Blog 6 – Consumer Cultures

This week’s reading was Consumer Cultures; I will involve relevant quotations and thoughts into this blog as I study advertising. Only the BBC received public funding, the other channels are dependent on advertising alone. The mass media depends on advertising to exist. So what is advertisement? Well advertising is promotion of a product or an idea. Its persuasive communication to the public – paid for media space.

"the nonpersonal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media”
                                                                                                             - (Bovee and Arens, 1992, p. 7).

There is personal type of advertising which can be identified by the type of communication and then impersonal advertising which is identified by the tone of communication. For example an advert for New Look is personal because it targets young women like myself, a sort of impersonal advert is a product like Sure deodorant its targeting men and women of all ages.

The oldest types of advertising has always been word of mouth, but as time went on in human history, in order to reach the majority of the people posters were put up, followed by advertisements in newspapers, radio, television and most recently the internet.

The industrial revolution is a key in advertising due to mass production, better technology and new inventions – hence business. Urban living was due to city development, large numbers of the population migrated into the cities in search of jobs in these factories. After the ability to improve the quality of goods how did they market them? The producers needed to communicate with the mass public to sell on their goods. They needed to advertise.

                                       “Public needs to consume to get the economy back on track”                                       
                                                                                 - (Mervin King – Head of the Bank of England)

“Advertising now permeates American culture and has affected in profound ways, everything from our food preferences and our body shapes to our politics.”                                                                                                                       - Consumer Cultures

Mervin King believed that it is our role as a citizen to spend our savings, to give our money back to the country. It’s how businesses succeed and people gain jobs, luxury items is a sign of a healthy economy. This brings up where does needs become wants?

Brands are a part of advertising, it is the face or the logo of products, they also represent the company, brands can be owned by companies that own other brands, see images below of famous brands;

A hundred years ago if not more, these brands grew into powerful entities e.g. Coca-Cola which remains strong. They keep strong by updating and adding new product e.g. Coca-Cola zero, cherry, lime etc. One thing I’ve learnt during the last few weeks are not only is media dependant on advertisement but advertisement is dependent on the media

Advertising was believed to have to power to sell personality, popularity and wealth.

The first televised advert as SR Gibbs Toothpaste in 1955 which aired on ITV, when watching this advert I found that there is no big difference in the advertising effects back then to what it is now. I believe that this first advert has created the techniques many adverts use today e.g. narrations, animations, scientific evidence etc.

‘The consumer experiences his distinctive behaviour as freedom, as aspiration, as choice. His experience is not one of being forced to be different, of obeying a code. To differentiate oneself is always, by the same token, to bring into play the total order of differences, which is, from the first, the product of the total society and inevitably exceeds the scope of the individual. In the very act of scoring his points in the order of differences, each individual maintains that order, and therefore condemns himself only ever to occupy a relational position within it’
                                                                                                                                        - (Baudrillard, 1968: 62).

Baudrillard believed that consumption is forced upon us and that we have no choice but to obey a code of advertisement. When reading Consumer Culture it stated “success is defined as being the person who has the most toys” and I think everyone can relate to that sentence.

Dove has recently said that they want to “make a real change in the way women and young girls perceive and embrace beauty. We want to help free ourselves and the next generation from beauty stereotypes”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I

Take a look at this amazing advert. I praise Dove for the anti ‘sex sells’ believes. I am constantly reminded that I don’t have Media’s idea of a perfect face and body; in their eyes I am ugly and overweight. I am 5’5 and 8.5 stone. Should I pressurise myself into being something that I’m not, unfortunately it is a constant reminder for women that they’re not perfect. The worst part is that the media is so powerful that they have forced men to believe that all women should be model looking hence women trying to be these young models so they’re good enough. Why do the media target women more than men? Are men just as self-conscious as women? One thing I hate is when my friend complains she’s ugly, in fact she isn’t – she is absolutely beautiful and who is constantly reminded by the people around her, but for some reason she’s in denial she will only believe she’s beautiful once she makes it in the media industry. Now I think that sad. Because the truth is no one in the media is genuine, even celebrities and models are self-conscious, if perfection is models and celebrities then it doesn’t work because they’re fake them. We should stop supporting the likes of Lynx adverts, the ones where they advertise beautiful women – the annoying part is, it works and they adverts sell. But the way I look it at it is that I hope those vain men get disappointed when they receive no beautiful women but a musky strong deodorant stench.

As we see, within 20 years advertising on the internet has surpassed television.

Audiences are now often enough targeted e.g. The Times targets the rich and Real People target the poor. So how do these companies target the audience, here is how I believe they target them

-          Gender

-          Age group

-          Demographic

-          Geography

-          Sexuality

-          Hobbies

What effects do advertising use? Here are some I believe to be common techniques used:

-          Sex Sells, where they exploit sexy women or men and tie it in with their product.

-          Hop on the bandwagon effect, all the cool people have it, why don’t you?

-          Scientific Research, if the scientist says its good then I better do it…

-          Luxury items, you will feel and be so much better when you get this.

-          Perceived benefits, this product will make you beautiful.

I believe that consumption can be related to the worship of religion because instead of us going to the charity shop to get clothes we will go to New Look or Bench to buy a certain brand. Religion and brands have no facts just faith from those who follow. Religious Holidays = Big sales. Devotion = Brand Loyalty.

The author to Consumer Cultures believes that we don’t concentrate on what we have but only on what we don’t have because advertisement constantly reminds us of that. My favourite quotation from the reading is below; it speaks absolute truth.

 “Needs are finite, desires are infinitive”

Refrences:

Lynx photo:
http://novelspaces.blogspot.com/2010/10/so-sex-sells-huh.html

Coca-Cola logo: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.infobarrel.com/media/image/280.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.infobarrel.com/The_History_of_the_Coca_Cola_Bottle&usg=__72URsL529EeOI2-YasIUhUb2IDM=&h=413&w=1181&sz=111&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=a6ooWxz0gnfccM:&tbnh=66&tbnw=188&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcoca%2Bcola%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1345%26bih%3D573%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=455&ei=MS3cTKqFEIG1hAeHm-H-Dw&oei=MS3cTKqFEIG1hAeHm-H-Dw&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0&tx=109&ty=42

Brands photo:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dbrands&w=657&h=561&imgurl=www.jonevan.com%2Fimages%2Fbrands_logos_panel.gif&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jonevan.com%2Fbrands.html&size=130KB&name=Brands+worked+on...&p=brands&oid=7f3414785266a574c30a8688c1f7ce11&fr2=&no=10&tt=2230000&sigr=112j07u97&sigi=11d37dkss&sigb=11lc0ldju&.crumb=BFnWduu9Kjr