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Advertising and Commercial Culture
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Early Developments in American Advertising
389
The Shape of U.S. Advertising Today
399
Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
405
Commercial Speech and Regulating Advertising
414
Advertising, Politics, and Democracy
There's a saying in advertising: "Dollars always follow eyeballs."1 That is, the advertising money flows to whichever medium is attracting people's attention. Over the past century those eyeballs have shifted from newspapers and magazines to television to the Internet—and now the Internet as accessed via tablets and smartphones. With each new medium, advertisers get closer to us—in our workplaces, in our homes, and now in our hands with mobile devices. The next new medium could be even closer—right in front of our eyeballs.
Well, our right eyeball, for now. One of Google's most talked-about recent inventions, announced in 2012 and tested in 2013, is Google Glass, a mobile computer worn like eyeglasses, with a tiny camera and clear optical display over one's right eye. The wearer can use voice commands to have "Glass" take a still photo, record video, send messages, search Google, and have a layer of augmented reality (for example, a map with directions) superimposed over one's view.
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"In today's multi-screen world we face tremendous opportunities as a technology company focused on user benefit. It's an incredibly exciting time to be at Google," says Larry Page, CEO of Google.2 But journalist Richard Tso reminds us that Google Glass might really be about more than just user benefit: "After the novelty of such a device begins to wear off, we can then examine how Google Glass may fit into the larger strategy down the road by Silicon Valley powerhouse Google. The company, after all, is an advertising company. . . "3
With Google Glass, Google has invented a new screen for "today's multi-screen world" that can literally put ads right in front of our eyes. Imagine walking down a street, our view of shops and storefronts layered with translucent images of specials and sales. Would that be helpful or annoying? Google, which has always tried to be low-key in its advertising style, will eventually find out. Richard Tso is even more concerned about information going in the other direction, from the Google Glass user back to the advertiser. Eye-tracking technology already exists and can determine where and for how long someone is looking. According to Tso, further advances in eye-tracking "will soon make it possible for ads to look right back at you, seeing where you look on a webpage and how long your gaze ingers on a banner or rich media advertisement for, say, Adidas or Starbucks." Google Glass has the potential to be the most powerful measure of advertising exposure ever.
Google Glass, if successful, could be a way for Google to further compete with its rival Apple. Google has been
successful making advertising money from its popular search engine, but with Apple's self-enclosed app environments for its iPhone and iPod, Google sees the need for developing its own devices, to ensure more control over screens. Google, which is already the biggest advertising company in the world, bought AdMob, a company that serves ads to mobile screens, for $750 million in 2010. With so many mobile phone and tablet devices (including Google's own Nexus 7 tablet) using the Android platform, Google has a ready network of devices for mobile advertising. Google hopes that Google Glass might become the next big device.
Then again, Google Glass might never catch on. It may be that potential users will be concerned about the intrusive-ness of ads being delivered directly to one's eyes, and the intrusiveness of one's eyes being tracked for data. Or, it may be (as some Internet memes already suggest) that people look dorky in them. If Google Glass does fail, we can be certain of one thing: Advertisers will be looking for another way to follow our eyeballs.
"When you put a pair of these glasses on, your gaze may be revealing more about you than you may realize—and advertisers will soon pay a hefty premium to gain access to your eyes."
RICHARD TSO, HUFFINGTON POST, 2013
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A TODAY, ADVERTISEMENTS ARE EVERYWHERE AND IN EVERY MEDIA FORM. Ads take up more than half the space in most daily newspapers and consumer magazines. They are inserted into trade books and textbooks. They clutter Web sites on the Internet. They fill our mailboxes and wallpaper the buses we ride. Dotting the nation's highways, billboards promote fast-food and hotel chains, while neon signs announce the names of stores along major streets and strip malls. Ads are even found in the restrooms of malls, restaurants, and bars.
At local theaters and on DVDs, ads now precede the latest Hollywood movie trailers. Corporate sponsors spend millions for product placement: buying spaces for particular goods to appear in a TV show, movie, or music video. Ads are part of a deejay's morning patter, and ads routinely interrupt our favorite TV and cable programs. In 2012, nearly sixteen minutes and twenty seconds of each hour of prime-time network television carried commercials, program promos, and public service announcements-an increase from thirteen minutes an hour in 1992. In addition, each hour of prime-time network TV carried about eleven minutes of product placements.4 This means that about twenty-six minutes of each hour (or 43 percent) include some sort of paid sponsorship. According to the Food Marketing Institute, the typical supermarket's shelves are filled with thirty thousand to fifty thousand different brand-name packages, all functioning like miniature billboards. By some research estimates, the average American comes into contact with five thousand forms of advertising each day.5
Advertising comes in many forms, from classified ads to business-to- mn business ads, providing detailed information on specific products. However, in this chapter we concentrate on the more conspicuous advertisements that shape product images and brand-name identities. Because so much consumer advertising intrudes into daily life, ads are often viewed in a negative light. Although business managers agree that advertising is the foundation of a healthy media economy-far preferable to government-controlled media-audiences routinely complain about how many ads they are forced to endure, and they increasingly find ways to avoid them, like zipping through television ads with TiVo and blocking pop-up ads with Web browsers. In response, market researchers routinely weigh consumers' tolerance-how long an ad or how many ads they are willing to tolerate to get "free" media content. Without consumer advertisements, however, mass commu nication industries would cease to function in their present forms. Advertising is the economic glue that holds most media industries together.
In this chapter, we will:
• Examine the historical development of advertising-an industry that helped transform numerous nations into consumer societies
• Look at the first U.S. ad agencies; early advertisements; and the emergence of packaging, trademarks, and brand-name recognition
• Consider the growth of advertising in the last century, such as the increasing influence of ad agencies and the shift to a more visually oriented culture
• Outline the key persuasive techniques used in consumer advertising
• Investigate ads as a form of commercial speech, and discuss the measures aimed at regulating advertising
• Look at political advertising and its impact on democracy
It's increasingly rare to find spaces in our society that don't contain advertising. As you read this chapter, think about your own exposure to advertising. What are some things you like or admire about advertising? For example, are there particular ad campaigns that give you
4
3
The game plan at breakfast,
THE "GOT MILK?"
advertising campaign was originally designed byGoodby, Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993. Since 1998, the National Milk Processor Board has licensed the "got milk?" slogan for its celebrity milk mustache ads like this one
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enormous pleasure? How and when do ads annoy you? Can you think of any ways you intentionally avoid advertising? For more questions to help you understand the role of advertising in our lives, see "Questioning the Media" in the Chapter Review.
Early Developments in American Advertising
Advertising has existed since 3000 b.c.e., when shop owners in ancient Babylon hung outdoor signs carved in stone and wood so that customers could spot their stores. Merchants in early Egyptian society hired town criers to walk through the streets, announcing the arrival of ships and listing the goods on board. Archaeologists searching Pompeii, the ancient Italian city destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 c.e., found advertising messages painted on walls. By 900 c.e., many European cities featured town criers who not only called out the news of the day but also directed customers to various stores.
Other early media ads were on handbills, posters, and broadsides (long, newsprint-quality posters). English booksellers printed brochures and bills announcing new publications as early as the 1470s, when posters advertising religious books were tacked on to church doors. In 1622, print ads imitating the oral style of criers appeared in the first English newspapers. Announcing land deals and ship cargoes, the first newspaper ads in colonial America ran in the Boston News-Letter in 1704.
To distinguish their approach from the commercialism of newspapers, early magazines refused to carry advertisements. By the mid-1800s, though, most magazines contained ads and most publishers started magazines hoping to earn advertising dollars. About 80 percent of
"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements."
NORMAN DOUGLAS, SOUTH WIND, 1917
Advertising and Commercial Culture
First Newspaper Ad
Featuring land deals and ship cargoes, the first newspaper ads in colonial America run in the Boston News-Letter in 1704 (p. 384)
Prototype of First Ad Agency
In 1841 in Boston, Volney Palmer opens a precursor to the first ad agency, selling newspaper space to advertisers (p. 385)
Food and Drug Act
To monitor misleading patent medicine claims in newspaper and magazine ads, the Federal Food and Drug Act is passed in 1906 (p. 387)
War Advertising Council
In the 1940s, a voluntary group of agencies and advertisers organizes war bond sales, blood donor drives, and food rationing; the postwar extension of these voluntary efforts becomes known as the Ad Council (p. 388)
1700
1900
1925
1950
First Full-Service Ad Agency
N. W. Ayer& Son of Philadelphia, assuming responsibility for creating and placing ads, becomes the first full-service advertising agency in 1869 (p. 385).
FTC
The Federal Trade Commission is established by the federal government in 1914 to help monitor advertising abuses (p. 389).
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these early advertisements covered three subjects: land sales, transportation announcements (stagecoach and ship schedules), and "runaways" (ads placed by farm and plantation owners whose slaves had fled).
The First Advertising Agencies
Until the 1830s, little need existed for elaborate advertising, as few goods and products were even available for sale. Before the Industrial Revolution, 90 percent of Americans lived in isolated areas and produced most of their own tools, clothes, and food. The minimal advertising that did exist usually featured local merchants selling goods and services in their own communities. In the United States, national advertising, which initially focused on patent medicines, didn't start in earnest until the 1850s, when railroads linking the East Coast to the Mississippi River Valley began carrying newspapers, handbills, and broadsides-as well as national consumer goods-across the country.
The first American advertising agencies were newspaper space brokers, individuals who purchased space in newspapers and sold it to various merchants. Newspapers, accustomed to a 25 percent nonpayment rate from advertisers, welcomed the space brokers, who paid upfront. Brokers usually received discounts of 15 to 30 percent but sold the space to advertisers at the going rate. In 1841, Volney Palmer opened a prototype of the first ad agency in Boston; for a 25 percent commission from newspaper publishers, he sold space to advertisers.
Advertising in the 1800s
The first full-service modern ad agency, N. W. Ayer & Son, worked primarily for advertisers and product companies rather than for newspapers. Opening in 1869 in Philadelphia, the agency helped create, write, produce, and place ads in selected newspapers and magazines. The traditional payment structure at this time had the agency collecting a fee from its advertising client for each ad placed; the fee covered the price that each media outlet charged for placement of
"The American apparatus of advertising is something unique in history!;]... it is like a grotesque, smirking gargoyle set at the very top of America's sky-scraping adventure in acquisition ad infinitum."
JAMES RORTY,
OUR MASTER'S VOICE,
1934
Tobacco Ads Are Banned on TV
In 1971, the tobacco industry agrees to a government rule that bans cigarette advertising from television (p. 408)
I960
1970
Tobacco Billboards Are Curbed
In 1998, the tobacco industry agrees to a settlement with several states, and tobacco ads on billboards are banned (p. 409)
1980
Spam
By 2010, spam e-mail ads account for more than 85 percent of all e-mail volume (p. 396)
1990
Google Glass
In 2013, Google tests a mobile computer worn like eyeglasses (p. 381).
2000
2010
2020
Joe Camel
In 1988, R.J. Reynolds revives the Joe Came cartoon character from an earlier print media campaign; the percentage of teens smoking Camels rises sharply (p. 408)
Channel One
Channel One is introduced into thousands of schools in 1989, offering "free" equipment in exchange for ten minutes of news programming and two minutes of commercials (p. 407)
BeerAdsonTV
nthe late 1990s, Budweiser uses cartoonlike anima characters to appeal to young viewers (p. 409)
TV Ad Time
By 2012, sixteen minutes of each hour of prime-time network TV feature ads and promos (p. 383)
Mega-Agencies
The 2013-14 merger of internationa ad agencies Omnicom and Publicis creates the largest mega-agency in the world (pp. 390-391)
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PATENT MEDICINES
Unregulated patent medicines, such as the one represented in this ad, created a bonanza for nineteenth-century print media in search of advertising revenue. After several muckraking magazine reports about deceptive patent medicine claims, Congress created the Food and Drug Administration in 1906
the ad, plus a 15 percent commission for the agency. The more ads an agency placed, the larger the agency's revenue. Thus agencies had little incentive to buy fewer ads on behalf of their clients. Nowadays, however, many advertising agencies work for a flat fee, and some will agree to be paid on a performance basis.
Trademarks and Packaging
During the mid-1800s, most manufacturers served retail store owners, who usually set their own prices by purchasing goods in large quantities. Manufacturers, however, came to realize that if their products were distinctive and associated with quality, customers would ask for them by name. This would allow manufacturers to dictate prices without worrying about being undersold by stores' generic products or bulk items. Advertising let manufacturers establish a special identity for their products, separate from those of their competitors.
