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Consumer culture and advertisement
The culture of American advertising
The culture of American advertising
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In the 1960’s, the general population experienced a massive shift in the way they reacted to advertisements. Society no longer wanted to be addressed as a mass and this resistance brought a sense of individualism and non-conformism. In reaction to this resistance, advertisers moved away from the concept of one large consumer mass and decided that in order to properly appeal to the consumer, they would have to segment the market. Starting in the late 1960’s, advertisers shifted their focus from a personal format to a lifestyle format, by using social context, by focusing on consumption, and by fully utilizing the advent of the television, in order to properly respond to the new cultural desire for identity and distinction. The biggest change …show more content…
In the late 1960’s, one of the most effective tactics in order to address society as less of a mass was to focus less on the product itself, but rather the consumption style around the product. This can be seen in any ad, either in print or in video format, that really illustrates a certain lifestyle that the consumer may be living, that would suit the use of the given product. This turned out to appeal to the consumer much more than personalizing the product, as it was more realistic and even more relatable. The companies and ad agencies realized that when a consumer sees an advertisement where someone is using a product in a scene that shows an appealing lifestyle, this triggers a desire to want this product. Consumers started to buy the products based on the lifestyle they’re living, or more often, the lifestyle they’d like to live. It became incredibly successful to shift away from focusing on the product, but rather on the lifestyle that surrounds it. This process was made even easier, with the invention of the television and the ability to represent these lifestyles …show more content…
One of the most prevalent adverting campaigns currently, is the one put on by Corona. The popular Mexican beer company has countless ads with the beer being featured on a tropical beach, in the sun, with the tagline “Where you’d rather be”. This type of advertisement is clearly trying to associate the beer with a laid back, relaxed lifestyle that consumers seemingly wish they had. The advertisement campaign has been incredibly successful and has distinguished the beer from its similar tasting competitors, simply based on the lifestyle associated with it. One of the main reasons why this approach is so successful is that there are no limitations to the type of consumer that can be persuaded. In a paper written about the lifestyle approach, Mike Featherstone suggests that there is evidence in consumer culture publicity that being self-conscious about one’s lifestyle is not the limited to the younger generation, because “we all have room for self-improvement and self-expression whatever our age or class origins”
American’s and people in general are an audience targeted for various commodities, advertising being a major contributor. The world of advertising has become a multiplex science, as mentioned in “What We Are to advertisers,” Twitchell divides consumers into 8 categories and Craig, in “Men’s Men and Women’s Women,” concludes there are specific times of day for advertisements to be displayed to reach specific audiences. “Mass production means mass marketing, and mass marketing means the creation of mass stereotypes,” claims Twitchell. These stereotypes of men, women, and humans in general are how advertiser’s reach their targeted audiences.
In “On Reading a Video Text,” Robert Scholes discusses the idea of cultural reinforcement within television commercials. Scholes claims that television commercials remind viewers of their social whereabouts and displays their association with society. Commercials are played year around and people have the chance to view and form their own values and beliefs based on what they see. For instance, Scholes blatantly describes to his audience that the Budweiser commercial from the 80s focuses on more than just advertising their product; they try selling a message. Two and a half decades later Budweiser is at it again. In a recent Super Bowl commercial they focus in on a similar aspect, the American Dream. Only this time it is a little more
Thus, the sixties triggered not only political change but also social and cultural reformations. Advertisers realized that they shou...
“What We are to Advertisers” by James B. Twitchell is a short article that emphasize how advertisement attracts audience magically. From the quote, “ Mass production means mass marketing, and mass marketing means the creation of mass stereotypes” James points out of how the world appear to be. The advertisers seems to be psychologically abuse to the public for them to be successful in their industry. Base on the way the society act, dress and thinks, we fantasize something ridiculous and only our imagination can only make it close to a reality. With that in mind, the industry of advertisements will immediately think of a way to try and sell their product to us.
