A Sore Sight for Sore Eyes, CHATting with Billboards Driving down a highway is about as American as apple pie. Since the 1950’s, our obsession with the open road can be seen throughout all aspects of American culture, and whenever I think of it I imagine picturesque views as I scream across Route 66 in my hotrod, my scarf blowing in the wind as I admire the landscape so beautifully encapsulated in the lyrics to “America the Beautiful.” One thing that you’ll notice amidst the amber waves of grain and diluting those spacious skies are these immense rectangular signs dotting the side of the road. We know them as “billboards” or “bulletins”; Giant roadside advertisements created to build a familiarity with a brand in order to influence future …show more content…
My obvious answer was simply “drivers on the highway.” But considering the fact that Americans are as diverse and as unique as snowflakes, how do billboard creators ensure that their message gets across to their target audience? According to the article Six Steps To Making a Great Billboard Ad, the answer lies within the type of marketing strategy used. Instead of direct response marketing, which is the type of marketing used to invoke an immediate response out of the consumer such as picking up the phone to buy as soon as possible, they will use what’s called branding. In other words, instead of filling up an advertisement with websites and phone numbers, they will consist of a quicker message to inform the driver of a certain place or a product without going as far as to offer specific instructions on how to purchase. Tying it all together, billboards typically won’t advertise a product intended for a narrow audience, and this all falls under the concept of Distribution, or for whom a text is given to and …show more content…
My next step in the process is to observe the many ways in which the consumers (highway drivers) utilize the genre. I continued to search online for articles and studies that take a look at advertisements intended for drivers, and found one on Forbes titled “Does Outdoor Advertising Still Work? Per the article, “On average each of us spends upwards of 20 hours per week and travel more than 200 miles per week (Olenski).” My initial reaction was that the fact that I drive a solid zero hours a week probably brought down the average a bit. The article went on to say that “71% of us ‘often look at the messages on roadside billboards (traditional and digital combined) and more than one-third (37%) report looking at an outdoor ad each or most of the time they pass one.’(Olenski)”. With that information, it’s easy to see just how big of market the average commuter is, and why it makes sense from a business perspective to reach out to them (and their
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
Targeted Audiences: Which One Suits You? According to Steve Craig in Signs of Life in the USA, the economic structure of the television industry has a direct effect on the placement and content of all television programs and commercials. Craig is a professor in the department of radio, television, and film at the University of North Texas, Craig has written widely on television, radio history, and gender and media. His most recent book is Out of the Dark: A History of Radio and Rural America (2009). Craig talks about the analysis of four different television commercials, showing how advertisers carefully craft their ads to appeal, respectively, to male and female consumers.
Once the target market has been identified it is important to develop a marketing strategy. In today's fast paced, information overloaded society; conveying a message about a product seems to be more difficult than ever. The consumer is bombarded with advertising everywhere they look. Today advertising not only exists on television, radio, magazines, and newspapers, it can be found on billboards, park benches, in our mailboxes, on buses, taxis, at sporting events, and on clothing.
I came across this advertisement on the train on my way to school. I felt it was a natural ad because it showcased the New Yorkers we see; the diverse community and the different age groups represented made this advertisement feel relatable. The propaganda gave off a direct persuasive voice that went straight to the point of reporting suspicious activity. Some of the elements evident in this public service announcement include bandwagon, slogan, target audience, and the use of plain folks.
Similar to news in its widespread marketing, publicity is another method in which people’s minds are reprogrammed, this time by the merchandisers. Publicity attempts to ingrain concepts and transmit political and commercial messages into the consumer’s minds, in an endeavor to make them buy specific goods. They do this by constantly exposing the people to the products through their repeated displayal on various mediums. Billboards and posters can be found on most highways, and in nearly all cities around the world. Consequently they push ideas at the consumer any time he/she travels on foot, by car, or even uses the public transport systems.
