Adverting and the Media Week 2-3

Make a blog to post your assignments

What have we learned so far?

            How taste develops
How culture develops
The three forms of cultural capital
Advertising thrives on persuading you to need things you might not need. 

How is advertising defined?

To inform, to give notice, to make known

A paid, non-personal message 

From an identifiable source

Delivered through a mass media channel

Intended to persuade

Is part of a larger marketing mix (IMC)

       Other components fill-in where advertising misses

 American Marketing Association

Important words you need to know

Demographics - the qualities (such as age, sex, and income) of a specific group of people

• a group of people that has a particular set of qualities

Psychographics 
the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research

Demographic Information:

Female

Aged 45-65

Married, with children

Dealing with issues of weight gain, diabetes, lack of energy or hormonal imbalance

Household income $100K+

Psychographic Information:

Concerned with health and appearance

Wants a healthy lifestyle, but doesn’t have much time

Enjoys going online in the evenings, big fan of Pinterest

Tends to favor quality over economy

Finds fulfillment in her career and family

Values time with a small group of friends

 Check out link to Google Drive

Informational/Transformational

Informational ads – for products, describes the products attributes to persuade you to buy the product.

http://www.asseenontvvideo.com/Billy-Mays.html

Transformational ads – how the product or service will make you feel

What is a brand?

A brand is the name and/or symbol used to identify a product or service and distinguish it from the competition.

Active and Passive Consumers

Passive consumer – if you don’t participate you won’t have a say (but do you have a say?)

Active consumer – are kept informed by the present state and stock of cultural meaning that exists in goods

 Consumer pathology – building your life around a product or service they purchase

When does the brand stand out?

o When the advertised product is special or different

o When the product is advertised in an unusual or striking fashion

o When the product or service is particularly relevant to the customer

o When the customer is familiar with the advertisement.

What are the goals of adverting?

Want people to pay attention to message.

Want people to act according to message

How do we get them to do this?

Provide new information.

Reinforce current practice.

Change a predisposition.

What do the critics have to say about advertising? 

                  "Many of us are being influenced and manipulated - far more than we realize – in the patterns of our everyday lives. Large-scale efforts are being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness."

                                                                                            Vance Packard The Hidden Persuaders

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defined puffery as a "term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined."

One explanation of where taste comes from: “Conspicuous Consumption”
Thorstein Veblen (1899) = Theory of the Leisure Class

            1. wealth basis of social esteem
 2. visible expenditure and the display of idleness become primary means to communicate the possession of riches.

Take a look at The Persuaders 

Getting started in Advertising and the Media

Welcome to Advertising and the Media. 

I will be providing you all the reading materials for this class. Lucky you.

(Do the reading!)

In this class you will learn the fundamentals of advertising and how it functions in our culture. Therefore, you need to think about your own thoughts on advertising. 

To get you started do the following: 

Actually pay some attention to the commercials that you see on TV or Youtube or wherever you connect with them. Think a little about what you are seeing. 

Read this article from The Atlantic 

Then take out some notebook paper and write for 10 minutes (without stopping or worrying if things are spelled correctly) about how you think you are persuaded and what persuades you

logic or emotion? 

Give one or two examples of those commercials you have seen that "work" for you and are they using logic or emotion?

We will discuss this the first day of class. 

And yes, I will be collecting them.