Like many ads today, nineteenth-century advertisements often created the impression of significant differences among products when in fact very few differences actually existed. But when consumers began demanding certain products-either because of quality or because of advertising-manufacturers were able to raise the prices of their goods. With ads creating and maintaining brand-name recognition, retail stores had to stock the desired brands.
One of the first brand names, Smith Brothers, has been advertising cough drops since the early 1850s. Quaker Oats, the first cereal company to register a trademark, has used the image of William Penn, the Quaker who founded Pennsylvania in 1681, to project a company image of honesty, decency, and hard work since 1877. Other early and enduring brands include Campbell Soup, which came along in 1869; Levi Strauss overalls in 1873; Ivory Soap in 1879; and Eastman Kodak film in 1888. Many of these companies packaged their products in small quantities, thereby distinguishing them from the generic products sold in large barrels and bins.
Product differentiation associated with brand-name packaged goods represents the single biggest triumph of advertising. Studies suggest that although most ads are not very effective in the short run, over time they create demand by leading consumers to associate particular brands with quality. Not surprisingly, building or sustaining brand-name recognition is the focus of many product-marketing campaigns. But the costs that packaging and advertising add to products generate many consumer complaints. The high price of many contemporary products results from advertising costs. For example, designer jeans that cost $150 (or more) today are made from roughly the same inexpensive denim that has outfitted farm workers since the 1800s. The difference now is that more than 90 percent of the jeans' cost goes toward advertising and profit.
Patent Medicines and Department Stores
By the end of the 1800s, patent medicines and department stores accounted for half of the revenues taken in by ad agencies. Meanwhile, one-sixth of all print ads came from patent medicine and drug companies. Such ads ensured the financial survival of numerous magazines as "the role of the publisher changed from being a seller of a product to consumers to being a gatherer of consumers for the advertisers."6 Bearing names like Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Dr. Lin's Chinese Blood Pills, and William Radam's Microbe Killer, patent medicines were often made with water and 15 to
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40 percent concentrations of ethyl alcohol. One patent medicine-Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup-actually contained morphine. Powerful drugs in these medicines explain why people felt "better" after taking them; at the same time, they triggered lifelong addiction problems for many customers.
Many contemporary products, in fact, originated as medicines. Coca-Cola, for instance, was initially sold as a medicinal tonic and even contained traces of cocaine until 1903, when it was replaced by caffeine. Early Post and Kellogg's cereal ads promised to cure stomach and digestive problems. Many patent medicines made outrageous claims about what they could cure, leading to increased public cynicism. As a result, advertisers began to police their ranks and develop industry codes to restore customer confidence. Partly to monitor patent medicine claims, the Federal Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906.
Along with patent medicines, department store ads were also becoming prominent in newspapers and magazines. By the early 1890s, more than 20 percent of ad space was devoted to department stores. At the time, these stores were frequently criticized for undermining small shops and businesses, where shopkeepers personally served customers. The more impersonal department stores allowed shoppers to browse and find brand-name goods themselves. Because these stores purchased merchandise in large quantities, they could generally sell the same products for less. With increased volume and less money spent on individualized service, department store chains, like Target and Walmart today, undercut small local stores and put more of their profits into ads.
"Consumption, Asthma, Bronchitis, Deafness, cured at HOME!"
AD FOR CARBOLATE OF TAR INHALANTS, 1883
WAR ADVERTISING COUNCIL
During World War II, the federal government engaged the advertising industry to create messages to support the U.S. war effort Advertisers promoted the sa le of war bonds, conservation of natura resources such as tin and gasoline, and even saving kitchen waste so it could be fed to farm animals
Advertising's Impact on Newspapers
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, "continuous-process machinery" kept company factories operating at peak efficiency, helping to produce an abundance of inexpensive packaged consumer goods.7 The companies that produced those goods-Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Heinz, Borden, Pillsbury, Eastman Kodak, Carnation, and American Tobacco-were some of the first to advertise, and they remain major advertisers today (although many of these brand names have been absorbed by larger conglomerates).
The demand for newspaper advertising by product companies and retail stores significantly changed the ratio of copy at most newspapers. While newspapers in the mid-1880s featured 70 to 75 percent news and editorial material and only 25 to 30 percent advertisements, by the early 1900s more than half the space in daily papers was devoted to advertising. However, the recent recession hit newspapers hard: Their advertising revenue is expected to decline from a peak of $49 billion in 2005 to an estimated $22.3 billion by 2014-a loss of 44 percent-as car, real estate, and help-wanted ads fell significantly.8 For many papers, fewer ads meant smaller papers, not more room for articles.
Promoting Social Change and Dictating Values
As U.S. advertising became more pervasive, it contributed to major social changes in the twentieth century. First, it significantly influenced the transition from a producer-directed to a consumer-driven society. By stimulating demand for new
KEEP IT DRY. FREE FROM GLASS. BONES. TINS. ETC
wiir men Wll chub
Hi
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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS
The Ad Council has been creating public service announcements (PSAs) since 1942. Supported by contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations, the council's PSAs are produced pro bono by ad agencies. This PSA is the result of the Ad Council's long-standing relationship with the National Safety Council
On the Road, Off the Phone.
products, advertising helped manufacturers create new markets and recover product start-up costs quickly. From farms to cities, advertising spread the word-first in newspapers and magazines and later on radio and television.
Second, advertising promoted technological advances by showing how new machines, such as vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and cars, could improve daily life. Third, advertising encouraged economic growth by increasing sales. To meet the demand generated by ads, manufacturers produced greater quantities, which reduced their costs per unit, although they did not always pass these savings along to consumers.
Appealing to Female Consumers
By the early 1900s, advertisers and ad agencies believed that women, who constituted 70 to 80 percent of newspaper and magazine readers, controlled most household purchasing decisions. (This is still a fundamental principle of advertising today.) Ironically, more than 99 percent of the copywriters and ad executives at that time were men, primarily based in Chicago and New York. They emphasized stereotyped appeals to women, believing that simple ads with emotional and even irrational content worked best. Thus early ad copy featured personal tales of "heroic" cleaning products and household appliances. The intention was to help female consumers feel good about defeating life's problems-an advertising strategy that endured throughout much of the twentieth century.
Dealing with Criticism
Although ad revenues fell during the Great Depression in the 1930s, World War II brought a rejuvenation in advertising. For the first time, the federal government bought large quantities of advertising space to promote U.S. involvement in a war. These purchases helped offset a decline in traditional advertising, as many industries had turned their attention and production facilities to the war effort.
Also during the 1940s, the industry began to actively deflect criticism that advertising created consumer needs that ordinary citizens never knew they had. Criticism of advertising grew as the industry appeared to be dictating values as well as driving the economy. To promote a more positive image, the industry developed the War Advertising Council-a voluntary group of agencies and advertisers that organized war bond sales, blood donor drives, and the rationing of scarce goods.
The postwar extension of advertising's voluntary efforts became known as the Ad Council, praised over the years for its Smokey the Bear campaign ("Only you can prevent forest fires"); its fund-raising campaign for the United Negro College Fund ("A mind is a terrible thing to waste"); and its "crash dummy" spots for the Department of Transportation, which substantially increased seat belt use. Choosing a dozen worthy causes annually, the Ad Council continues to produce pro bono public service announcements (PSAs) on a wide range of topics, including literacy, home-lessness, drug addiction, smoking, and AIDS education.
Early Ad Regulation
The early 1900s saw the formation of several watchdog organizations. Partly to keep tabs on deceptive advertising, advocates in the business community in 1913 created the nonprofit Better Business Bureau, which now has more than one hundred branch offices in the United States. At the same time, advertisers wanted a formal service that tracked newspaper
FOCUSDRIVEN-
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readership, guaranteed accurate audience measures, and ensured that papers would not overcharge ad agencies and their clients. As a result, publishers formed the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) in 1914 (now known as the Alliance for Audited Media).
That same year, the government created the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in part to help monitor advertising abuses. Thereafter, the industry urged self-regulatory measures in order to keep government interference at bay. Established in 1917, the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), for example, tried to minimize government oversight by urging ad agencies to refrain from making misleading product claims.
Finally, the advent of television dramatically altered advertising. With this new visual medium, ads increasingly intruded on daily life. Critics also discovered that some agencies used subliminal advertising. This term, coined in the 1950s, refers to hidden or disguised print and visual messages that allegedly register in the subconscious and fool people into buying products. Noted examples of subliminal ads from that time include a "Drink Coca-Cola" ad embedded in a few frames of a movie and alleged hidden sexual activity drawn into liquor ads; but research suggests that such ads are no more effective than regular ads. Nevertheless, the National Association of Broadcasters banned the use of subliminal ads in 1958.
The Shape of U.S. Advertising Today
Until the 1960s, the shape and pitch of most U.S. ads were determined by a slogan, the phrase that attempts to sell a product by capturing its essence in words. With slogans such as "A Diamond Is Forever" (which De Beers first used in 1948), the visual dimension of ads was merely a complement. Eventually, however, through the influence of European design, television, and (now) multimedia devices, such as the iPad, images asserted themselves, and visual style became dominant in U.S. advertising and ad agencies.
The Influence of Visual Design
Just as a postmodern design phase developed in art and architecture during the 1960s and 1970s, a new design era began to affect advertising at the same time. Part of this visual revolution was imported from non-U. S. schools of design; indeed, ad-rich magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair increasingly hired European designers as art directors. These directors tended to be less tied to U.S. word-driven radio advertising because most European countries had government-sponsored radio systems with no ads.
By the early 1970s, agencies had developed teams of writers and artists, thus granting equal status to images and words in the creative process. By the mid-1980s, the visual techniques of MTV, which initially modeled its style on advertising, influenced many ads and most agencies. MTV promoted a particular visual aesthetic-rapid edits, creative camera angles, compressed narratives, and staged performances. Video-style ads soon
MAD MEN
AMC's hit series Mad Men depicts the male-dominated world of Madison Avenue in the 1960s, as the U.S. consumer economy kicked into high gear and agencies developed ad campaigns for cigarettes, exercise belts, and presidential candidates In 2012, the show was nominated for seventeen Emmys and won Outstanding Drama Series for the fourth straight year in 2011
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"The combination of Omnicom Group of the U.S. and France's Publicis Groupe SA is aimed at restoring the balance of power between advertising agencies and such Silicon Valley companies as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc."
WALL STREET JOURNAL, 2013
saturated television and featured such prominent performers as Paula Abdul, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Madonna. The popularity of MTV's visual style also started a trend in the 1980s to license hit songs for commercial tie-ins. By the twenty-first century, a wide range of short, polished musical performances and familiar songs-including the work of Train (Samsung), the Shins (McDonald's), LMFAO (Kia Motors), and classic Louis Armstrong (Apple iPhone)-were routinely used in TV ads to encourage consumers not to click the remote control.
Most recently, the Internet and multimedia devices, such as computers, mobile phones, and portable media players, have had a significant impact on visual design in advertising. As the Web became a mass medium in the 1990s, TV and print designs often mimicked the drop-down menu of computer interfaces. In the twenty-first century, visual design has evolved in other ways, becoming more three-dimensional and interactive, as full-motion, 3-D animation becomes a high-bandwidth multimedia standard. At the same time, design is also simpler, as ads and logos need to appear clearly on the small screens of smartphones and portable media players, and more international, as agencies need to appeal to the global audiences of many companies and therefore need to reflect styles from around the world.
Types of Advertising Agencies
About fourteen thousand ad agencies currently operate in the United States. In general, these agencies are classified as either mega-agencies-large ad firms that formed by merging several agencies and that maintain regional offices worldwide-or small boutique agencies that devote their talents to only a handful of select clients. With the economic crisis, both types of ad agencies suffered revenue declines in 2008 and 2009 but slowly improved afterward.
Mega-Agencies
Mega-agencies provide a full range of services from advertising and public relations to operating their own in-house radio and TV production studios. By 2014, the three mega-agencies were Publicis Omnicom Groupe, WPP, and Interpublic (see Figure 11.1).
