Advertising
Related: Benetton - commercial - consumerism - marketing - persuasion - propaganda - sex in advertising - women in advertising - fashion photography
Through advertising, marketing is also related to many of the creative arts.
"Just What is it that makes today's home so different, so appealing?" (1956) - Richard Hamilton
SS Normandie (1935) - Cassandre
The Hidden Persuaders (1957) - Vance Packard [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Image sourced here.
Definition
Advertising is the promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, most often through paid messages. Marketers see advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy. Other components of the promotional mix include publicity, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdvertisingAdvertising technique
Advertisers use several recognizable techniques in order to better convince the public to buy a product. These may include:
- Repetition: Some advertisers concentrate on making sure their product is widely recognized. To that end, they simply attempt to make the name remembered through repetition.
- Bandwagon: By implying that the product is widely used, advertisers hope to convince potential buyers to "get on the bandwagon."
- Testimonials: Advertisers often attempt to promote the superior quality of their product through the testimony of ordinary users, experts, or both. "Three out of four dentists recommend..." This approach often involves an appeal to authority.
- Pressure: By attempting to make people choose quickly and without long consideration, some advertisers hope to make rapid sales: "Buy now, before they're all gone!"
- Association: Advertisers often attempt to associate their product with desirable imagery to make it seem equally desirable. The use of attractive models, picturesque landscapes and other alluring images is common. Also used are "buzzwords" with desired associations.
- Advertising slogans
- Controversy, as in the Benetton publicity campaign.
- Subliminal messages: It was feared that some advertisements would present hidden messages, for example through brief flashed messages or the soundtrack, that would have a hypnotic effect on viewers ('Must buy car. Must buy car.') This is now generally discredited.
Subvertising
Subvertising refers to the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements in order to make a statement. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvertising. See also: http://adbusters.org/spoofads/Books
- The Erotic History of Advertising (2003) - Tom Reichert [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In the supposedly prudish late-19th century, tobacco products were advertised with posters showing a variety of buxom, practically (or entirely) topless women. They were invariably draped in toga-like robes and adopted pseudo-Grecian poses. In the 1930s, ads for a Midwestern varnish company used completely naked models; as they were used in trade magazines with an almost entirely male readership, it was considered unlikely that any woman would ever see them. Reichert, a University of Alabama advertising professor, unearthed these tidbits and others in the course of researching this entertaining and fairly comprehensive history of the use of sex in American advertising over the past 150 years. At first, this research may seem unnecessary, since the sex and advertising are so inextricably intertwined. Yet Reichert plots a telling time line, from the late-19th-century petticoat-wearing women coyly exposing themselves on beer tavern walls to the double entendres of 1960s magazine ads and the lasciviously photographed nudes plastered throughout today's fashion glossies. Although Reichert doesn't delve fully into the social ramifications of the constant rise of and backlash against overt sexuality in advertising or how the ads are targeted differently at men and women, he provides a fun, accessible survey of a subject everyone's familiar with.--amazon.com
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