What is Advertising?
Advertising is a process, not a medium in its own right, although
it uses different media forms to communicate. Advertising, in its
simplest form, is the way in which the vendor or manufacturer of
a product communicates with consumers via a medium, or many different
media. (It can be anything as simple as a ‘For Sale’
card on a Noticeboard, to a vast advertising campaign on TV, in
newspapers, magazines and on the Internet!)
When creating an advertisement, the vendor must take many different
things into account. They want to aim at a specific target audience,
so they must find out, where, when and how to target them. This
is done using market research and similar methods. The advert itself
must standout and interest the audience; colour, graphics, puns,
famous role models are just a few of the ways that an advertiser
attracts its audience. If the product is to be advertised close
to similar products, i.e. in a mobile phone catalogue, the promoter
will try to make their advertisement different and more attractive
than other advertisers. This can be done by highlighting specific
selling points and making there product appear better, cheaper etc.
Images are extremely important in advertisements. They allow the
consumer to see the product, or what is being marketed.
Advertising as Branding
Most advertising today is about communicating the complex range
of messages about a product known as branding. A brand is a product
or range of products that has a set of values associated with it
that are easily recognised by the consumer. A brand is distinguished
immediately by its name and/or a symbol, e.g. the Nike swoosh, the
adidas three stripes. Using the following elements creates brand
identity:
- Brand essence – a way of summing up the significance
of the brand to consumers, and stockholders, in one simple sentence
- Brand slogan – a public way of identifying the brand for
consumers – often associated with a logo
- Brand personality – marketers can describe their brand
as though it were a person, with likes and dislikes and a certain
behaviour
- Brand values – what does it stand for/against?
- Brand appearance – what does it look/sound/taste like?
- Brand heritage – how long has it been around? Does it
have customers who have been loyal to it for years?
- Emotional benefits – how it avoids/reduces pain or increases
pleasure
- Hard benefits – bigger? better? cheaper? washes whiter?
As consumers, we tend to be more familiar with a whole brand, as
opposed to individual products. The process of advertising allows
us to associate values with products that may have a real connection
to them – for instance, Nike has always selected rebellious
athletes to promote its shoes, the ‘bad boys’ of basketball,
tennis & football, and therefore the Nike brand has connotations
of rebelliousness and doing whatever to win
Advertising as Institution
Advertising is also a media institution, which means it is an industry
with its own way of doing things, its own channels of communication,
and its own key personnel who carry out skilled tasks. It is bound
by its own regulations, and penalizes those who break regulations.
It also has a number of award-winning governing bodies, and rewards
good work, as judged by peers. Advertising companies are known as
agencies, and the produce and distribute advertising material on
behalf of clients, manufacturers or service providers.
Advertising As Part of Our Culture
If you look around you, you will find your world filled with advertising
– on huge billboards in the streets, on pages of magazines,
between the tracks on the radio, on the walls of the subway, on
Internet pages, on the backs of cinema tickets, on the shirts of
football players! It seems that any surface that will hold still
long enough to be read is considered as potential advertising space.
As there is so much advertising around us, it has become part of
our culture. Therefore the study of advertising is not just WHAT
manufacturers say to their audience, but HOW it is said. Advertisements
can have influences far beyond a simple message about a product.
Advertisements can introduce new characters to public imagination,
make icons out of actors, have everyone repeating a catchphrase
(‘Wassup’ anyone?), get audiences arguing over plot
points, waiting for next installments and generating news stories.
Advertisements can often take on a cultural life of their own and
occupy space in the media beyond that which has been paid for. This
is great for the advertisers!
As well as being part of the news agenda, advertisements are also
a reflection of a society’s wants and needs at a particular
point in time. They also provide excellent material for historians
and sociologists researching social attitudes of an era.
Advertising Makes The World Go Round
The messages relayed through advertising may range from the straightforward
(“Buy this now – it’s cheaper!”), to the
subtle (“Buy this now – it will make you attractive
to the opposite sex!”), but they all cost money to put ‘out
there’ – A LOT OF MONEY!! The giants of the corporate
world (Nike, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble) all pour millions
of dollars into advertising on an annual basis. They want their
messages to be heard, and as a by-product of all this, they support
financially the media through which we hear or see their messages.
Without advertising there would be no television except re-runs,
magazines would be thin, colourless and prohibitively expensive,
and many internet sites would not be able to afford their server
space. When big companies cut down their advertising budget (as
happened after 9/11) the effects are keenly felt by the media, which
rely heavily on the revenue from advertising. The money simply stops
coming in and the economic effects are drastic; magazines fold,
TV stations slash original programming, and dot.com companies crash
out of existence.
Therefore, advertising is extremely important in our society –
A world without advertising would be totally different to the place
that we all know! |