In this generation businesses use commercial to persuade different types of audiences to buy their product or to persuade them to help a certain caused. If you analyze commercial you can see how certain things play a major role in the success of a commercial. The ad I decide to analyze as an example is the commercial snickers used during the Super Bowl in 2010;”Betty White”-Snickers. This commercials starts off with guys playing a game of football with an elderly women know as Betty White. As Betty White tries to play football she is tackled to the ground. Her teammates refer to her as Mike when they come up to her to ask why she has been “playing like Betty White all day”. This helps inform the audience that Betty White is not actually playing but instead represent another teammate. As the guys keep arguing Mikes girlfriend calls her over and tells her to eat a snicker. Betty White takes the first bite and then suddenly a man appears in her place ready to finish the game. At the end of the commercial the statement "You're not you when you're hungry" is shown followed by the Snickers bar logo. What this commercial is trying to show is that hunger changes a person, and satisfying this hunger can change you back to your normal self. They use different types
Michael Messner and Jeffrey Montez de Oca explain that contemporary beer ads represent a desirable male lifestyle to reaffirm masculinity in a time when men are insecure. Their essay, “The Male Consumer as a Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events,” goes on to list the reasons for their insecurities: historic and cultural shifts such as deindustrialization, declining real value of wages, feminists and sexual minorities. They support their main point by providing a window to the past as beer ads of the 1950s depicted a desirable lifestyle that was appropriate for post war style of living. By following the transitions of beer ads from the 1950s to now, we could follow the accepted lifestyles of the times during which the ad was made.
Fowles, Jib. “Advertising's Fifteen Basic Appeals.” Eds Michael Petracca, Madeleine Sorapure. Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Pop Culture. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 54-72. Print.
Have you ever seen an advertisement for a product and could immediately relate to the subject or the product in that advertisement? Companies that sell products are always trying to find new and interesting ways to get buyers and get people’s attention. It has become a part of our society today to always have products being shown to them. As claimed in Elizabeth Thoman’s essay Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, “…advertising offered instructions on how to dress, how to behave, how to appear to others in order to gain approval and avoid rejection”. This statement is true because most of the time buyers are persuaded by ads for certain products.
In the article Kilbourne is stressing the Idea that advertising is stripping us of our spirituality, culture is becoming commercialism. Kilbourne believes that because of the way advertisements are deployed they’re changing our values in what I (and I’m pretty sure she) would consider an extremely negative way. Kilbourne talks of their efforts to addict us to consumerism as children and leave us emotionally starved, expecting products to fill the void that they create in us. The culture that comes with these advertisements is turning us into self-indulgent, close minded people Kilbourne sums this idea up quite well bemoaning that “This apparently bottomless consumerism not only depletes the world’s resources,
Bordo’s essay shows the way that women are constantly being bombarded with commercials. Advertisements portray the idea that you are what society envisions you being, if you don’t make a certain choice regarding to the kinds of food you eat, and the amount of food you eat. They say that if you don’t eat a certain kind of cereal, that you will be fat, or that you look unattractive eating that thick, burger, and instead, you should have some
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.
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
The techniques companies use to sell their products have changed so much in the past 50 years. Every company has to adapt to the changing times. An example of this is that in the 1950s, companies had to find a way to appeal mostly to stay-at-home wives because they were the ones who were home all day listening to the radio while doing chores or watching the commercials between their soaps. In the 1970s advertisements had to change and find some way to appeal to an increasing amount of feminists while alluring homemakers also. They have to go along with the changes.
In this paper we will explore how advertisements cultivate a woman’s need for consumerism as a part of their own self image. George Gerbner, the founder of cultivation theory, argued that television has the ability to impact the way that people percieve certain message and influence their everyday life. In this study, we will conduct a content analysis of quantitative and qualitative measures that will study fashion advertisements. Each advertisement will be critiqued by a set of questions to help find any pattern or correlation between attributes that may have an impact on female consumers. A sample population will be drawn at random on three different occasions containing women from the ages of 18-30. In the first group each individual that is selected will be given a survey of questions. This set of questions will focus on the shaping of body image with the use of makeup, accessories, and clothing, and help identify trends between fashion and life style. The second sample group will participate in a focus group discussion that will be directed towards how women see themselves with regards to their own body image. The third group of women will complete a written survey before and after being exposed to television advertisements. This will test to see if advertisements entice woman to purchase products or change their personal portrayal.
“The average family is bombarded with 1,100 advertisements per day … people only remembered three or four of them”. Fiske’s uses an example of kids singing Razzmatazz a jingle for brand of tights at a woman in a mini skirt. This displayed to the reader that people are not mindless consumers; they modify the commodity for their use. He rejects that the audiences are helpless subjects of unconscious consumerism. In contrast to McDonald’s, Fiske’s quoted “they were using the ads for their own cheeky resistive subculture” he added. He believed that instead of being submissive they twisted the ad into their own take on popular culture (Fiske, 1989, p. 31)