Advertising

1. Advertising Media Literacy

2. Some things that advertisements try to do… • Make us aware of products • Differentiate one product from another • Create a need where none existed

3. Basic Premises of Advertising • We prefer to identify with ads that show us as we aspire to be rather than as we are (Goffman, 1976).

4. Basic Premises of Advertising • Ads are very specifically placed in TV shows, newspapers, and magazines to be seen by a target audience. Magazines and TV shows know who watches and reads and they market themselves to advertisers. If it’s in a publication you read, it is aimed at you (even though you may not identify with the product).

5. Basic Premises of Advertising • Ads manipulate our cultural understanding of the meaning of symbols, ideas, words, relationships, and images. The name for the study of these understandings is “semiotics”. Advertisers try to invent a link between a product and a desirable symbol, idea, or relationship.

6. Why do we buy products or choose one product over another? • desire for the products’ results • to create an image • insecurity that we needed it all along and just didn’t know it (dandruff shampoos!) • fulfills psychological need • brand loyalty

7. Overt v. covert • Overt means “out in the open” or “obvious” • Covert means “in secret” or “not obvious” • Advertising has overt goals and covert goals

8. Overt messages of advertisements • “Buy this product.” • “Buy this product; you’ll be happier.” • “Buy this product; it will help you meet your goals.” • “Buy this product; you will be more attractive.” • “Buy this product, you will be more successful.”

9. If we buy these overt messages, what happens? • How do you think people in general are affected when they accept the overt messages of advertisements?

10. Covert messages of advertisements • “You can rely on this product, but other people and other things can’t be trusted.” • “The people who have this product have access to something that you are not fully aware of. Buying it will make you part of this select group.” • “This product allows you to break the rules.”

11. What are covert messages? • Covert messages are ones that are under the surface. No one could come out and say them straight out because these messages appeal to parts of our minds that we don’t really talk about: our insecurities and fears.

12. Covert messages of advertisements • This product makes you better than people who don’t have it.” • “This product has powers that you do not have. Owning it will give you those powers.” • “This product will identify you with a social group or cause”

13. Covert messages of advertisements • “You won’t be able to control yourself with this product.” validates the idea that loss of control is acceptable • “People like you use this product.” OR “People like you don’t use this product.” (in the case of less affluent people) • “This product will give you competence and confidence. Without it, everyone knows you’re lost.”

14. If we buy these covert messages, what happens? • How do you think people in general are affected when they accept the covert messages of advertisements?

15. Some Strategies • Linking products to causes • Linking products to cultural needs • Creating brand loyalty/lifestyle marketing • Using sex to sell

16. Linking products to causes • “The revolution is about basketball, and basketball is the truth.” Shows powerful young black men playing basketball in Rucker Park. Links civil rights to basketball and to Nike shoes. An extension of Nike’s ad campaign that used The Beatles’ song “Revolution”.

17. Linking products to causes • “Keep America Moving.” General Motors tries to make it a patriotic duty to buy a car. • “We’ve come a long way, baby.” Virginia Slims campaign that linked smoking with women’s liberation movement.

18. If we accept these cultural messages, what happens? • What do you think happens to causes when people accept a link between a product and a cause? • What’s one ad you can think of that links a product and a cause? • Name the product and the cause. • Is the link real?

19. Linking products to important cultural images or needs • “cultural rape” using important religious (crosses, images of Jesus or Moses) or secular ( the Constitution, the flag, Abraham Lincoln) images to sell a product

20. Linking products to important cultural images or needs • Mastercard ads that show credit spending being used to build personal relationships (father-child bonding in particular) • Bonding over products: guys become friends because of beer, couples fall in love over diamonds, women build friendships over chocolate

21. Linking products to important cultural images or needs • Bribing the kids: McDonald’s ads that validate a mother for feeding her kids fast food. • Drug ads showing elderly people with arthritis struggling to play with their grandkids, then enjoying being grandparents once they take the medication

22. If we accept these links between products and causes, what happens? • How do you think people are affected when they accept a link between a product and a cultural need? • What’s one ad that links a product and a cultural need? • Name the product and the need. • Is the link real?

23. Brand Loyalty or Lifestyle Marketing • Tries to promote a link between a certain product or group of products and a lifestyle; kids and yuppies are the biggest targets. • Goal is to create a life-long consumer.

24. Brand Loyalty or Lifestyle Marketing • Couture houses create an image through money-losing haute-couture to get people to buy their lower-priced off-the-rack items and accessories. • Product placement in films

25. If we buy these images about lifestyle, what happens? • How do you think people are affected when they develop brand loyalty or accept lifestyle marketing ideas? • What’s product that tries to develop brand loyalty in your age group? • How do they do this? • Does it work? For whom?

26. Using Sex to Sell • The basic goal is to link the product to a desirable thing and sex is the most desirable thing to many people • Some products naturally fit, some it’s a stretch

27. Using Sex to Sell • Only so many products can be sexualized, so to use this strategy you have to either expand the market to different (younger) consumers or sexualize non-sexual products by taking the product out of the ad • clothing, beauty products, gum, beer, cars

28. Using sex to sell • How are people affected by sexual advertising campaigns? • Who is most affected? • Name one product that uses sex to sell. • Is the relationship between sexuality and product realistic?

29. Resisting the Ads • Who is able to do it? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: We are vulnerable at whatever stage our needs are not met.

31. What groups are vulnerable at which levels of the hierarchy of needs? • Where are teens vulnerable? • Where are pre-teens vulnerable? • Where are parents vulnerable? • Where are more successful people vulnerable? • Where are less successful people vulnerable? • Where are men vulnerable? • Where are women vulnerable?

32. Where are you vulnerable?

33. How are people affected when our vulnerabilities are targeted? • What do you think?