According to the New York Times, many multi-modal texts expose the average person to at least five thousand advertisements a day (Story). In today’s world, ads are everywhere—on television, in magazines, and even inside cereal boxes. Ad Council, a non-profit organization, joins with various sponsors to produce and promote unique collaborations of public service announcements. The organization has found ways to stimulate action against many problems in the world that concerns Americans (e.g., texting and driving, dating violence, and child hunger). Accordingly, Ad Council has cooperated with Feeding America, a nationwide network that ventures to advocate food insecurities in America. Together, the organizations have recently released a new campaign—“summer
All in all, it seems that car companies can use posters to advertise their upcoming vehicle and get creative with it. It just goes to show this creativity of poster ads leads to countless ways of influencing and even repelling different consumer groups. Looking back, it also appears that behind these texts and images are tactful tools of advertising that can be manipulative and associative, and persuade to appeals of reason or emotion.
Since the beginning of media and advertising, marketers have been using subtle tactics in order to pull in the consumers. In Jib Fowles essay, “Advertising's Fifteen Basic Appeals”, he discusses the 15 appeals that advertisers use in order to engage the consumer’s interest into buying their products. These different advertising appeals are targeted towards a set audience. Some of the target audiences being male, female, elder, or teenager. However, in some cases, the Carls Junior ad I’m analyzing has multiple audiences. Which is the male and female audience. The male audience is more geared towards the sex appeal in the ad, and the female audience is geared towards the longing for attention and to be accepted and wanted. Jib Fowles essay about 15 appeals of advertising helps distinguish which appeals Carls Juniors
In a world now seemingly revolved around technology, companies can reach their audience with an ad almost in any daily task. Whether it be during a Candy Crush game,
The commercials products that are introducing are the 2014 Chevy and 2014 Nissan. Each commercial can either be effective or not effective. Like the 2014 Chevy commercial, it is not an effective commercial because it just shows the life of a girl with her dog being by her side. The actual product is being shown last and it doesn’t explain anything about the car, it just shows the car and the name. The audience would have not understand if they didn’t show the car at the end, that's why this commercial is not effective. The other commercial of the 2014 Nissan is not effective as well. Most of this commercial shows a family going through life struggles and doesn’t show the actual product until the very end. The commercial doesn’t talk about the product, the price, or anything. As I watched the commercials it did grab my attention because it got to my emotions, but I honestly didn’t like the video. I didn’t like the videos because it doesn’t show the inside of the car nor information about the car. If the videos don’t tell information about the products the audience are not going to keep on watching the commercial, which no one will buy the
Billboards is another strategy that marketing professional practice, it is strategically placed to catch the eye of individuals in driving vehicles (Connole, 2010). Acute care hospitals apply social marketing through a wide range of health communication strategies based on mass media. This type of marketing involves influencing health behavior through the usage of commercial marketing, which integrates audience and branding. MUMC, uses billboard strategy to communicate and market its services through clinics for promotion, dissemination,
By the age of 65, the average person has seen approximately 2 million television commercials. (Herr, 2001). This is an incredible number of attempts to persuade potential consumers therefore how do companies make their commercials stand out amongst each other. Recalling my personal favorite commercials, billboards, and radio ads, I assumed would be hard, but truly wasn’t. Out of the many funny and interesting commercials I have seen, Budweiser has had the most long-lasting impressions on my memory.
Suicide is defined as the act of killing oneself intentionally and voluntarily. Suicide is one of the outcomes of social difficulties faced by the Aboriginal youth in Canada. The rate of suicide amongst aboriginal youth (aged 14 to 26) on reserves is 5 to 7 times more likely than non- Aboriginal youth (Health Canada, 2013). According to Health Canada, 1 in 5 deaths are due to suicide in the Aboriginal youth (aged 10 to 19 years).
The Illusion of Advertisements Advertisements are pieces of art or literary work that are meant to make the viewer or reader associate with the activity or product represented in the advertisement. According to Kurtz and Dave (2010), in so doing, they aim at either increasing the demand of the product, to inform the consumer of the existence, or to differentiate that product from other existing ones in the market. Therefore, the advertiser’s aim should at all times try as much as possible to stay relevant and to the point. The advert alongside is simple and straight to the point. It contains very few details but extremely large content with the choice of words and graphics.
Advertisements became hugely popular when they were carried over to commercial television in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Campbell and Thomas, 2014). At present time, advertisements are all around us. Thousands of advertisements are going on around the world every second. In just the USA, the average American child watches over 40,000 commercial ads a year.