Omnicom and Publicis announced their merger in 2013, creating the world's largest mega-agency, with more than $22 billion in revenue. Omnicom, based in New York, had more than
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71,000 employees in 2013 operating in more than 100 countries and currently owns the global advertising firms BBDO Worldwide, DDB Worldwide, and TBWA Worldwide. The company also owns three leading public relations agencies: Fleishman-Hillard, Ketchum, and Porter Novelli. The Paris-based Publicis Groupe has a global reach through agencies like Leo Burnett Worldwide, the British agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Digitas, and the public relations firm MS&L. Publicis employed more than 49,000 people worldwide in 2013. The London-based WPP Group grew quickly in the 1980s with the purchases of J. Walter Thompson, the largest U.S. ad firm at the time; Hill & Knowlton, one of the largest U.S. public relations agencies; and Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. In the 2000s, WPP Group continued its growth and acquired Young & Rubicam and Grey Global-both major U.S. ad firms. By 2013, WPP had 165,000 employees in 110 countries. The Interpublic Group, based in New York with 43,500 employees worldwide, holds global agencies like McCann Erickson (the top U.S. ad agency), DraftFCB, and Lowe Worldwide, and public relations firms GolinHarris and Weber Shandwick.
This mega-agency trend has stirred debate among consumer and media watchdog groups. Some consider large agencies a threat to the independence of smaller firms, which are slowly being bought out. An additional concern is that these four firms now control more than half the distribution of advertising dollars globally. As a result, the cultural values represented by U.S. and European ads may undermine or overwhelm the values and products of developing countries. (See Figure 11.2 for a look at how advertising dollars are spent by medium.)
Boutique Agencies
The visual revolutions in advertising during the 1960s elevated the standing of designers and graphic artists, who became closely identified with the look of particular ads. Breaking away from bigger agencies, many of these creative individuals formed small boutique agencies. Offering more personal services, the boutiques prospered, bolstered by innovative ad campaigns and increasing profits from TV accounts. By the 1980s, large agencies had bought up many of the boutiques. Nevertheless, these boutiques continue to operate as fairly autonomous subsidiaries within multinational corporate structures.
One independent boutique agency in Minneapolis, Peterson Milla Hooks (PMH), made its name with a boldly graphic national branding ad campaign for Target department stores. Target moved its business to another agency in 2011, but PMH-which employs only about sixty people-rebounded with new clients like Gap, Kmart, Sephora, Athleta, and JCP.9
FIGURE 11.2
FORECAST FOR 2015: WHERE WILL THE ADVERTISING DOLLARS GO?
Source: "Share of Ad Spending by Medium: U.S.," Advertising Age, December 31, 2012, p. 16. Note: Outdoor advertising ncludes billboards, transit advertising, and kiosk ads. TV includes network TV, spot TV, syndicated TV, and cable TV networks.
Share of Ad Spending in United States, by Medium, 2012       share of Ad Spending in United States, by Medium, 2015 (forecast)
Outdoor & Cinema 5.2%
Radio_
10.4%
Magazines 11.2%
Newspapers 15.5%
Internet 19.1%
Outdoor & Cinema 5.3%
Radio 9.7%
Magazines 9.0%
Newspapers 10.7%
Internet 27.7%
TV
37.5%
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The Structure of Ad Agencies
Traditional ad agencies, regardless of their size, generally divide the labor of creating and maintaining advertising campaigns among four departments: account planning, creative development, media coordination, and account management. Expenses incurred for producing the ads are part of a separate negotiation between the agency and the advertiser. As a result of this commission arrangement, it generally costs most large-volume advertisers no more to use an agency than it does to use their own staff.
"The best advertising artist of all time was Raphael. He had the best client— the papacy; the best art director— the College of Cardinals; and the best product-salvation. And we never disparage Raphael for working for a client or selling an idea."
MARK FENSKE, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, N.W.AYER, 1996
"Alcohol marketers appear to believe that the prototypical college student is (1) male;
(2) a nitwit; and
(3) interested in nothing but booze and'babes.'"
MICHAEL F. JACOBSON AND LAURIE ANN MAZUR, MARKETING MADNESS, 1995
Account Planning, Market Research, and VALS
The account planner's role is to develop an effective advertising strategy by combining the views of the client, the creative team, and consumers. Consumers' views are the most difficult to understand, so account planners coordinate market research to assess the behaviors and attitudes of consumers toward particular products long before any ads are created. Researchers may study everything from possible names for a new product to the size of the copy for a print ad. Researchers also test new ideas and products with consumers to get feedback before developing final ad strategies. In addition, some researchers contract with outside polling firms to conduct regional and national studies of consumer preferences.
Agencies have increasingly employed scientific methods to study consumer behavior. In 1932, Young & Rubicam first used statistical techniques developed by pollster George Gallup. By the 1980s, most large agencies retained psychologists and anthropologists to advise them on human nature and buying habits. The earliest type of market research, demographics, mainly studied and documented audience members' age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, education, and income. Today, demographic data are much more specific. They make it possible to locate consumers in particular geographic regions-usually by zip code. This enables advertisers and product companies to target ethnic neighborhoods or affluent suburbs for direct mail, point-of-purchase store displays, or specialized magazine and newspaper inserts.
Demographic analyses provide advertisers with data on people's behavior and social status but reveal little about feelings and attitudes. By the 1960s and 1970s, advertisers and agencies began using psychographics, a research approach that attempts to categorize consumers according to their attitudes, beliefs, interests, and motivations. Psychographic analysis often relies on focus groups, a small-group interview technique in which a moderator leads a discussion about a product or an issue, usually with six to twelve people. Because focus groups are small and less scientific than most demographic research, the findings from such groups may be suspect.
In 1978, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), now called Strategic Business Insights (SBI), instituted its Values and Lifestyles (VALS) strategy. Using questionnaires, VALS researchers measured psychological factors and divided consumers into types. VALS research assumes that not every product suits every consumer and encourages advertisers to vary their sales slants to find market niches.
Over the years, the VALS system has been updated to reflect changes in consumer orientations (see Figure 11.3 on page 393). The most recent system classifies people by their primary consumer motivations: ideals, achievement, or self-expression. The ideals-oriented group, for instance, includes thinkers-"mature, satisfied, comfortable, and reflective people who value order, knowledge, and responsibility." VALS and similar research techniques ultimately provide advertisers with microscopic details about which consumers are most likely to buy which products.
Agencies and clients-particularly auto manufacturers-have relied heavily on VALS to determine the best placement for ads. VALS data suggest, for example, that achievers and
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FIGURE 11.3
VALS TYPES AND CHARACTERISTICS
Source: Strategic Business Insights, 2010, http://strategichusinessinsights.com/vals/ustypes.shtml
Primary Motivation Ideals
The VALS™ Framework
nnovators
High resources High innovation
Achievement
Self-Expression
Low resources Low innovation
VALS™Types and Characteristics
Innovators
nnovators are successful, sophisticated, take-charge people with high self-esteem and abundant resources. They exhibit all three primary motivations in varying degrees. They are change leaders and are the most receptive to new ideas and technologies. They are very active consumers, and their purchases reflect cultivated tastes for upscale, niche products and services.
Believers Like Thinkers, Believers are motivated by ideals.
They are conservative, conventional people with concrete beliefs based on traditional, estab-ished codes: family, religion, community, and the nation. Many Believers express moral codes that are deeply rooted and literally interpreted. They follow established routines, organized in large part around home, family, community, and socia or religious organizations to which they belong.
Thinkers Thinkers are motivated by ideals. They are mature, satisfied, comfortable, and reflective people who value order, knowledge, and responsibility. They tend to be well educated and actively seek out information in the decision-making process. They are well nformed about world and national events and are alert to opportunities to broaden their knowledge.
Strivers Strivers are trendy and fun loving. Because they are motivated by achievement, Strivers are concerned about the opinions and approval of others. Money defines success for Strivers, who don't have enough of it to meet their desires. They favor stylish products that emulate the purchases of people with greater materia wealth. Many see themselves as having a job rather than a career, and a lack of skills and focus often prevents them from moving ahead.
Achievers Motivated by the desire for achievement, Achievers have goal-oriented lifestyles and a deep commitment to career and family. Their social lives reflect this focus and are structured around family, their place of worship, and work. Achievers live conventional lives, are politically conservative, and respect authority and the status quo. They value consensus, predictability, and stability over risk, intimacy, and self-discovery.
Makers Like Experiencers, Makers are motivated by self-expression. They express themselves and experience the world by working on it—building a house, raising children, fixing a car, or canning vegetables—and have enough ski II and energy to carry out their projects successfully. Makers are practical people who have constructive skills and value self-sufficiency. They live within a traditional context of family, practical work, and physical recreation and have little interest in what lies outside that context.
Experiencers Experiencers are motivated by self-expression.
As young, enthusiastic, and impulsive consumers, Experiencers quickly become enthusiastic about new possibilities but are equally quick to cool. They seek variety and excitement, savor-ng the new, the offbeat, and the risky. Their energy finds an outlet in exercise, sports, outdoor recreation, and social activities.
Survivors Survivors live narrowly focused lives. With few resources with which to cope, they often believe that the world is changing too quickly. They are comfortable with the familiar and are primarily concerned with safety and security. Because they must focus on meeting needs rather than fulfilling desires, Survivors do not show a strong primary motivation.
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experiencers watch more sports and news programs; these groups prefer luxury cars or sport-utility vehicles. Thinkers, on the other hand, favor TV dramas and documentaries and like the functionality of minivans or the gas efficiency of hybrids.
VALS researchers do not claim that most people fit neatly into a category. But many agencies believe that VALS research can give them an edge in markets where few differences in quality may actually exist among top-selling brands. Consumer groups, wary of such research, argue that too many ads promote only an image and provide little information about a product's price, its content, or the work conditions under which it was produced.
"Ads seem to work on the very advanced principle that a very small pellet or pattern in a noisy, redundant barrage of repetition will gradually assert itself."
MARSHALL MCLUHAN, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA, 1964
Creative Development
Teams of writers and artists-many of whom regard ads as a commercial art form-make up the nerve center of the advertising business. The creative department outlines the rough sketches for print and online ads and then develops the words and graphics. For radio, the creative side prepares a working script, generating ideas for everything from choosing the narrator's voice to determining background sound effects. For television, the creative department develops a storyboard, a sort of blueprint or roughly drawn comic-strip version of the potential ad. For digital media, the creative team may develop Web sites, interactive tools, flash games, downloads, and viral marketing-short videos or other content that (marketers hope) quickly gains widespread attention as users share it with friends online, or by word of mouth.
Often the creative side of the business finds itself in conflict with the research side. In the 1960s, for example, both Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) and Ogilvy & Mather downplayed research; they championed the art of persuasion and what "felt right." Yet DDB's simple ads for Volkswagen Beetles in the 1960s were based on weeks of intensive interviews with VW workers as well as on creative instincts. The campaign was remarkably successful in establishing the first niche for a foreign car manufacturer in the United States. Although sales of the VW "bug" had been growing before the ad campaign started, the successful ads helped Volkswagen preempt the Detroit auto industry's entry into the small-car field.
Both the creative and the strategic sides of the business acknowledge that they cannot predict with any certainty which ads and which campaigns will succeed. Agencies say ads work best by slowly creating brand-name identities-by associating certain products over time with quality and reliability in the minds of consumers. Some economists, however, believe that much of the money spent on advertising is ultimately wasted because it simply encourages consumers to change from one brand name to another. Such switching may lead to increased profits for a particular manufacturer, but it has little positive impact on the overall economy.
Media Coordination: Planning and Placing Advertising
Ad agency media departments are staffed by media planners and media buyers: people who choose and purchase the types of media that are best suited to carry a client's ads, reach the targeted audience, and measure the effectiveness of those ad placements. For instance, a company like Procter & Gamble, currently the world's leading advertiser, displays its more than three hundred major brands-most of them household products like Crest toothpaste and Huggies diapers-on TV shows viewed primarily by women. To reach male viewers, however, media buyers encourage beer advertisers to spend their ad budgets on cable and network sports programming, evening talk radio, or sports magazines.
Along with commissions or fees, advertisers often add incentive clauses to their contracts with agencies, raising the fee if sales goals are met and lowering it if goals are missed. Incentive
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clauses can sometimes encourage agencies to conduct repetitive saturation advertising, in which a variety of media are inundated with ads aimed at target audiences. The initial Miller Lite beer campaign ("Tastes great, less filling"), which used humor and retired athletes to reach its male audience, became one of the most successful saturation campaigns in media history. It ran from 1973 to 1991 and included television and radio spots, magazine and newspaper ads, and billboards and point-of-purchase store displays. The excessive repetition of the campaign helped light beer overcome a potential image problem: being viewed as watered-down beer unworthy of "real" men.
The cost of advertising, especially on network television, increases each year. The Super Bowl remains the most expensive program for purchasing television advertising, with thirty seconds of time costing $4 million in 2013. Running a thirty-second ad during a national prime-time TV show can cost from $50,000 to more than $500,000 depending on the popularity and ratings of the program. These factors help determine where and when media buyers place ads.
