My blog will discuss Advertising, a topic i find fascinating and therefore easy to research and write about.
Most of the topics I study at uni are cross analysed in my mind with relation to advertising, so when discussing the division of labour brought forward by Adam Smith, in one of my lectures and later the Fordist approach to work and the eight hour, five dollar day bringing about the modern day ideas of consumerism, I was thinking:
I wonder how that changed the way people advertised?
This in turn got me thinking how advertisement has changed recently. With the nature of the course being dedicated to ‘new media’, I naturally started to ponder how new media has changed the way advertisements are made.......................
Looking at the history of adverts I found that it’s not a phenomena exclusive to modernity. Egyptians used to use papyrus paper and make sales messages on wall posters. Then moving into the Middle Ages town criers where used to express the where abouts of certain shops for the convenience of customers. Getting a little closer to modern day:
in the 19th century with the growth of economy in the USA ‘mail order advertising’ grew.
But theses were still pretty rudimentary forms of advertising in comparison to what we see today with the use of illustration.
The rotary printing press was invented in 1833 making print media much more available and wide spread and in June 1836, French newspaper La Presse started to include paid advertising. This allowed it to lower its price, and increase its profit by getting more readers, soon all papers started to cotton on to the idea. So new media technologies such as the printing press moved along the use and distribution of adverts but no one was advertising on nearly the scale observed in today’s society.
So back to the Fordism, when it really started to kick in, in the 1940s – 1960s people started to have more money (disposable income) than before and this is how consumerism, as we know it, started.
And with more people buying stuff, companies started to realise they could get much more money if they out did each other with advertising campaigns. There was of course advertising before Fordism but it was mainly political such as the adverts for political candidates, in the USA particularly, and propaganda in this country such as:
Government advertising from the Second World War.
By the 1950s photo images were everywhere thanks to the development of photographical technology. For example the1952 made 127 model of the ‘Brownie’, camera made it possible for the first time that the average person could afford their own piece of the action. So advertisers moved away from the old illustration ads and photos were observed in more and more campaigns.
This gave copywriters of the time more freedom for their ideas and more, ‘risque’, adds started to appear in print media:
But then in 1962 the industry set up the Advertising Standards Authority (yey!) So order was restored to the world of advertising and those pesky ad men pushing boundaries of social norms and showing an increasing amount of creativity could be penalised accordingly.
And carried on its good work through until present day such as the censorship of these 1996 Saatchi and Saatchi made ad for the 18 – 30s club.
But it was the advent of commercial TV networks such as ITV in 1955 which was the first network which allowed TV advertising in this country.
Then there was the birth of satellite TV with Rupert Murdoch’s Sky in 1990, which, with its hundreds of channels made advertising common place among the leisure process of TV watching in our homes. Some might say that advertising is almost intrusive as advertisements take airtime away from programs. But it’s not as bad here as it is in America for example in the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding advertisements. Today, a similar program would only be 42 minutes long.
In the late 80s and early 90s a new global phenomenon was starting to interest the world, this was the birth of the commercial use of the internet. It wasn’t long until the ad men were sniffing around to see what profit could be had and in what different ways. The website ‘HotWired’ were the first to try and make money from the web space they had obtained and in 1994, they created banner ads. American company AT&T were the first to test out the new idea from HotWired and paid them to make a 468 x 60 banner that premiered October 25 1994.
Now, internet adverts are rife and pages with no ads are few and far between. If a website isn't owned by a charity or an organisation and doesn't have a benefactor or offer any sort of service form which it can derive money, it's only source of revenue is from the adverts it displays. So the more popular a website, the more money it can charge.
The perfect example of this would be social networking site facebook. It is extremely popular all over the world and is growing every day. While visiting your and friends profiles there is a constant stream of advertising down the side of your screen. But at closer inspection the adverts displayed aren’t just any old advert they are picked especially for the user. They do this by looking through the interests you have inputted onto the site and also your age, sex etc. to pick the perfect adverts for you. Facebook from the out set was always destined to great things and was getting there steadily but last year it changed its format to ‘the new face book which looks like this:
A new technique concerning internet advertising is that of ‘virals’. A viral is a piece of advertisement made for people to pass on to each other. The advert is made famous because of virtual and actual word of mouth thus creating a lot of publicity for a small amount of effort on the part of the creator. Virals are a good ides for advertisers working on a low budget and for those who don’t want to feel the warm breath of the ASA down their backs. A good example of this would be:
But the age of new media technologies doesn’t just mean that all of our advertising is on the internet. Television is still big business in the advertising world and new media technologies such as the development of computer graphics is seen through the medium of television adverts.
