Thomas Frank’s book entitled The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism takes a poignant look at the advertising world of the 1950’s and 1960’s, exploring how advertising played a role in shaping the next generation of consumers. Frank points out that he believes many misunderstand how important the key industries of fashion and advertising were to the shaping of our consumer culture, especially in getting Americans to rethink who they were. The industry of advertising was not conforming to the upcoming generation, instead the new consumer generation was conforming to the ideals of the advertising industry. Frank believes that the advertising and fashion industries were changing, but not to conform to the new generation, instead to shape a new generation of consumers. The advertising industry has always played a role in consumerism, but by the 1960’s its role was changing as the advertising structure and order that was normally found was being replaced with nonconformity. The simple structure of advertising showing a single picture no longer evoked the emotions advertisers were looking for, instead fast paced or out of the ordinary became the name of the game. This book delves into the idea that corporations played a major role in …show more content…
Frank points out how the advertising industry played to the idea of “disposables – not forevers” in their tactics. The older generation was very picky with what they bought, but the new generation of consumers wanted to buy goods for the moment and were not interested in how long they would last. The advertising industry pushed new, improved products onto the hip, new consumer generation to continually buy the “next thing”. Advertising for the young became the next “big thing” as older consumers started buying into the idea of “feeling young again”. Once again advertisers changed their tactics to reach those who were young or young at
Thus, the sixties triggered not only political change but also social and cultural reformations. Advertisers realized that they shou...
The three chapters assigned to be read out of Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market, a novel by Susan Strasser, outline the consumer culture of the United States around the end of 19th century, following the conclusion of the civil war. The chapters work chronologically and describe the rapid evolution of companies’ production, advertising and branding techniques. The reading also hits some of the main goods introduced at the time, most of which we still use today, and the troubles that companies faced convincing the public to invest in (purchase) their product for the first time. The problem with introducing thousands of products that no one had ever heard of? Most people will naturally pick the safe bet when spending
Many television commercials choose to feature a contrast between youth and maturity as their subject. An “Oreo Cookie” commercial, for example, features a little girl who is about four years old mimicking her grandfather’s actions in eating a cookie. Another commercial advertises the popular theme park, Six Flags Great Adventure. This commercial, entitled “The Six Flags Dancing Man,” features an elderly man dancing like an enthusiastic child. This relates to Stephen King’s idea in “My Creature from the Black Lagoon,” that adults long for and are often reminded of their childhood. Meanwhile, Rita Dove’s essay, “Loose Ends,” and Marie Winn’s essay, “Television Addiction,” each presents the great influence television has on life, often because of television’s great aspect of reality. Together, these ideas support the reasoning behind an advertisement’s attempt to sell abstract ideas. By using youth and old age in commercials, advertisers can sell nostalgia as a way of making commercials more memorable.
This essay is an analysis of two advertising posters, one of being a modern piece of media, the other being aimed at the previous generation. I will be reviewing posters from Coca Cola and Benetton, the latter being the modern piece of media in this comparison.
In the 1997 article Listening to Khakis, published in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell effectively paints a vivid picture of the thought and science that goes into advertising campaigns. Gladwell begins his paper by focusing on the Dockers’ advertising campaign for their line of adult male khaki pants, which he labels as extremely successful. This campaign was the first line of successful fashion advertisements aimed directly toward adult males (Gladwell, 1997). This campaign was cunningly simple and showed only males wearing the pants being advertised with the background noise filled with men having a casual conversation (Gladwell, 1997). This tactic was used because studies showed that Dockers’ target market felt an absence in adult male friendships. (Gladwell, 1997). The simplicity of the advertisements was accentuated as to not to deter possible customers by creating a fashion based ad because, based on Gladwell’s multiple interviews of advertising experts, males shy away from being viewed as fashion forward or “trying to hard” (Gladwell, 1997).
You go pick one either because the picture is better or you saw the commercial the other day and you want it. During the length of this paper we will talk about two important writers, Kalle Lasn the writer of “The Cult You’re in” and Benoit Denizet-Lewis the writer of “ The Man Behind Abercrombie & Fitch”. They both talk about similar topics that go hand and hand with each other, they talk about the consumers “Dream”, how companies recruit the consumers, who cult members really are, how people are forced to wear something they don’t want, and about slackers. What is the dream we all have? Think about the main things that you strive for in life.
