them with their brands. Nothing is more distressing than a viewer who
says, "That was a very funny ad for light beer, but I couldn't tell you if
it was for Miller or Bud." Despite the entertainment value of Super Bowl
commercials (including the picking of winners and losers), these ads must still
do their work of reinforcing brand loyalty, encouraging selection of their
brands over the competition, or, more rarely, introducing new products or
services.
The cost of airing
commercials has risen from $42,000 during the first year to $2.4 million in
2006. The reach to homes and viewers has steadily increased during this period,
making it a highly ranked and prestigious venue for showcasing ads.
A few spots from
previous Super Bowls have achieved something of a cult status as best-liked
ads. According to a poll conducted by America Online, the three best Super Bowl
commercials ever were Coca-Cola's Mean Joe Greene (1980), Apple Computer's 1984
(1984), and Reebok's Terry Tate (2004). Each of these commercials struck
responsive chords with audiences by focusing on themes like sports heroes,
distrust of corporate giants, and work environments.
Newspapers, magazines,
and above all the Internet reviews the ads after they appear on the Super Bowl.
This publicity, if it is positive, is of incalculable value to the sponsors,
but not all of it is positive. For example, the 2006 post-Super Bowl
assessments included the following:
Let's start with
the lowest of the low: GoDaddy.com. Talk about a $5 million vanity project (so
bad they had to run it twice). This complete mess was what it took Bob Parsons
14 tries with ABC to get through.
- Barbara Lippert,
Adweek
A prehistoric air
express delivery-of a stick, via pterodactyl-is stymied by a hungry
tyrannosaurus, leading to the first-ever mailroom firing. Adorable and funny.
Also, how can you fault a strategy (nobody ever lost his job for choosing
FedEx) that's 40 million years old?
Ah, now here's a
show stopper that should have been our lead-in: Burger King puts on a Busby
Berkeley musical number. Singing and dancing "Whopperettes" dress as
various burger components (my favorite is the mayonnaise dress, followed by the
beef-patty tutu). This was the only ad all night that was outsized and garish
enough to be Super Bowl-worthy.
- Seth Stevenson,
Slate
Atmosphere BBDO
developed an extension of Pizza Hut's Super Bowl promotion with Jessica Simpson
creating a site that allows consumers to literally play with their food. The
Pizza Hut Cheesy Bites site allows visitors to remix their own version of the
Jessica Simpson Pizza Hut song, "These Bites Are Made for Poppin.'"
With 28 musical tracks and 40 sound effects to choose from, people can watch
and share their version of the song played along with the television commercial
and see Jessica singing along to their creation.
- AdRants.com
Our favorite of all
the Anheuser-Busch work this year is the hysterically funny, "On The
Roof," where Bud Light-loving husbands seek refuge. The comic timing is
perfect. Ditto the meticulously realized visuals."
- Lewis Lazare,
Chicago Sun-Times
In addition to these
professional columnists and commentators, many others offered their opinions of
Super Bowl commercials via the Internet. One blogger wrote, "Nicely shot,
but what's the point?", incisively cutting through the usual verbiage.
Bulletin boards posted rants and raves about the commercials. And more than a
few groups specially assembled for the purpose of reviewing Super Bowl
commercials were reported on in the press. For example, in Boston members of ad
agencies assembled to view the ads together. From their group emerged the not
surprising finding that men and women liked different ads more. The women in
the group were especially approving of Dove's commercial focusing on women's
self-esteem.
Many times when people
express opinions about ad preferences, they lack reasons for the preferences.
Even when reasons are given, they tend to be more emotional than rational
reactions. The Wall Street Journal, in an article quoting viewers' opinions
about Super Bowl ads, included the following:
- the ad broke through
and was attention-grabbing.
- it was so
unpredictable.
- the spot was very
moving.
- hilarious, everyone
cracked up laughing.
- didn't like it, I was
waiting for a spoof.
- tons of impact and
very memorable.
- I'm a sucker for
monkeys. [spot featuring office run by chimps]
All this hype about
Super Bowl commercials brings the phenomenon of the TV commercial to public
attention once a year and results in considerable discussion about the
aesthetic and business value of this mode of advertising. Unlike the more
highbrow domains of culture like literature, art, and even film, the commercial
is at home in popular culture. For many, it is unabashed fun and hilarity.
Maintaining the suspense about the commercials can be as exciting as the football
game itself. The Super Bowl becomes the one moment in American cultural life
where advertising is unabashedly welcomed.
Conclusion
Advertising arised in
antiquity when the majority of people couldn’t read or write. The period of
after the World War II was the period of progress of TV advertisement, intense
competition in selling and branding.
Advertising has
certainly come a long way since the beginning of the century. While the basic
principles remain the same, as society becomes more accepting of certain
topics, the advertising will continue evolve. For instance, consider in the
'50s when it was taboo for pregnancy to be shown on television. "I Love
Lucy" broke this wall down, and it is now commonplace. Things that are
"politically incorrect" and aren't seen in advertising during one
time period become accepted and visible in another.