Account and Client Management
Client liaisons, or account executives, are responsible for bringing in new business and managing the accounts of established clients, including overseeing budgets and the research, creative, and media planning work done on their campaigns. This department also oversees new ad campaigns in which several agencies bid for a client's business, coordinating the presentation of a proposed campaign and various aspects of the bidding process, such as determining what a series of ads will cost a client. Account executives function as liaisons between the advertiser and the agency's creative team. Because most major companies maintain their own ad departments to handle everyday details, account executives also coordinate activities between their agency and a client's in-house personnel.
The advertising business is volatile, and account departments are especially vulnerable to upheavals. One industry study conducted in the mid-1980s indicated that client accounts stayed with the same agency for about seven years on average, but since the late 1980s clients have
CREATIVE ADVERTISING
The New York ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach created a famous series of print and television ads for Volkswagen beginning in 1959 (below, left), and helped to usher in an era of creative advertising that combined a single-point sales emphasis with bold design, humor, and honesty Arnold Worldwide, a Boston agency, continued the highly creative approach with its clever, award-winning "Drivers wanted" campaign for the New Beetle (below)
Lemon.
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changed agencies much more often. Clients routinely conduct account reviews, the process of evaluating and reinvigorating a product's image by reviewing an ad agency's existing campaign or by inviting several new agencies to submit new campaign strategies, which may result in the product company switching agencies. For example, when General Motors restructured its business in 2010, it put its advertising account for Chevrolet under review. Campbell-Ewald (a subsidiary of Interpublic) had held the Chevy account since 1919, creating such campaigns as "The Heartbeat of America" and "Like a Rock," but after the review it lost the $30 million account to Publicis.10
ONLINE ADS are mostly placed by large Internet companies like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL. Such services have allowed small businesses access to more customers than traditional advertising because the online ads are often cheaper to produce and are shown only to targeted users
YAHOOf SMALL BUSINESS
Trends in Online Advertising
The earliest form of Web advertising appeared in the mid-1990s and featured banner ads, the printlike display ads that load across the top or side of a Web page. Since that time, other formats have emerged, including video ads, sponsorships, and "rich media" like pop-up ads, pop-under ads, flash multimedia ads, and interstitials, which pop up in new screen windows as a user clicks to a new Web page. Other forms of Internet advertising include classified ads and e-mail ads. Unsolicited commercial e-mail-known as spam-now accounts for more than 85 percent of e-mail messages.
Paid search advertising has become the dominant format of Web advertising. Even though their original mission was to provide impartial search results, search sites such as Google, Yahoo!, and (now) Bing have quietly morphed into advertising companies, selling sponsored links associated with search terms and distributing online ads to affiliated Web pages.11
Back in 2004, digital ads accounted for just over 4 percent of global ad spending. By 2012, the Internet had gained an 18 percent share of worldwide ad spending and was projected to become the second-largest global advertising medium in 2013, behind only television. In the United States, the Internet accounted for 19.1 percent of ad spending in 2012, and in that year became the second-largest advertising medium, behind television.12 (See Figure 11.2.) Search ads make up 46 percent of Internet advertising revenues; display/banner advertising accounts for 21 percent; mobile (the fastest-growing segment) accounts for 9 percent; and the rest of the revenues are generated by segments such as classifieds, digital video, sales leads, and e-mail.13
Online Advertising Challenges Traditional Media
Because Internet advertising is the leading growth area, advertising mega-agencies have added digital media agencies and departments to develop and sell ads online.
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For example, WPP has 24/7 Real Media, Omnicom owns Proximity Worldwide, Publicis has Digitas and Razorfish, and Interpublic operates R/GA. Realizing the potential of their online ad businesses, major Web services have also aggressively expanded into the advertising market by acquiring smaller Internet advertising agencies. Google bought Doubleclick, the biggest online ad server; Yahoo! purchased Right Media, which auctions online ad space; and Microsoft acquired aQuan-tive, an online ad server and network that enables advertisers to place ads on multiple Web sites with a single buy. Google, as the top search engine, has surpassed the
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traditional mega-agencies in revenue, earning $50.2 billion in 2012, with $46 billion of that coming from advertising. In 2012, Google's mobile ad earnings were around $4.6 billion, about half of mobile ad revenues worldwide. Facebook, the top social networking site, is not yet in Google's league but is poised to become an advertising force with its audience of over 1.06 billion users worldwide. In 2012, Facebook earned $4.3 billion from ads.14 As the Internet draws people's attention away from traditional mass media, leading advertisers are moving more of their ad campaigns and budget dollars to digital media. For example, the CEO of consumer product giant Unilever, a company with more than four hundred brands (including Dove, Hellmann's, and Lipton) and a multibillion-dollar advertising budget, vowed to double its spending on digital media in 2010, since customers spend more time on the Internet and mobile phones. "I think you need to fish where the fish are," the Unilever CEO said. "So I've made it fairly clear that I'm driving Unilever to be at the leading edge of digital marketing."15
Online Marketers Target Individuals
Internet ads offer many advantages to advertisers, compared to ads in traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, radio, or television. Perhaps the biggest advantage-and potentially the most disturbing part for citizens-is that marketers can develop consumer profiles that direct targeted ads to specific Web site visitors. They do this by collecting information about each Internet user through cookies (see Chapter 2 for more on cookies) and online surveys. For example, when an ESPN.com contest requires you to fill out a survey to be eligible to win sports tickets, or when washingtonpost.com requires that you create an account for free access to the site, marketers use that information to build a profile about you. The cookies they attach to your profile allow them to track your activities on a certain site. They can also add to your profile by tracking what you search for and even by mining your profiles and data on social networking sites. Agencies can also add online and retail sales data (what you bought and where) to user profiles to create an unprecedented database, largely without your knowledge. Such data mining is a boon to marketers, but it is very troubling to consumer privacy advocates.
Internet advertising agencies can also track ad impressions (how often ads are seen) and click-throughs (how often ads are clicked on). This provides advertisers with much more specific data on the number of people who not only viewed the ad but also showed real interest by clicking on it. For advertisers, online ads are more beneficial because they are more precisely targeted and easily measured. For example, an advertiser can use Google AdWords to create small ads that are linked to selected key words and geographic targeting (from global coverage to a small radius around a given location). AdWords tracks and graphs the performance of the ad's key words (through click-through and sales rates) and lets the advertiser update the campaign at any time. This land of targeted advertising enables smaller companies with a $500 budget, for example, to place their ads in the same location as larger companies with multimillion-dollar ad budgets.
Beyond computers, smartphones-the "third screen" for advertisers-are of increasing importance. Smartphones offer effective targeting to individuals, as does Internet advertising, but they also offer advertisers the bonus of tailoring ads according to either a specific geographic location (e.g., a restaurant ad goes to someone in close proximity), or the user demographic, since wireless providers already have that information. Google has also developed unique applications for mobile advertising and search. For example, the Google Goggles smartphone app enables the user to take a photo of an object such as a book cover, a landmark, a logo, or text, and then have Google return related search results. Google's Voice Search app lets users speak their search terms. Such apps are designed to maintain Google's
VideoCentral ©
Mass Communication
bedfordstmartins.com /mediaculture
Advertising in the Digital Age
This video discusses how ads evolve to overcome resistance to advertising Discussion: Doyourecal many ads from the last few times you used the Internet? What do you think this might mean for advertisers?
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Ogawa Cafe
36 E 4th SI
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Details
Courtney Lev/is
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Courtney Lewis
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Dan Maccarone
FOURSQUARE is using its recent popularity to increase revenues by partnering with businesses to provide "specials" to Foursquare users and "Mayors." While it may seem like a great dea to offer free snacks or drinks to users, what Foursquare is really offering to businesses ("venues") is the chance to mine data and "be able to track how your venue is performing over time thanks to our [Foursquare's] robust set of venue analytics."
"Mad Ave better take note—you are digital, or you are very, very unimportant."
ADVERTISING AGE, 2011
dominant Web search-engine position (which generates most of its profits) on the increasingly important mobile platform.
J
Tips
Advertising Invades Social Media
Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, provide a wealth of data for advertisers to mine. These sites and apps create an unprecedented public display of likes, dislikes, locations, and other personal information. And advertisers are using such information to further refine their ability to send targeted ads that might interest users. Facebook and other sites like Hulu go even further by asking users if they liked the ad or not. For example, clicking off a display ad in Facebook results in the question "Why didn't you like it?" followed by the choices "uninteresting," "misleading," "offensive," "repetitive," and "other." All that information goes straight back to advertisers so they can revise their advertising and try to engage you the next time. Beyond allowing advertisers to target and monitor their ad campaigns, most social media encourage advertisers to create their own online identity. For example, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream's Facebook page has more than 7 million "friends." Despite appearances, such profiles and identities still constitute a form of advertising and serve to promote products to a growing online audience for virtually no cost.
Companies and organizations also buy traditional paid advertisements on social media sites. A major objective of their paid media is to get earned media, or to convince online consumers to promote products on their own. Imagine that the environmental group the National Resources Defense Council buys an ad on Facebook that attracts your interest. That's a successful paid media ad for the Council, but it's even more effective if it becomes earned media-that is, when you mark that you "Like" it, you essentially give the organization a personal endorsement. Knowing you like it, your friends view it; as they pass it along, it gets more earned media and eventually becomes viral-an even greater advertising achievement. As the Nielsen Media rating service says about online earned media, "study after study has shown that consumers trust their friends and peers more than anyone else when it comes to making a purchase decision."16 Social media are helping advertisers use such personal endorsements to further their own products and marketing messages-basically, letting consumers do the work for them.
A recent controversy in online advertising is whether people have to disclose if they are being paid to promote a product. For example, bloggers often review products or restaurants as part of their content. Some bloggers with large followings have been paid (either directly or by "gifts" of free products or trips) to give positive reviews or promote products on their site. When such instances, dubbed "blog-ola" by the press, came to light in 2008 and 2009, the bloggers argued that they did not have to reveal that they were being compensated for posting their opinions. At the time, they were right. However, in 2009 the Federal Trade Commission released new guidelines that require bloggers to disclose when an advertiser is compensating them to discuss a product. In 2010, a similar controversy erupted when it was revealed that many celebrities were being paid to tweet about their "favorite" products. One of Facebook's more recent ad ventures is called "sponsored stories." The way this works is that companies, including Amazon, "pay Facebook to generate . . . automated ads" when a user clicks on the "Like" button for a Facebook participating brand partner or "references them in some other way." Sponsors and product companies like this service because they save money since "no creative work is involved." However, in 2012 this practice resulted in Facebook settling a state of California class action suit out of court. The lead plaintiff in the
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case, a costume designer from Seattle, innocently clicked the "Like" button for an online language course offered by Rosetta Stone. Then several months later "she showed up in an ad for Rosetta Stone on her friends' Facebook pages."17 Part of the case was her resentment about being used in an ad she had not consented to do nor for which she was paid. As new ways to advertise or sponsor products through social media continue to develop, consumers need to keep a careful eye out for what is truly a friendly recommendation from a friend and what is advertising.
Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
Ad agencies and product companies often argue that the main purpose of advertising is to inform consumers about available products in a straightforward way. Most consumer ads, however, merely create a mood or tell stories about products without revealing much else. A one-page magazine ad, a giant billboard, or a thirty-second TV spot gives consumers little information about how a product was made, how much it costs, or how it compares with similar brands. In managing space and time constraints, advertising agencies engage in a variety of persuasive techniques.
Conventional Persuasive Strategies
One of the most frequently used advertising approaches is the famous-person testimonial, in which a product is endorsed by a well-
known person. Famous endorsers include Justin Timberlake for Bud Light, Taylor Swift for Diet Coke, and Beyonce for Pepsi. Athletes earn some of the biggest endorsement contracts. For example, Chicago Bulls player Derrick Rose has a $260 million, fourteen-year deal with Adidas, the same shoe company that has a $160 million deal with now-retired soccer star David Beckham. Tiger Woods remains one of the leading endorsers, despite his personal scandals in 2009. Although some sponsors-including Accen-ture, Gatorade, and Gillette-dropped him, Nike, Rolex, Electronic Arts (EA), and other companies stayed with him in deals that still total up to $80 million a year.
Another technique, the plain-folks pitch, associates a product with simplicity. Over the years, Volkswagen ("Drivers wanted"), General Electric ("We bring good things to life"), and Microsoft ("I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea") have each used slogans that stress how new technologies fit into
"In order to advertise on Facebook, advertisers give us an ad they want us to display and tell us the kinds of people they want to reach. We deliver the ad to people who fit those criteria without revealing any personal information to the advertiser."