In “The man behind Abercrombie and Fitch.” An interview conducted by Benoit Denizet-Lewis displays a glimpse into the life of Mike Jeffries and his views of his company only hiring “good-looking” people and targeting “good-looking” people to wear his clothes. This has been done in order to force his audience to recognize that the issue of acceptance one’s peers and exclusion of a community mentioned by Mike Jeffries, is a result of cultural perceptions and individual self-image. Denizet-Lewis skillfully shows that while Jeffries remarks of not wanting the “not-so-popular” kids to shop in his stores, it poses a question to consumers asking what change in our attitudes will come or if there will be any change at all. Thus comes the issue of how consumers today have a shift in the reasoning behind why one buys clothing and the motivating factors that influence one to buy certain clothing. Denizet-Lewis also demonstrates the different messages that controversial advertisements and statements affect different groups of people and how what they project is really what people desire, though deemed by many people as unacceptable or inappropriate. The author also examines how in the news media, the image has become more important than the message and how images have taken precedent over actual issues and character. As a result of this, various communities have formed by the construct of selling to “beautiful people” and how popular appeal has become an extension of a person.
Consumerism is the idea that influences people to purchase items in great amounts. Consumerism makes trying to live the life of a “perfect American” rather difficult. It interferes with society by replacing the normal necessities for life with the desire for things with not much concern for the true value of the desired object. Children are always easily influenced by what they watch on television. Swimme suggests in his work “How Do Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism” that although an advertiser’s objective is to make money, the younger generation is being manipulated when seeing these advertisements. Before getting a good understanding of a religion, a child will have seen and absorbed at least 30,000 advertisements. The amount of time teenagers spend in high school is lesser than the amount of advertisement that they have seen (155). The huge amount of advertisements exposed to the younger generation is becomi...
The Great Gatsby revolving around the 1920’s timeframe ,consumerism was booming with new ads surrounding promotions towards the products, giving positive attitudes accompanied with positive intentions and with key positive attributes towards the product or service displayed in advertisements with creative and innovative products or services
Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College, is the author of Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool and many other books on the topic of American Consumption. Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College. In this article, Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool, Schor talks about what cool is and how it has affected the culture of advertising and ideals. From Schor’s writing we can try to understand why she wrote about this topic and how she feels about the methods of advertising used for kids, providing facts for each of her main statements.
Sut Jhally, a professor at the university of Massachusetts of whom won the distinguished teacher award, wrote in his essay “ Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse” that : 20th century advertising - the most powerful propaganda in human history - will destroy the world as we know it. The survival of the human race will depend upon our ability to minimize the harmful effects of Advertising. These effects will have lasting impacts on our culture, joy, and future.
Today's young people are generally unresponsive to traditional brand marketing messages. Teens spent $12 billion dollars last year according to a recent study of Teen Marketing Trends. Teens not only use their money on small purchases such as music, clothes and food but also have the power to influence high-end purchases of their parents. Every year younger teens are being marketed because that they are the future teenagers and brand loyalty is an important thing to many companies. If you can get an older child hooked on a product, they’ll generally love it for life. These younger age demographics are being marketed to because more and more kids have increasing spending power and authority over what is purchased in their household.
During the 19th and 20th century, America –mostly white collar, middle class Americans- saw a great increase in salaries and a huge rise in mass production which paved the way for the modern American consumerism which we know today. The advertising scene saw a dramatic boost during that period and tried to latch on to this growing pool of emerging consumers. Although only limited to print, advertising during this pivotal period showed panache and reflected American society
In the words of the great stand up comedian Eddie Izzard, “Never put a sock in a toaster”. Although this quote is completely unrelated to the topic at hand, it has captured your attention. Now the topic that I will be addressing in the following essay is the issue of whether or not it was ethical to point out the flaws of consumers in advertisements in the 1920s. From what I have observed, it seems that it was completely necessary and therefore I would say it was ethical, since it didn’t seem to harm anyone too severely. In the mind of Roland Marchand, “a leading late twentieth-century student of advertising”, write about what he has gathered through his lifetime along the lines of advertisements in his essay Advertising the American Dream.
Advertising in the 50s was primarily focused on the return of traditional family values, and portraying the consumer’s role in society’s prestige. But, during the recession of 1959 to 1961, the time was ripe for some innovation in the advertising industry. Surly enough, a single ad appeared that changed the course of advertising history. The Volkswagen Beetle, a seemingly ugly car with all odds against it in the American market of huge, tail-finned vehicles of the 1950s, surprisingly prospered. The advertisement campaign broke all previous rules of using wide-angle photography, and beautiful women. These advertisements stole the American hearts with their wit and honesty.