The answer to our
question, whether or not advertising is a direct effect or affect of
advertising, is simple. Both are yes. Advertising uses what it sees as popular
in its audience at the particular time the campaign is ran, to call attention
to the product. What people see in the advertising of a product that they
consider popular, creates a new trend in culture. Advertising both directs and
reflects popular culture. Thousands of products are advertised daily in many
different ways. Oftentimes people will discuss the manner in which the product
was advertised as frequently, if not more so than the product itself. What
makes any particular advertisement memorable is the "personality"
which it is given, and the consumers ability to relate. While some advertising
has proven itself to be more effective than others, once again it all serves
the same basic purpose-to inform, and persuade. As long as there is a creative
motivation to create new products and to allow the familiar ones to continually
impact us, advertising will continue to drive and be driven by popular culture.
So you see that the role
of advertising in American pop culture is very high: we can see hidden ads in
films, on the pictures, even in music. Advertising affects on pop culture: ads
can put such market conditions that a new direction in pop culture can appear.
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Appendix
The Art and Science
of the Advertising Slogan
by Timothy R. V.
Foster
1. A slogan should
be memorable
Memorability has to do
with the ability the line has to be recalled unaided. A lot of this is based on
the brand heritage and how much the line has been used over the years. But if
it is a new line, what makes it memorable? I suggest it is the story told in
the advertisement - the big idea.
The more the line
resonates with the big idea, the more memorable it will be. 'My goodness, my
Guinness!', as well as being a slick line, was made memorable by the illustrations
of the Guinness drinker seeing his pint under some sort of threat (perched on
the nose of a performing seal, for example). It invoked a wry smile and a tinge
of sympathy on the part of the audience at the potential loss if the Guinness
was dropped.
If it is successful,
ideally the line should pass readily into common parlance as would a
catchphrase, such as 'Beanz meanz Heinz' or 'Where's the beef?'
In addition to a
provocative and relevant illustration or story, alliteration, coined words, puns
and rhymes are good ways of making a line memorable, as is a jingle.
2. A slogan should
recall the brand name
Ideally the brand name
should be included in the line. 'My goodness, my Guinness!' thus works, as does
'Aah, Bisto!'. On the other hand, 'Once driven, forever smitten' does not
easily invoke the word Vauxhall, nor does 'All it leaves behind is other
non-bios' scream out Fairy Ultra. This, by the way, is possibly the worst
endline in the history of advertising! It certainly gets my vote. It's a brand
manager at P&G speaking to a brand manager at the competition and it means
it doesn't leave a nasty residue in the wash -- the laundry equivalent of 'no
bathtub ring'. No 'housewife' could possibly understand it.
What's the point of
running an advertisement in which the brand name is not clear? Yet millions of
pounds are wasted in this way. If the brand name isn't in the strapline, it had
better be firmly suggested. Nike dares to run commercials that sign off only
with their visual logo -- the 'swoosh' -- like a tick mark or check mark, as
the Americans say. The word Nike is unspoken and does not appear. This use of
semiotics is immensely powerful when it works, because it forces the viewer to
say the brand name.
Rhymes - with brand name
One of the best techniques
for bringing in the brand name is to make the strapline rhyme with it. Here are
some lines we've selected from the AdSlogans.com database. See how well it
works if the brand name is the rhyming word.
3. A slogan should
include a key benefit
'Engineered like no
other car in the world' does this beautifully for Mercedes Benz. 'Britain's
second largest international scheduled airline' is a 'so what?' statement for
the late Air Europe. You might well say "I want a car that is engineered
like no other car in the world." But it is unlikely you would say "I
want two tickets to Paris on Britain's second largest international scheduled
airline!"
In America they say
'sell the sizzle, not the steak.' In Britain they say 'sell the sizzle, not the
sausage.' Either way, it means sell the benefits not the features.
Since the tagline is the
leave-behind, the takeaway, surely the opportunity to implant a key benefit
should not be missed? Here are some...
4. A slogan should
differentiate the brand
'Heineken refreshes the
parts other beers cannot reach' does this brilliantly. When the line needed
refreshing, it was extended in later executions to show seemingly impossible
situations, such as a deserted motorway in the rush hour, with the line 'Only
Heineken can do this', and lately showing unlikely but admirable situations,
such as a group of sanitation engineers trying to keep the noise down to the
comment: 'How refreshing! How Heineken!'
The distinction here is
that the line should depict a characteristic about the brand that sets it apart
from its competitors. In the above examples, we see Swan Light, an Australian
low-alcohol beer. 'Won't make a pom tiddly' is brilliant. It plays on the
expression 'tiddly pom', the sort of noise a stiff-upper-lip Brit would say in
the colonies when reviewing the troops as they march past, and, of course, a
Brit to an Oz is a pom. And what could be worse than a tiddly (tipsy) pom? This
line gets my vote as one of the all-time greats. And it runs on double-decker
bus 'super sides'.