SHERYLSANDBERG, FACEBOOK CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, 2010
FAMOUS-PERSON TESTIMONIALS
Olympic glory comes not just with gold medals, but endorsement deals. Gabrielle Douglas, gold-medal winner in gymnastics at the 2012 Summer Olympics, appeared on a special-edition box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes Nintendo also announced that she would be part of an ad campaign promoting its game New Super Mario Bros. 2.
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"In some ways, you could almost consider yourself lucky if people note your ads. Most ads trigger no reaction at all."
THE FINANCIAL BRAND, 2011
"In a mobile society, commercial products with familiar [brand] names provide people with some sense of identity and continuity in their lives."
MICHAEL SCHUDSON, ADVERTISING, THE UNEAS Y PERSUASION, 1984
the lives of ordinary people. In a way, the Facebook technique of sponsored stories fits this model since it depends on friends' endorsements of products rather than the words or images of stars or athletes.
By contrast, the snob-appeal approach attempts to persuade consumers that using a product will maintain or elevate their social status. Advertisers selling jewelry, perfume, clothing, and luxury automobiles often use snob appeal. For example, the pricey bottled water brand Fiji ran ads in Esquire and other national magazines that said "The label says Fiji because it's not bottled in Cleveland"-a jab intended to favorably compare the water bottled in the South Pacific to the drinldng water of an industrial city in Ohio. (Fiji ended up withdrawing the ad after the Cleveland Water Department released test data showing that its water was more pure than Fiji water.)
Another approach, the bandwagon effect, points out in exaggerated claims that everyone is using a particular product. Brands that refer to themselves as "America's favorite" or "the best" imply that consumers will be "left behind" if they ignore these products. A different technique, the hidden-fear appeal, plays on consumers' sense of insecurity. Deodorant, mouthwash, and shampoo ads frequently invoke anxiety, pointing out that only a specific product could relieve embarrassing personal hygiene problems and restore a person to social acceptability.
A final ad strategy, used more in local TV and radio campaigns than in national ones, has been labeled irritation advertising: creating product-name recognition by being annoying or obnoxious. Although both research and common sense suggest that irritating ads do not work very well, there have been exceptions. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, an aspirin company ran a TV ad illustrating a hammer pounding inside a person's brain. Critics and the product's own agency suggested that people bought the product, which sold well, to get relief from the ad as well as from their headaches. On the regional level, irritation ads are often used by appliance discount stores or local car dealers, who dress in outrageous costumes and yell at the camera.
The Association Principle
Historically, American car advertisements have shown automobiles in natural settings-on winding roads that cut through rugged mountain passes or across shimmering wheat flelds-but rarely on congested city streets or in other urban settings where most driving actually occurs. Instead, the car-an example of advanced technology-merges seamlessly into the natural world.
This type of advertising exemplifies the association principle, a persuasive technique used in most consumer ads that associates a product with a positive cultural value or image even if it has little connection to the product. For example, many ads displayed visual symbols of American patriotism in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an attempt to associate products and companies with national pride. In trying "to convince us that there's an innate relationship between a brand name and an attitude,"18 advertising may associate products with nationalism, happy families, success at school or work, natural scenery, freedom, or humor.
One of the more controversial uses of the association principle has been the linkage of products to stereotyped caricatures of women. In numerous instances, women have been portrayed either as sex objects or as clueless housewives who, during many a daytime TV commercial, needed the powerful off-screen voice of a male narrator to instruct them in their own kitchens (see "Case Study: Idiots and Objects: Stereotyping in Advertising" on page 401).
Another popular use of the association principle is to claim that products are "real" and "natural"-possibly the most familiar adjectives associated with advertising. For example, Coke
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:ase
Idiots and Objects: Stereotyping in Advertising
Over the years, critics and consumers alike have complained about stereotyping in mainstream advertising. Stereotyping refers to the process of assigning people to abstract groups, whose members are assumed to act as a single entity—rather than as individuals with distinct identities— and to display shared characteristics, which often have negative connotations.
Today, particularly in beer ads, men are often stereotyped as inept or stupid, incapable of negotiating a routine day or a normal conversation unless fortified—or dulled—by the heroic product. Throughout advertising history, men have often been portrayed as doofuses and idiots when confronted by ordinary food items or a simple household appliance.
In contrast, in the early history of product ads on television, women were often stereotyped as naive or emotional, needing the experienced voice of a rational male narrator to guide them around their own homes. Ads have also stereotyped women as brainless or helpless or offered them as a man's reward for drinking a particular beer, wearing cool jeans, or smoking the right cigarette. Worst of all, women, or even parts of women—with their heads cut from the frame—have been used as merely objects, associated with a particular product (e.g., a swimsuit model holding a new car muffler or wrapped around a bottle of Scotch). Influenced by the women's movement and critiques of advertising culture, such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), ads depicting women have changed. Although many sexist stereotypes still persist in advertising, women today are portrayed in a variety of social roles.
In addition to ads that have stereotyped men and women, there is invisible stereotyping. This occurs when whole
segments of the population are ignored—particularly African, Arab, Asian, Latin, and Native American. Advertising—especially in its early history—has often faced criticism that many segments of the varied and multicultural U.S. population have been missing or underrepre-sented in the ads and images that have dominated the landscape. In the last several years, however, conscious of how diverse the United States has become, many companies have been doing a better job of representing various cultures in their product ads. 4
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sells itself as "the real thing," and the cosmetics industry offers synthetic products that promise to make women look "natural." The adjectives real and natural saturate American ads, yet almost always describe processed or synthetic goods. "Green" marketing has a similar problem, as it is associated with goods and services that aren't always environmentally friendly.
Philip Morris's Marlboro brand has used the association principle to completely transform its product image. In the 1920s, Marlboro began as a fashionable women's cigarette. Back then, the company's ads equated smoking with a sense of freedom, attempting to appeal to women who had just won the right to vote. Marlboro, though, did poorly as a women's product, and new campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s transformed the brand into a man's cigarette. Powerful images of active, rugged men dominated the ads. Often, Marlboro associated its product with nature: an image of a lone cowboy roping a calf, building a fence, or riding over a snow-covered landscape. In 2013, the branding consultancy BrandZ (a division of WPP) named Marlboro the world's eighth "most global brand," having an estimated worth of $69.4 billion. (Apple, Google, IBM, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola were the Top 5 rated brands.)
Disassociation as an Advertising Strategy
As a response to corporate mergers and public skepticism toward impersonal and large companies, a disassociation corollary emerged in advertising. The nation's largest winery, Gallo, pioneered the idea in the 1980s by establishing a dummy corporation, Bartles & Jaymes, to sell jug wine and wine coolers, thereby avoiding the use of the Gallo corporate image in ads and on its bottles. The ads featured Frank and Ed, two low-key, grandfatherly types, as "co-owners" and ad spokesmen. On the one hand, the ad was "a way to connect with younger consumers who yearn for products that are handmade, quirky, and authentic."19 On the other hand, this technique, by concealing the Gallo tie-in, also allowed the wine giant to disassociate from the negative publicity of the 1970s-a period when labor leader Cesar Chavez organized migrant workers in a long boycott of Gallo.
In the 1990s, General Motors used the disassociation strategy. Reeling from a declining corporate reputation, GM tried to package the Saturn as "a small-town enterprise, run by folks not terribly unlike Frank and Ed" who provide caring, personal service.20 In 2009, however, GM shut down its struggling Saturn brand during the economic recession. As an ad strategy, disassociation often links new brands in a product line to eccentric or simple regional places rather than to images conjured up by big cities and multinational conglomerates.
Advertising as Myth and Story
Another way to understand ads is to use myth analysis, which provides insights into how ads work at a general cultural level. Here, the term myth does not refer simply to an untrue story or outright falsehood. Rather, myths help us to define people, organizations, and social norms. According to myth analysis, most ads are narratives with stories to tell and social conflicts to resolve. Three common mythical elements are found in many types of ads:
1. Ads incorporate myths in mini-story form, featuring characters, settings, and plots.
2. Most stories in ads involve conflicts, pitting one set of characters or social values against another.
3. Such conflicts are negotiated or resolved by the end of the ad, usually by applying or purchasing a product. In advertising, the product and those who use it often emerge as the heroes of the story.
Even though the stories that ads tell are usually compressed into thirty seconds or onto a single page, they still include the traditional elements of narrative. For instance, many SUV ads ask us to imagine ourselves driving out into the raw, untamed wilderness, to a quiet, natural place that only, say, a Jeep can reach. The audience implicitly understands that the SUV can
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somehow, almost magically, take us out of our fast-paced, freeway-wrapped urban world plagued with long commutes, traffic jams, and automobile exhaust. This implied conflict between the natural world and the manufactured world is apparently resolved by the image of the SUV in a natural setting. Although SUVs typically clog our urban and suburban highways, get low gas mileage, and create tons of air pollution particulates, the ads ignore those facts. Instead, they offer an alternative story about the wonders of nature, and the SUV amazingly becomes the vehicle that negotiates the conflict between city/suburban blight and the unspoiled wilderness.
Most advertisers do not expect consumers to accept without question the stories or associations they make in ads; they do not "make the mistake of asking for belief."21 Instead, ads are most effective when they create attitudes and reinforce values. Then they operate like popular fiction, encouraging us to suspend our disbelief. Although most of us realize that ads create a fictional world, we often get caught up in their stories and myths. Indeed, ads often work because the stories offer comfort about our deepest desires and conflicts-between men and women, nature and technology, tradition and change, the real and the artificial. Most contemporary consumer advertising does not provide much useful information about products. Instead, it tries to reassure us that through the use of familiar brand names, everyday tensions and problems can be managed (see "Media Literacy and the Critical Process: The Branded You" on page 405).
Product Placement
Product companies and ad agencies have become adept in recent years at product placement: strategically placing ads or buying space-in movies, TV shows, comic books, and most recently video games, blogs, and music videos-so products appear as part of a story's set environment (see "Examining Ethics: Brand Integration, Everywhere" on page 404). For example, in 2009, Starbucks became a naming sponsor of MSNBC's show Morning Joe-which now includes "Brewed by Starbucks" in its logo. In 2013, the Superman movie Man of Steel had the most product placements ever for a film, with 100-plus marketing partners in deals worth $160 million, including those with Hardee's, Gillette, Sears, Nikon, Nokia, 7-Eleven, IHOP, and the National Guard.
For many critics, product placement has gotten out of hand. What started out as subtle appearances in realistic settings-like Reese's Pieces in the 1982 movie B.T.-has turned into Coca-Cola being almost an honorary "cast member" on Fox's American Idol set. The practice is now so pronounced that it was a subject of Hollywood parody in the 2006 film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, starring Will Ferrell.
In 2005, watchdog organization Commercial Alert asked both the FTC and the FCC to mandate that consumers be warned about product placement on television. The FTC rejected the petition, whereas the FCC proposed product placement rules but had not approved them by 2013. In contrast, the European Union recently approved product placement for television but requires programs to alert viewers of such paid placements. In Britain, for example, the letter "P" must appear in the corner of the screen at commercial breaks and at the beginning and end of a show to signal product placements.22
PRODUCT PLACEMENT in
movies and television is more prevalent than ever. Reality shows have used particularly prominent placement, as when Subway promotes its image as a health-conscious fast food by appearing on the weight-loss competition series The Biggest Loser
"The level of integration on-and off-screen in Talladega Nights is unprecedented. I can't remember ever seeing this much product placement displayed, from the commercials to the trailers for the film to the publicity and press events. It's pretty incredible, and it's pretty unheard of... a new and great thing for the brands involved."
AARON GORDON, MARKETING EXECUTIVE, 2006
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examining
Brand Integration, Everywhere
How clear should the line be between media content and media sponsors? Generations ago, this question was a concern mainly for newspapers, which (to maintain their credibility) worked to erect a "firewall" between the editorial and business sides of their organizations. This was meant to prevent advertising concerns from creeping into published articles and opinions. But early television and radio shows welcomed advertisers' sponsorship of programs— sometimes even including product names in show titles. After television's quiz show scandal (see Chapter 6), networks relegated advertisers to buying spot ads during commercial breaks.
Today, however, advertisers have found new ways to cut through the clutter and put their messages right in the midst of media content.
In television, getting product placements (also known as "brand integration") during shows is much more desirable than running traditional ads.