There are many new trends in adverts one of the biggest would be celebrity endorsement.
This clip not only displays the endorsement of Mitchel and Webb, stars of the hit program ‘Peep Show’ but also describes how new media itself is being sold.
Other media trends such as the program ‘Super Sweet Sixteen’ shown on the MTV channel show social commentary with advertising as the yellow pages made a spoof advert of the show.
Using big name directors is another trend most big advertising companies are conforming to as Toby Clifton, a Television Agency Producer, a Saatchi and Saatchi describes in this 2008 interview on the subject.
Click 'Play' to listen
Not only are the directors behind the camera but they are also being sought after to star in the adverts themselves. Such as this American Express advert starring Wes Anderson. This technique appeals to the cult audience of the director and is aesthetically pleasing to any viewer as it uses the cinematic style of the director himself.
Contemporary adverts have started to reflect the way in which we use technology. For example the 'confused.com' adverts.
This ad uses the format of people speaking into a webcam. The advert assumes most viewers in the target audience will easily be able to identify this format, and as computer users (they have to be to use the site) sympathise with it. It would seem as though this is the new way we communicate, through technology, but this advert is very interesting as it displays a second order of realism. It is someone talking to you through a computer through a television loosing the actual individual completely in translation and all that remains is the virtual image which is edited to spout the message of confused.com.
This is a change in paradigm as it shows a de- professionalization to the media form. The assumption that all viewers would understand the concept reflects the idea that new media technologies such as computers and the use of websites and webcams are moving from luxury to necessity items and customs within our society. Not understanding the concept I think would isolate people and this reflects the idea that technology is now being used as a social status symbol.
Another company using this format is Microsoft, in there new campaign ‘I am a PC’ where viewers actually have the opportunity to upload there own ‘I am a PC’ quote and be a part of the trend. This is interaction with advertising another lucrative idea reproduced again and again with relevance to time period and of course the media available at the time.
This also shows how virtual communities can be made and collaborative websites such as ‘Wikipedia’ only enforce this. While in the cold world of reality we are becoming more isolated form the people around us.
The Microsoft ‘I am a PC’, adverts reach out to the target audience as we can see the use of, again, celebrity endorsements. The scene with ‘Pharrell’ for example shows the viewers that this sort of technology is being used in the creation of music and not only should you use the same technology because of the professional factor but because some one of high social status is shown to be using it, relating back to the idea of technology as commodity and the aspect of social status brought about by the latest technology.
Another advert using the technique of interaction is the Carphone Warehouse copy where it is sponsoring ‘The X Factor’. It, like the Microsoft ad asks for viewers to “have a go” and gives them their website address causing more hits on the company’s website making it more popular and the company more wealthy.
The Carphone Warehouse adverts in style are quite different to most adverts on television at the moment. They use hand drawn animation resonant of flick book style. In my opinion the reason for this is because of the constant bombardment of amazing visual effects upon audiences, that to stand out an advert has to be the opposite of that. So with that in mind the creators of the Carphone Warehouse’s most recent adds have resorted to a more rudimentary form of advert making in order to make an impression on a media saturated society. So it would seem as though we have come full circle from the illustrations used last century through the battles of technological brilliance back to the old formats.
The controversial road safety advert featuring an accident filmed on a mobile phone by teenagers only reiterates my point that these forms are being used to appeal to the companies target audiences using media forms they will understand. This copy assumes that all teenagers will identify with the form of mobile phone technology. That perhaps this fresh and at the time innovative idea would make them take more notice of the message.
Mobile phone technology is another that is growing fast in the western world. Many mobile phones are too used as a status symbol and the way that we use them is also being taken advantage of by the ad men. Text messages were originally designed to use if somebody’s phone was off, the creators had no idea they would be so popular. And with out warning we are now subject to adverts via text. An example of this is the company Blyk where a company offers you free monthly airtime in exchange for receiving adverts and taking part in small consumer surveys.
Another, I think more ingenious method of mobile advertising I have experienced is when you walk past a pub or venue with your blue tooth enabled (because all new phones have inbuilt blue tooth capabilities) and you receive a message on your phone informing you of up and coming events. This is almost being advertised to without knowledge or permission, you can turn off the TV, cancel pop – ups on the internet or simply turn away from billboards but this is a much more intrusive method.
But the old ways haven’t died yet billboard adverts are also trying new methods to make an impact in a world more concerned with the digital than the actual.
Inspired by and dedicated to Dan Jones
www.iamdanjones.com