5. A slogan should
impart positive feelings for the brand
Some lines are more
positive than others. 'Once driven, forever smitten', for example, or 'Aah,
Bisto!'. Contrast this with Triumph's line for its TR7 sports car in 1976: 'It
doesn't look like you can afford it', or America's Newport cigarettes: 'After
all, if smoking isn't a pleasure, why bother?' "Because I'm hooked, you
bastard!" might well be the answer from those who are addicted to the
weed, a sentiment the cigarette company may not appreciate as part of its
message.
Publishers will tell you
that negative book titles don't sell. It is my belief that negative advertising
is hard to justify.
Notice how boring all
the negative electioneering is in general elections. The voters just want to
turn off.
6. A slogan should
reflect the brand's personality
How can a brand have a
personality? Our dictionary says personality means 'habitual patterns and
qualities of behaviour of any individual as expressed by physical and mental
activities and attitudes; distinctive individual qualities of a person
considered collectively.'
So think of the brand as
a person. Then consider whether the line works for that person.
7. A slogan should
be strategic
Some companies can
effectively convey their business strategy in their lines.
8. A slogan should
be campaignable
This means that the line
should work across a series of advertising executions. It should have some
shelf-life. Then you could have a dozen different ads or commercials, each with
its own unique story, with a single common tagline that supports them all.
9. A slogan should
not be usable by a competitor
In other words, you
should not be able to substitute a competitive brand name and use the line. For
example, 'My goodness, my Murphy's!' just would not work, but 'A company called
TRW' could be a company called anything. Let's look at these characteristics in
more detail, illustrating the points with more examples.
So many slogans have
absolutely no competitive differentiation. You could add any brand name to the
line and it would make sense. And this often is proven by how many users of a
line there are.
10. A slogan should
be original
In advertising,
originality is king. A new way of sending a message can set a brand apart from
copycats and also-rans.
11. A slogan should
be simple
Remember, the endline is
what you want the punter to 'get'. So KISS (keep it simple, stupid!).
12. A slogan should
be neat
We're using the word
neat in the teenage sense. A neat line helps portray the product progressively
in the punter's perception.
13. A slogan should
be believable
Poetic licence is
allowed. Even exaggeration.
14. Does the line
help when you're ordering the
product or service, or
at least aspiring to it?
15. A slogan should
not be in current use by others
The more different users
of a slogan, the less effective it is.
AdSlogans.com offers its
LineCheck service so you can make sure your line isn't in use by others.
16. A slogan should
not be bland, generic or hackneyed
Slogans that are bland,
redolent of Mom and apple-pie, clearly suffer a weakness.
17. A slogan should
not prompt a sarcastic or negative response.
18. A slogan should
not be pretentious
This is the pomposity
test.
Try reading the line
with the utmost gravity, like an American narrator in a 50's corporate film,
giving it the true spin of importance.
19. A slogan should
not be negative
Publishers will tell you
that negative book titles don't sell. It is my belief that negative advertising
is hard to justify.
Notice how boring all
the negative electioneering is in general elections. The voters just want to
turn off.
20. A slogan should
not reek of corporate waffle, hence sounding unreal.
21. A slogan should
not be a "So what?" or "Ho-hum" statement
23. A slogan should
not be meaningless
These are... What on
earth are they trying to say?
24. A slogan should
not be complicated or clumsy
25. You should like
it
26. It could be trendy
- All in a word
There area two trends in
slogans these days. One is the single-word line, such as exemplified here:
Budweiser: True
Hankook Tyres: Driven
IBM: Think
Irn-Bru: Different
Rover: Relax
United Airlines: Rising
It could be trendy - All
in three words (or three terse ideas)
It is hard to deliver a
complex message in a single word, so that brings us to the other trend - the
triple threat...
Air France: New. Fast.
Efficient.
British Gas: Energy.
Efficiency. Advice.
ICI: World problems.
World solutions. World class.
Jaguar: Grace...
Space... Pace...
Marks & Spencer: Quality.
Value. Service.
And of course...
AdSlogans.com:
Check. Create. Inspire.
It could be trendy - The
twenty most frequently used words in slogans
We thought it would be
interesting to see which words were the most prevalent in slogans, so we delved
through the AdSlogans.com database.
Omitting such words as
'the' and 'and', etc, here's what we found. The percentages represent the
number of lines using that word out of the total number of lines.
1. you 11.15%
2. your 7.94%
3. we 6.03%
4. world 4.18%
5. best 2.67%
6. more 2.54%
7. good 2.43%
8. better 2.12%
9. new 1.90%
10. taste 1.85%
11. people 1.54%
12. our 1.49%
13. first 1.42%
14. like 1.41%
15. don't 1.36%
16. most 1.19%
17. only 1.16%
18. quality 1.15%
19. great 1.13%
20. choice 1.08%