UP IN THE AIR featured two major companies: Hilton Hotels and American Airlines (shown).
Reality TV programming, which can be structured around products and services, is especially saturated with brand integration. In fact, such episodes contain an average of 19 minutes and 42 seconds of brand integration appearances per hour. This is more than the time allotted for network TV commercials per hour, and nearly three times the amount of brand appearances in scripted programs (6 minutes and 59 seconds).1 For example, The Biggest Loser chronicles the weight losses of its contestants, who work out at 24 Hour Fitness, one of the program's sponsors, and eat food from General Mills and Subway, two other advertisers.2
On the movie screen, a single product placement deal can translate into revenues ranging from several hundred thousand to millions of dollars. Sometimes the placements help fund production costs. For example, in Up in the Air, the 2009 film starring George Cloo-ney as a frequent-flyer businessman, characters stay at a real hotel, a Hilton. Hilton gave free lodging to the crew and promoted the film "on everything from key cards to in-room televisions to toll-free hold messages."3 In return, Hilton was prominently displayed in the film
and the company was able to ensure that the movie portrayed its employees and business in a favorable manner.
Now, digital technology makes it even easier to put product placements in visual media. Movies,TV shows, and video games can add or delete product placements, such as inserting a box of branded crackers in a kitchen scene during a show or removing a branded billboard from a video game. Advertising can be digitally integrated into older media that didn't originally include product placement. On the Internet, some bloggers and Twitter users write posts on topics or products because they've been paid or given gifts to do so.
The rules on disclosure for product placements are weak or nonexistent. Television credits usually include messages about "promotional consideration," which means there was some paid product integration, but otherwise there are no warnings to the viewers. Movies have similar standards. The Writers Guild of America has criticized the practice, arguing that it "forces content creators to become ad writers."4 In fact, some writers say that it is easier to get a studio to buy a script or finance a project if brand integrations are already secured.
In contrast, the Federal Trade Commission requires bloggers to disclose paid sponsorships or posts, but it's not clear yet how well product placements on the Internet are being monitored. In newspapers, where the "firewall" remains important, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics calls for journalism to "distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two." For the rest of the media, however, such hybrids are increasingly embraced as a common and effective form of advertising. A
The Branded You
Media Literacy and     To what extent are you influenced by brands?
the Critical Process
1DESCRIPTION. Take a look around your home or dormitory room and list all the branded products you've purchased, including food, electronics, clothes, shoes, toiletries, and cleaning products.
2ANALYSIS. Now organize your branded items into categories. For example, how many items of clothing are branded with athletic, university, or designer logos? What patterns emerge and what kind of psychographic profile do these brands suggest about you?
3INTERPRETATION. Why did you buy each particular product? Was it because you thought it
was of superior quality? Because it was cheaper? Because your parents used this product (so it was tried, trusted, and familiar)? Because it made you feel a certain way about yourself, and you wanted to project this image toward others? Have you ever purchased items without brands or removed logos once you bought the product? Why?
4EVALUATION. As you become more conscious of our branded environment (and your participation in it), what is your assessment of U.S. consumer culture? Is there too much conspicuous branding? What is good and bad about the ubiquity of brand names in our culture? How does branding
relate to the common American ethic of individualism?
5ENGAGEMENT. Visit Adbusters .org and read about action projects that confront commercialism, including Buy Nothing Day, Media Carta, TV Turnoff, the Culturejammers Network, the Blackspot non-brand sneaker, and Un-brand America. Also visit the home page for the advocacy organization Commercial Alert (http://www.commercialalert.org) to learn about the most recent commercial incursions into everyday life and what can be done about them. Or write a letter to a company about a product or ad that you think is a problem. How does the company respond?
Commercial Speech and Regulating Advertising
In 1791, Congress passed and the states ratified the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, promising, among other guarantees, to "make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Over time, we have developed a shorthand label for the First Amendment, misnaming it the free-speech clause. The amendment ensures that citizens and journalists can generally say and write what they want, but it says nothing directly about commercial speech-any print or broadcast expression for which a fee is charged to organizations and individuals buying time or space in the mass media.
While freedom of speech refers to the right to express thoughts, beliefs, and opinions in the abstract marketplace of ideas, commercial speech is about the right to circulate goods, services, and images in the concrete marketplace of products. For most of the history of mass media, only very wealthy citizens established political parties, and multinational companies could routinely afford to purchase speech that reached millions. The Internet, however, has helped to level that playing field. Political speech, like a cleverly edited mash-up video, or entertaining speech, like a music video by California teenager Rebecca Black singing about the weekend (the infamous "Friday" video on YouTube), can go viral and quickly reach millions, rivaling the most expensive commercial speech.
Although the mass media have not hesitated to carry product and service-selling advertisements and have embraced the concepts of infomercials and cable home-shopping channels,
"There's no law that says we have to sell you time or space. We sell time for many, many different things, but not controversial issues of social importance."
JULIE HOOVER, VICE PRESIDENTOF ADVERTISING, ABC, 2004
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ADBUSTERS MEDIA FOUNDATION
This nonprofit organization based in Canada says its spoof ads, like the one shown here, are designed to "put out a better product and beat the corporations at their own game." Besides satirizing the advertising appeals of the fashion, tobacco, alcohol, and food industries, the Adbusters Media Foundation sponsors Buy Nothing Day, an anti-consumption campaign that annually falls on the day after Thanksgiving—one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
they have also refused certain issue-based advertising that might upset their traditional advertisers. For example, although corporations have easy access in placing paid ads, many labor unions have had their print and broadcast ads rejected as "controversial." The nonprofit Adbusters Media Foundation, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has had difficulty getting networks to air its "uncommercials." One of its spots promotes the Friday after Thanksgiving (traditionally, the beginning of the holiday shopping season) as "Buy Nothing Day."
"Some of these companies spend more on media than they spend on the materials to make their products."
IRWIN GOTLIEB, CEO OF WPP GROUP'S MINDSHARE,2003
Critical Issues in Advertising
In his 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard expressed concern that advertising was manipulating helpless consumers, attacking our dignity, and invading "the privacy of our minds."23 According to this view, the advertising industry was all-powerful. Although consumers have historically been regarded as dupes by many critics, research reveals that the consumer mind is not as easy to predict as some advertisers once thought. In the 1950s, for example, Ford could not successfully sell its midsize car, the oddly named Edsel, which was aimed at newly prosperous Ford customers looking to move up to the latest in push-button window wipers and antennas. After a splashy and expensive ad campaign, Ford sold only 63,000 Edsels in 1958 and just 2,000 in 1960, when the model was discontinued.
One of the most disastrous campaigns ever featured the now-famous "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" spots that began running in 1989 and starred celebrities like former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and his daughter. Oldsmobile (which became part of General Motors in 1908) and its ad agency, Leo Burnett, decided to market to a younger generation after sales declined from a high of 1.1 million vehicles in 1985 to only 715,000 in 1988. But the campaign backfired, apparently alienating its older loyal customers (who may have felt abandoned by Olds and its catchy new slogan) and failing to lure younger buyers (who probably still had trouble getting past the name "Olds"). In 2000, Oldsmobile sold only 260,000 cars, and GM phased out its Olds division by 2005.24
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As these examples illustrate, most people are not easily persuaded by advertising. Over the years, studies have suggested that between 75 and 90 percent of new consumer products typically fail because they are not embraced by the buying public.25 But despite public resistance to many new products, the ad industry has made contributions, including raising the American standard of living and financing most media industries. Yet serious concerns over the impact of advertising remain. Watchdog groups worry about the expansion of advertising's reach, and critics continue to condemn ads that stereotype or associate products with sex appeal, youth, and narrow definitions of beauty. Some of the most serious concerns involve children, teens, and health.
Children and Advertising
Children and teenagers, living in a culture dominated by TV ads, are often viewed as "consumer trainees." For years, groups such as Action for Children's Television (ACT) worked to limit advertising aimed at children. In the 1980s, ACT fought particularly hard to curb program-length commercials: thirty-minute cartoon programs (such as G.I.Joe, My Little Pony and Friends, The Care Bear Family, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe) developed for television syndication primarily to promote a line of toys. This commercial tradition continued with programs such as Pokemon and SpongeBob SquarePants.
In addition, parent groups have worried about the heavy promotion of products like sugar-coated cereals during children's programs. Pointing to European countries, where children's advertising is banned, these groups have pushed to minimize advertising directed at children. Congress, hesitant to limit the protection that the First Amendment offers to commercial speech, and faced with lobbying by the advertising industry, has responded weakly. The Children's Television Act of 1990 mandated that networks provide some educational and informational children's programming, but the act has been difficult to enforce and has done little to restrict advertising aimed at kids.
Because children and teenagers influence up to $500 billion a year in family spending-on everything from snacks to cars-they are increasingly targeted by advertisers.26 A Stanford University study found that a single thirty-second TV ad can influence the brand choices of children as young as age two. Still, methods for marketing to children have become increasingly seductive as product placement and merchandising tie-ins become more prevalent. Most recently, companies have used seemingly innocuous online games to sell products like breakfast cereal to children.
Advertising in Schools
A controversial development in advertising was the introduction of Channel One into thousands of schools during the 1989-90 school year. The brainchild of Whittle Communications, Channel One offered "free" video and satellite equipment (tuned exclusively to Channel One) in exchange for a twelve-minute package of current events programming that included two minutes of commercials. In 2007, Alloy Media + Marketing, a New York-based marketing company that targets young audiences, bought Channel One. In 2012, Channel One reached a captive audience of approximately six million U.S. students in eight thousand middle schools and high schools each day.
Over the years, the National Dairy Council and other organizations have also used schools to promote products, providing free filmstrips, posters, magazines, folders, and study guides adorned with corporate logos. Teachers, especially in underfunded districts, have usually been grateful for the support. Channel One, however, has been viewed as a more intrusive threat, violating the implicit cultural border between an entertainment situation (watching commercial television) and a learning situation (going to school). One study showed that schools with a high concentration of low-income students were more than twice as likely as affluent schools to receive Channel One.27
VideoCentral ©
Mass Communication
bedfordstmartins.com /mediaculture
Advertising and Effects on Children
Scholars and advertisers analyze the effects of advertising on children Discussion: In the video, some argue that using cute, kid-friendly imagery in ads can lead children to begin drinking; others dispute this claim. What do you think, and why?
"It isn't enough to advertise on television____[Ylou've
got to reach kids throughout the day—in school, as they're shopping in the mall... or at the movies. You've got to become part of the fabric of their lives."
CAROL HERMAN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GREY ADVERTISING, 1996
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AS AMERICAN OBESITY CONTINUES TO RISE, ads
touting fast food and soft drinks have been countered by health advocacy, as in this ad on the New York City subway warning riders about the sugar content of their morning coffee drinks
Some individual school districts have banned Channel One, as have the states of New York and California. These school systems have argued that Channel One provides students with only slight additional knowledge about current affairs; but students find the products advertised-sneakers, cereal, and soda, among others-more worthy of purchase because they are advertised in educational environments.28 A 2006 study found that students remember "more of the advertising than they do the news stories shown on Channel One."29
Health and Advertising
Eating Disorders.  Advertising has a powerful impact on the standards of beauty in our culture. A long-standing trend in advertising is the association of certain products with ultrathin female models, promoting a style of "attractiveness" that girls and women are invited to emulate. Even today, despite the popularity of fitness programs, most fashion models are much thinner than the average woman. Some forms of fashion and cosmetics advertising actually pander to individuals' insecurities and low self-esteem by promising the ideal body. Such advertising suggests standards of style and behavior that may be not only unattainable but also harmful, leading to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia and an increase in cosmetic surgeries.
If advertising has been criticized for promoting skeleton-like beauty, it has also been blamed for the tripling of obesity rates in the United States since the 1980s, with a record 66 percent of adult Americans identified in 2012 as overweight or obese. Corn syrup-laden soft drinks, fast food, and processed food are the staples of media ads and are major contributors to the nationwide weight problem. More troubling is that an obese nation is good for business (creating a multibillion-dollar market for diet products, exercise equipment, and self-help books), so media outlets see little reason to change current ad practices. The food and restaurant industry at first denied any connection between ads and the rise of U.S. obesity rates, instead blaming individuals who make bad choices. Increasingly, however, some fast-food chains offer healthier meals and calorie counts on various food items.
"We have to sell cigarettes to your kids. We need half a million new smokers a year just to stay in business. So we advertise near schools, at candy counters."
