Blog #9

·       Whom did the first ad agents serve?

Little need existed for elaborate advertising, as few goods and products were even available for sale until the 1830s. The percentage of Americans who lived in isolated areas and produced most of their own tools, clothes, and food was 90 percent. 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. Fifteen to thirty percent, brokers usually received discounts 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.

·       How did packaging and trademarks influence advertising?

In the mid-1800s, most manufacturers served retail store owners, who usually set their own prices by purchasing goods in large quantities. However, came to realize that if their products were distinctive and associated wit quality, customers would ask for them by name. This allowed 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. The nineteenth-century advertisements often created the impression of significant differences among products when in fact very few differences actually existed. 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. 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. 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.

·       What role did advertising play in transforming America into a consumer society?

United States advertising became more pervasive, it contributed to major social changes in the twentieth century. It significantly influenced the transition from a producer-directed to a consumer-driven society. By stimulating demand for new products, advertising helped manufacturers create new markets and recover product start-up costs quickly. Advertising spread the word-first in newspapers and magazines and later on radio and television, from farms to cities. Advertising promoted technological advances by showing how new machines, such as vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and cars, could improve daily life. 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.

·       What influences did visual culture exert on advertising?

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. 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. 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 saturated television and featured such prominent performers as Paula Abdul, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Madonna. The Internet and multimedia devices, such as computers, mobile phones, and portable media players have had a significant impact on visual design in advertising. The Web became a mass medium in the 1990s, TV and print designs often mimicked the drop-down menu of computer interfaces. 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.

·       What are the advantages of Internet and mobile advertising over traditional media like newspapers and television?

Internet ads offer many advantages to advertisers, compared to ads in traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, radio or television. The biggest advantage 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 and online surveys. 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. Internet advertising agencies can also track ad impressions and click-throughs. 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. Online ads are more beneficial because they are more precisely targeted and easily measured. An advertiser can use Google AdWords to create small ads that are linked to selected key words and geographic targeting. 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, or the user demographic, since wireless providers already have that information.

·       How does the association principle work, and why is it an effective way to analyze advertising?

American car advertisements have shown automobiles in natural settings-on winding roads that cut through rugged mountain passes or across shimmering wheat fields but rarely on congested city streets or in other urban settings where most driving actually occurs. This type of advertising is called association principle, it is a persuasive technique used in most consumer ads that associates a product with a positive cultural value or image even if it has little consumer ads that associates a product with a positive cultural value or image even if it has little connection to the product. Many ads displayed visual symbols of American patriotism in the wake of the 9/11 terroritst 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,” advertising may associate products with nationalism, happy families, success at school or work, natural scenery, freedom or humor. More controversial uses of the association principle has been the linkage of products to stereotyped caricatures of women. 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. The association principle is to claim that products are “real: and “natural” possibly the most familiar adjectives associated with advertising. Marlboro brand used the association principle to completely transform its product image.

·       What is product placement? Cite examples.

Product companies and ad agencies have become adept in recent years at product placement, which is strategically placing ads or buying spaces in movies, TV shows, comic books, and most recently video games, blogs and music videos so products appear as part of a stories set environment. In 2009, Starbucks became a naming sponsor of MSNBC’s show Morning Joe which now includes “Brewed by Starbucks” in its logo(page,403). In 2011, Transformers; Dark Side of the Moon had the most product placements of any film that year with sixty-nine, including deals with and references to NASA, Fox News, Apple, Mercedes-benz, Ferrari, Nokia, Adidas, Nike, and Starbucks (page, 403). Product placement has gotten out of hand for many critics. It started out as subtle appearances in realistic settings-like Reese’s Pieces in the 1982 movie E.T. has now turned into Coca-Cola being almost an honorary “cast member” on Fox’s American Idol set.

·       What is the difference between puffery and deception in advertising? How can the FTC regulate deceptive ads?

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.” Ads become deceptive when they are likely to mislead reasonable consumers based on statements in the ad or because they omit information. 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. 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. The FTC, in 2003, 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. 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 to run spots to correct the deceptive ads.

·       What are some of the major issues involving poltical advertising?

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 candidates image and persuade the public to adopt a particular viewpoint. 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. Only very wealthy or well-funded candidates can afford such promotional strategies, and television does not usually provide free airtime to politicians. Although broadcasters use the public’s airwaves, they have long opposed providing free time for political campains 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 from political ads during the presidential and congressional elections in 2004. In 2012, 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.

·       What role does advertising play in a democratic society?

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. 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. 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. Unwilling to downplay its centrality to global culture, many citizens do not think advertising is significant enough to monitor or reform. 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 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 comfortable in a commercialized society and those who cannot.