CALIFORNIA ANTI-CIGARETTE TV AD. TOBACCO COMPANIES FILED A FEDERAL SUITAGAINSTTHE AD AND LOSTWHENTHE U.S. SUPREME COURT TURNED DOWN THEIR APPEAL IN 2006
Tobacco.   One of the most sustained criticisms of advertising is its promotion of tobacco consumption. Opponents of tobacco advertising have become more vocal in the face of grim statistics: Each year, an estimated 400,000 Americans die from diseases related to nicotine addiction and poisoning. Tobacco ads disappeared from television in 1971, under pressure from Congress and the FCC. However, over the years numerous ad campaigns have targeted teenage consumers of cigarettes. In 1988, for example, R. J. Reynolds, a subdivision of RJR Nabisco, updated its Joe Camel cartoon character, outfitting him with hipper clothes and sunglasses. Spending $75 million annually, the company put Joe on billboards and store posters and in sports stadiums and magazines. One study revealed that before 1988 fewer than 1 percent of teens under age eighteen smoked Camels. After the ad blitz, however, 33 percent of this age group preferred Camels.
In addition to young smokers, the tobacco industry has targeted other groups. In the 1960s, for instance, the advertising campaigns for Eve and Virginia Slims cigarettes (reminiscent of ads during the suffrage movement in the early 1900s) associated their products with women's liberation, equality, and slim fashion models. And in 1989, Reynolds introduced a cigarette called Uptown, targeting African American consumers. The ad campaign fizzled due to public protests by black leaders and government officials. When these leaders pointed to the high concentration of cigarette billboards in poor urban areas and the high mortality rates among black male smokers, the tobacco company withdrew the brand.
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The government's position regarding the tobacco industry began to change in the mid-1990s, when new reports revealed that tobacco companies had known that nicotine was addictive as early as the 1950s and had withheld that information from the public. In 1998, after four states won settlements against the tobacco industry and the remaining states threatened to bring more expensive lawsuits against the companies, the tobacco industry agreed to an unprecedented $206 billion settlement that carried significant limits on advertising and marketing tobacco products.
The agreement's provisions banned cartoon characters in advertising, thus ending the use of the Joe Camel character; prohibited the industry from targeting young people in ads and marketing and from giving away free samples, tobacco-brand clothing, and other merchandise; and ended outdoor billboard and transit advertising. The agreement also banned tobacco company sponsorship of concerts and athletic events, and it strictly limited other corporate sponsorships by tobacco companies. These agreements, however, do not apply to tobacco advertising abroad (see "Global Village: Smoking Up the Global Market" on page 410).
Alcohol.  Every year, about 79,000 people die from alcohol-related diseases, and another 10,000 die in car crashes involving drunk drivers. As you can guess, many of the same complaints regarding tobacco advertising are also being directed at alcohol ads. (The hard liquor industry has voluntarily banned TV and radio ads for decades.) For example, one of the most popular beer ad campaigns of the late 1990s, featuring the Budweiser frogs (which croak Bud-weis-errrr), has been accused of using cartoonlike animal characters to appeal to young viewers. In fact, the Budweiser ads would be banned under the tough standards of the tobacco settlement mentioned above, which prohibits the attribution of human characteristics to animals, plants, or other objects.
Alcohol ads have also targeted minority populations. Malt liquors, which contain higher concentrations of alcohol than beers do, have been touted in high-profile television ads for such labels as Colt 45 and Magnum. There is also a trend toward marketing high-end liquors to African American and Hispanic male populations. In a recent marketing campaign, Hennessy targeted young African American men with ads featuring hip-hop star Nas and sponsored events in Times Square and at the Governors Ball and Coachella music festivals. Hennessy also sponsored VIP parties with Latino deejays and hip-hop acts in Miami and Houston.
College students, too, have been heavily targeted by alcohol ads, particularly by the beer industry. Although colleges and universities have outlawed "beer bashes" hosted and supplied directly by major brewers, both Coors and Miller still employ student representatives to help "create brand awareness." These students notify brewers of special events that might be sponsored by and linked to a specific beer label. The images and slogans in alcohol ads often associate the products with power, romance, sexual prowess, or athletic skill. In reality, though, alcohol is a chemical depressant; it diminishes athletic ability and sexual performance, triggers addiction
LIFESTYLE AD APPEALS
TBWA (now a unit of Omnicom) introduced Absolut Vodka's distinctive advertising campaign in 1980. The campaign marketed a little-known Swedish vodka as an exclusive lifestyle brand, an untraditional approach that parlayed it into one of the world's best-selling spirits. The long-running ad campaign ended in 2006, with more than 1,450 ads having maintained the brand's premium status by referencing fashion, artists, and contemporary music
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lobal
Smoking Up the Global Market
By 2000, the status of tobacco companies and their advertising in the United States had hit a low point. A $206 billion settlement between tobacco companies and state attorneys general ended tobacco advertising on billboards and severely limited the ways in which cigarette companies can promote their products in the United States. Advertising bans and antismoking public service announcements contributed to tobacco's growing disfavor in America, with smoking rates dropping from a high of 42.5 percent of the population in 1965 to just 18 percent almost fifty years later.
As Western cultural attitudes have turned against tobacco, the large tobacco multinationals have shifted their global marketing focus, targeting Asia in particular. Of the world's 1.3 billion smokers, 120 million adults smoke in India, 125 million adults smoke in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), and 350 million people smoke in China.1 Underfunded government health programs and populations that generally admire American and European cultural products make Asian nations ill-equipped to resist cigarette
marketing efforts. For example, in spite of China's efforts to control smoking (several Chinese cities have banned smoking in public places), 66 percent of Chinese men and 10 percent of Chinese women are addicted to tobacco. Chinese women, who are now starting to smoke at increasing rates, are associating smoking with slimness, feminism, and independence.2
Advertising bans have actually forced tobacco companies to find alternative and, as it turns out, better ways to promote smoking. Philip Morris, the largest private tobacco company, and its global rival, British American Tobacco (BAT), practice "brand stretching"— linking their logos to race-car events, soccer leagues, youth festivals, concerts, TV shows, and popular cafes. The higher price for Western cigarettes in Asia has increased their prestige and has made packs of Marlboros symbols of middle-class aspiration.
The unmistakable silhouette of the Marlboro Man is ubiquitous throughout developing countries, particularly in Asia. In Hanoi, Vietnam, almost every corner boasts a street vendor with a trolley cart, the bottom half of which carries the Marlboro logo or one of the other premium foreign brands. Vietnam's
Ho Chi Minh City has two thousand such trolleys. Children in Malaysia are especially keen on Marlboro clothing, which, along with watches, binoculars, radios, knives, and backpacks, they can win by collecting a certain number of empty Marlboro packages. (It is now illegal to sell tobacco-brand clothing and merchandise in the United States.)
Sporting events have proved to be an especially successful brand-stretching technique with men, who smoke the majority of cigarettes in Asia. Many observers argue that much of the popularity of Marlboro cigarettes in China derives from when Philip Morris sponsored the Marlboro soccer league there. Throughout Asia, attractive young women wearing tight red Marlboro-themed outfits cruise cities in red Marlboro minivans, frequently stopping to distribute free cigarettes, even to minors.
Critics suggest that the same marketing strategies will make their way into the United States and other Western countries, but that's unlikely. Tobacco companies are mainly interested in developing regions like Asia for two reasons. First, the potential market is staggering: Only one in twenty cigarettes now sold in China is a foreign brand, and women are just beginning to develop the habit. Second, many smokers in countries like China—whose government officially bans tobacco advertising—are unaware that smoking causes lung cancer. In fact, a million Chinese people die each year from tobacco-related health problems—around 50 percent of Chinese men will die before they are sixty-five years old, and lung cancer among Chinese women has increased by 30 percent in the past few years.3 Smoking is projected to cause about eight million deaths a year by 2030.4 a
in roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population, and factors into many domestic abuse cases. A national study demonstrated "that young people who see more ads for alcoholic beverages tend to drink more."30
Prescription Drugs.  Another area of concern is the recent surge in prescription drug advertising. Spending on direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs increased from $266 million in 1994 to $5.3 billion in 2007-largely because of growth in television advertising, which today accounts for about two-thirds of such ads. The ads have made household names of prescription drugs such as Nexium, Claritin, Paxil, and Viagra. The ads are also very effective: Another survey found that nearly one in three adults has talked to a doctor and one in eight has received a prescription in response to seeing an ad for a prescription drug.31 But between 2007 and 2011, direct-to-consumer TV advertising for prescription drugs dropped 23 percent-from $3.1 billion in 2007 to $2.3 billion in 2011-in part due to doctors' concerns about being pressured by patients who see the TV ads for new drugs and due to notable recalls of heavily advertised drugs like Vioxx, a pain reliever that was later found to have harsh side effects. Still, in 2011, Pfizer spent $156 million on TV ads for Lipitor (a cholesterol-lowering drug that reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke), the highest amount spent for any prescription drug that year.32 The tremendous growth of prescription drug ads brings the potential for false and misleading claims, particularly because a brief TV advertisement can't possibly communicate all of the relevant cautionary information.
More recently, direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising has appeared in text messages and on Facebook. Pharmaceutical companies have also engaged in "disease awareness" campaigns to build markets for their products. In 2012, the United States and New Zealand were the only two nations that allow prescription drugs to be advertised directly to consumers.
Watching Over Advertising
A few nonprofit watchdog and advocacy organizations-Commercial Alert, as well as the Better Business Bureau and the National Consumers League-compensate in many ways for some of the shortcomings of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies in monitoring the excesses of commercialism and false and deceptive ads.
Excessive Commercialism
Since 1998, Commercial Alert has been working to "limit excessive commercialism in society" by informing the public about the ways that advertising has crept out of its "proper sphere." For example, Commercial Alert highlights the numerous deals for cross-promotion made between Hollywood studios and fast-food companies. These include Warner Brothers and Hardee's teaming up for Man of Steel and DreamWorks Animation partnering with McDonald's for family-friendly flicks including The Croods and How to Train Your Dragon 2.
CELEBRITY SPOKESPEOPLE
Tennis champion Serena Williams recently endorsed the sleep supplement "Sleep Sheets," an over-the-counter sleep aid that promises to combat insomnia and promote natural sleep. Although it is available without a prescription, Williams's vigorous ad campaign for the supplement, which she co-owns, attests to the persistence of prescription drug ads and the vulnerability of their audience
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These deals not only helped movie studios make money as DVD sales declined but also helped movies reach audiences that traditional advertising can't. As Jeffrey Godsick, Fox's Executive VP of marketing, has said, "We want to hit all the lifestyle points for consumers. Partners get us into places that are non-purchasable (as media buys). McDonald's has access to tens of millions of people on a daily basis-that helps us penetrate the culture."33
Founded in part by longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Commercial Alert is a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit organization and a lonely voice in checking the commercialization of U.S. culture. Some of its other activities have included challenges to specific marketing tactics, such as when HarperCollins Children's Books created the series "Mackenzie Blue," which included "dynamic corporate partnerships," or product placements woven into the stories written by an author who is also the founder of a marketing group aimed at teens. In constantly questioning the role of advertising in democracy, the organization has aimed to strengthen noncommercial culture and limit the amount of corporate influence on publicly elected government bodies.
GREEN ADVERTISING
In response to increased consumer demand, companies have been developing and advertising "green," or environmentally conscious, products to attract customers who want to lessen their environmenta impact. How effective is this ad for you? What shared values do you look for or respond to in advertising?
The FTC Takes on Puffery and Deception
Since the days when Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound promised "a sure cure for all female weakness," false and misleading claims have haunted advertising. Over the years, the FTC, through its truth-in-advertising rules, has played an investigative role in substantiating the claims of various advertisers. A certain amount of puffery-ads featuring hyperbole and exaggeration-has usually been permitted, particularly when a product says it is "new and improved." However, ads become deceptive when they are likely to mislead reasonable consumers based on statements in the ad or because they omit information. Moreover, when a product claims to be "the best," "the greatest," or "preferred by four out of five doctors," FTC rules require scientific evidence to back up the claims.
A typical example of deceptive advertising is the Campbell Soup ad in which marbles in the bottom of a soup bowl forced more bulky ingredients-and less water-to the surface. In another instance, a 1990 Volvo commercial featured a monster truck driving over a line of cars and crushing all but the Volvo; the company later admitted that the Volvo had been specially reinforced and the other cars' support columns had been weakened. A more subtle form of deception featured the Klondike Lite ice-cream bar-"the 93 percent fat-free dessert with chocolate-flavored coating." The bars were indeed 93 percent fat-free, but only after the chocolate coating was removed.34
In 2003, the FTC brought enforcement actions against companies marketing the herbal weight-loss supplement ephedra. Ephedra has a long-standing connection to elevated blood pressure, strokes, and heart attacks and has contributed to numerous deaths. Nevertheless, companies advertised ephedra as a safe and miraculous weight-loss supplement and, incredibly, as "a beneficial treatment for hypertension and coronary disease." According to the FTC, one misleading ad said: "Teacher loses 70 pounds in only eight weeks.... This is how over one
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million people have safely lost millions of pounds! No calorie counting! No hunger! Guaranteed to work for you too!" As the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection summed up, "There is no such thing as weight loss in a bottle. Claims that you'll lose substantial amounts of weight and still eat everything you want are simply false."35 In 2004, the United States banned ephedra.
When the FTC discovers deceptive ads, it usually requires advertisers to change them or remove them from circulation. The FTC can also impose monetary civil penalties for companies, and it occasionally requires an advertiser to run spots to correct the deceptive ads.
Alternative Voices
One of the provisions of the government's multibillion-dollar settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998 established a nonprofit organization with the mission to counteract tobacco marketing and reduce youth tobacco use. That mission became a reality in 2000, when the American Legacy Foundation launched its antismoking/anti-tobacco-industry ad campaign called "Truth."
Working with a coalition of ad agencies, a group of teenage consultants, and a $300 million budget, the foundation created a series of stylish, gritty print and television ads that deconstruct the images that have long been associated with cigarette ads-macho horse country, carefree beach life, sexy bar scenes, and daring skydives. These ads show teens dragging, piling, or heaving body bags across the beach or onto a horse, and holding up signs that say "What if cigarette ads told the Truth?" Other ads show individuals with lung cancer ("I worked where people smoked. I chose not to. But I got lung cancer anyway") or illustrate how many people are indirectly touched by tobacco deaths ("Yeah, my grandfather died April last year").
The TV and print ads prominently reference the foundation's Web site, www.thetruth .com, which offers statistics, discussion forums, and outlets for teen creativity. For example, the site provides facts about addiction (more than 80 percent of all adult smokers started smoking
"Clinically proven to increase fat-loss by an unprecedented 1,700 percent."
DECEPTIVE AD CLAIM BY DIET-PILL MAKER NUTRAQUEST (FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY IN 2003)
ALTERNATIVE ADS
In 2005, "Truth," the nationa youth smoking prevention campaign, won an Emmy Award in the National Public Service Announcement category. "Truth" ads were created by the ad firms of Arnold Worldwide of Boston and Crispin Porter & Bogusky of Miami. Here a "Truth" ad reimagines a common image found in Marlboro cigarette ads
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^ ADVERTISING
before they turned eighteen) and tobacco money (tobacco companies make $1.8 billion from underage sales), and urges site visitors to organize the facts in their own customized folders. By 2007, with its jarring messages and cross-media platform, the "Truth" anti-tobacco campaign was recognized by 80 percent of teens and was ranked in the Top 10 "most memorable teen brands."36
Advertising, Politics, and Democracy
"Corporations put ads on fruit, ads all over the schools, ads on cars, ads on clothes. The only place you can't find ads is where they belong: on politicians."
MOLLY IVINS, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST, 2000
Advertising as a profession came of age in the twentieth century, facilitating the shift of U.S. society from production-oriented small-town values to consumer-oriented urban lifestyles. With its ability to create consumers, advertising became the central economic support system for our mass media industries. Through its seemingly endless supply of pervasive and persuasive strategies, advertising today saturates the cultural landscape. Products now blend in as props or even as "characters" in TV shows and movies. In addition, almost every national consumer product now has its own Web site to market itself to a global audience 365 days a year. With today's digital technology, ad images can be made to appear in places where they don't really exist. For example, advertisements can be superimposed on the backstop wall behind the batter during a nationally televised baseball broadcast. Viewers at home see the ads, but fans at the game do not.
Advertising's ubiquity, especially in the age of social media, raises serious questions about our privacy and the ease with which companies can gather data on our consumer habits. But an even more serious issue is the influence of ads on our lives as democratic citizens. With fewer and fewer large media conglomerates controlling advertising and commercial speech, what is the effect on free speech and political debate? In the future, how easy will it be to get heard in a marketplace where only a few large companies control access to that space?
Advertising's Role in Politics
Since the 1950s, political consultants have been imitating market-research and advertising techniques to sell their candidates, giving rise to political advertising, the use of ad techniques to promote a candidate's image and persuade the public to adopt a particular viewpoint. In the early days of television, politicians running for major offices either bought or were offered half-hour blocks of time to discuss their views and the issues of the day. As advertising time became more valuable, however, local stations and the networks became reluctant to give away time in large chunks. Gradually, TV managers began selling thirty-second spots to political campaigns, just as they sold time to product advertisers.
During the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, third-party candidate Ross Perot restored the use of the half-hour time block when he ran political infomercials on cable and the networks. Barack Obama also ran a half-hour infomercial in 2008, and in the 2012 presidential race, both major candidates and various political organizations supporting them ran many online infomercials that were much longer than the standard thirty- to sixty-second TV spot. However, only very wealthy or well-funded candidates can afford such promotional strategies, and television does not usually provide free airtime to politicians. Questions about political ads continue to be asked: Can serious information on political issues be conveyed in thirty-second spots? Do repeated attack ads, which assault another candidate's character, so undermine citizens' confidence in the electoral process that they stop voting?37 And how does a democratic
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society ensure that alternative political voices, which are not well financed or commercially viable, still receive a hearing?
Although broadcasters use the public's airwaves, they have long opposed providing free time for political campaigns and issues, since political advertising is big business for television stations. TV broadcasters earned $400 million in 1996 and took in more than $1.5 billion (of $4.14 billion total spending) from political ads during the presidential and congressional elections in 2004. In the historic 2008 election, more than $5.28 billion was spent on advertising by all presidential and congressional candidates and interest groups. In 2012 (with a total of $6.28 billion spent on all elections), more than $1.1 billion alone went to local broadcast TV stations in the twelve most highly contested states, with local cable raking in another $200 million in those states.38
The Future of Advertising
Although commercialism-through packaging both products and politicians-has generated cultural feedback that is often critical of advertising's pervasiveness, the growth of the industry has not diminished. Ads continue to fascinate. Many consumers buy magazines or watch the Super Bowl just for the advertisements. Adolescents decorate their rooms with their favorite ads and identify with the images certain products convey. In 2012, the third straight year of increases, advertising spending in the United States totaled $140 billion.39
A number of factors have made possible advertising's largely unchecked growth. Many Americans tolerate advertising as a "necessary evil" for maintaining the economy, but many dismiss advertising as not believable and trivial. As a result, unwilling to downplay its centrality to global culture, many citizens do not think advertising is significant enough to monitor or reform. Such attitudes have ensured advertising's pervasiveness and suggest the need to escalate our critical vigilance.
As individuals and as a society, we have developed an uneasy relationship with advertising. Favorite ads and commercial jingles remain part of our cultural world for a lifetime, but we detest irritating and repetitive commercials. We realize that without ads many mass media would need to reinvent themselves. At the same time, we should remain critical of what advertising has come to represent: the overemphasis on commercial acquisitions and images of material success, and the disparity between those who can afford to live comfortably in a commercialized society and those who cannot. ►
"Mass advertising flourished in the world of mass media. Not because it was part of God's Natural Order, but because the two were mutually sustaining."
BOB GARFIELD, ADVERTISING AGE, 2007
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COMMON THREADS
One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is the commercial nature of the mass media. The U.S. media system, due to policy choices made in the early mid-twentieth century, is built largely on a system of commercial sponsorship. This acceptance was based on a sense that media content and sponsors should remain independent of each other. In other words, sponsors and product companies should not control and create media content. Today, is that line between media content and advertising shifting—or completely disappearing?
Although media consumers have not always been comfortable with advertising, they developed a resigned acceptance of it because it "pays the bills" of the media system. Yet media consumers have their limits. Moments in which sponsors stepped over the usual borders of advertising into the realm of media content—including the TV quiz show and radio payola scandals, complimentary newspaper reports about advertisers'businesses, product placement in TV or movies, and now "Sponsored Stories" on Facebook— have generated the greatest legal and ethical debates about advertising.
Still, as advertising has become more pervasive and consumers more discriminating, ad practitioners have searched for ways to weave their work more seamlessly into the cultural fabric. Products now blend in as props or even as "characters" in TV shows and movies. Search engines deliver "paid" placements along with regular search results. Product placements are woven into video games. Advertising messages can also be the subject of viral videos—and consumers do the work of distributing the message.
Among the more intriguing efforts to become enmeshed in the culture are the ads that exploit, distort, or
transform the political and cultural meanings of popular music. When Nike used the Beatles' song "Revolution" (1968) to promote Nike shoes in 1987 ("Nike Air is not a shoe ... it's a revolution," the ad said), many music fans were outraged to hear the Beatles' music being used for the first time to sell products.
That was more than twenty-five years ago. These days, having a popular song used in a TV commercial is considered a good career move—even better than radio airplay. Similarly, while product placement in TV and movies was hotly debated in the 1980s and 1990s, the explosive growth of paid placements in video games hardly raises an eyebrow today. Even the lessons of the quiz show scandals, which forced advertisers out of TV program production in the late 1950s, are forgotten or ignored today as advertisers have been warmly invited to help develop TV programs.
Are we as a society giving up on trying to set limits on the never-ending onslaught of advertising? Are we weary of trying to keep advertising out of media production? How do we feel about the growing encroachment of ads into social networks like Facebook and Twitter? Why do we now seem less concerned about the integration of advertising into the core of media culture?
KEYTERMS
The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book. The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.
product placement, 383 space brokers, 385 subliminal advertising, 389 slogan, 389 mega-agencies, 390 boutique agencies, 390 market research, 392 demographics, 392 psychographics, 392 focus groups, 392
Values and Lifestyles (VALS), 392 storyboard, 394 viral marketing, 394 media buyers, 394 saturation advertising, 395 account executives, 395 account reviews, 396 interstitials, 396 spam, 396
famous-person testimonial, 399
plain-folks pitch, 399 snob-appeal approach, 400 bandwagon effect, 400 hidden-fear appeal, 400 irritation advertising, 400 association principle, 400 myth analysis, 402 commercial speech, 405 political advertising, 414
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For review quizzes, chapter summaries, links to media-related Web sites, and more, go to bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
Early Developments in American Advertising
1. Whom did the first ad agents serve?
2. How did packaging and trademarks influence advertising?
3. Explain why patent medicines and department stores figured so prominently in advertising in the late 1800s.
4. What role did advertising play in transforming America into a consumer society?
The Shape of U.S. Advertising Today
5. What influences did visual culture exert on advertising?
6. What are the differences between boutique agencies and mega-agencies?
7. What are the major divisions at most ad agencies? What is the function of each department?
8. What are the advantages of Internet and mobile advertising over traditional media like newspapers and television?
Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
9. How do the common persuasive techniques used in advertising work?
QUESTIONING THE MEDIA
1. What is your earliest recollection of watching a television commercial? Do you think the ad had a significant influence on you?
2. Why are so many people critical of advertising?
3. If you were (or are) a parent, what strategies would you use to explain an objectionable ad to your child or teenager? Use an example.
4. Should advertising aimed at children be regulated? Support your response.
10. How does the association principle work, and why is it an effective way to analyze advertising?
11. What is the disassociation corollary?
12. What is product placement? Cite examples. Commercial Speech and Regulating Advertising
13. What is commercial speech?
14. What are four serious contemporary issues regarding health and advertising? Why is each issue controversial?
15. What is the difference between puffery and deception in advertising? How can the FTC regulate deceptive ads?
Advertising, Politics, and Democracy
16. What are some of the major issues involving political advertising?
17. What role does advertising play in a democratic society?
5. Should tobacco or alcohol advertising be prohibited? Why or why not? How would you deal with First Amendment issues regarding controversial ads?
6. Would you be in favor of regular advertising on public television and radio as a means of financial support for these media? Explain your answer.
7. Is advertising at odds with the ideals of democracy? Why or why not?
ADDITIONAL VIDEOS
Visit the © VideoCentral: Mass Communication section at bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture for additional exclusive videos related to Chapter 11, including:
■   BLURRING THE LINES: MARKETING PROGRAMS ACROSS PLATFORMS
An executive for MTV New Media explores how recent television programs blur the line between scripted and reality shows—and how MTV markets online to reach today's younger viewers.
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