Blog #7

Politics and Its Effects on Advertising

My feelings towards political advertising are the same as my feelings toward people who never come to class and then complain about the homework.  Political ads should be about candidates broadcasting what they have done to make our country better or what they plan on doing to achieve improvement.  Although these kinds of ads have been broadcasted and still are, the more popular approach seems to be tainting their opponent’s character. 

The cheesy commercials like “Its morning in America again” at least portray the message across that Regan was a good guy.  Put any one of those ads from that campaign against the commercials from the Swift Vets claiming John Kerry is a traitor, it is obvious how advertising tactics have changed.

Swiftboat Veterans Commercial Attacking 

John Kerry in 2004

My favorite clean "Its morning in America Again"
political advertisement.

I was surprised to learn that political advertising is not held to the same standards as everyday ads made by Target, Gucci and Best Buy.  I find it fascinating that any “527” group that can come up with the money have free reign in what they can advertise, even if the truth is not the main agenda.  Obviously I was not alive during the war in Vietnam, but the commercials that the Swift Vet group aired on television were questionable.  I don’t understand what the Swift Vet group was trying to accomplish with this ad at all.  This goes back to my main argument of what these ads are conveying to the most important people, the voters.  Why the Swift Vet’s thought this information was that important to convey I do not know.  Good for them, they got there 15 minutes of fame for their ad campaign. I just hope their money was worth it.

Turn Right USA also completely shocked me with their “Give Me That Cash...” ad that was attacking Janice Hahn.  This ad blows the Swift Vets out of the water.  Turn Right USA did a good job of stretching their free speech right. Groups that come up with these advertisements give the industry a bad name.

The research from Sanford University on the effect of political advertising on commercial advertising was very intriguing.  The word avoidance being associated with contemporary political advertising puts a damper on all the 527’s out there. The point of any advertisement is to convey a message and have it received by the population. If avoidance really becomes an issue, all television sets will be turned off or muted whenever a political ad comes on or when all commercials come on period. 

Advertising as a whole is criticized constantly. I try to be a person who believes advertising does not brainwash people and is mostly entertainment instead of harm.  Any form of advertising that brings down commercial advertising seems impossible.  In the research from Sanford it states that the lack of ethics smear all forms of advertising.  I believe that statement to be true.  Main stream and brand advertising can be ethically questionable, yes, but at least commercial advertising has to answer to somebody if they step over the line. I think that political advertising should not be different. 

Videos uploaded from YouTube

Pictures from Bing Images

Blog #6 Ethics and Advertising

Advertising Ethics always have and always will be a hot button issue.  Depending on each person’s outlook on life and beliefs, they make a judgment on what is “ethical.”  Sexual images and content that objectifies a certain demographic (mostly women) is always a topic that companies walk the line with.

Take this Burger King ad for example – obviously it is a sexual advertisement. And it is quite apparent that it was purposely meant to come off this way. If the ad were just to have the two sandwiches and the same tag line “It will blow your mind away,” no one would think anything of the ad. I would predict that it would flop because there is no “wow” factor. As soon as you put the image of the woman in the ad, it can be perceived many different ways:

Discrimination of Women
Humorous (perhaps)
Confusion

I would like to focus on the fashion industry for a little bit. Diesel is a company that has always been controversial, and here is why -- 

This ad by Diesel I agree is stupid and crossing the line. It is bad enough to show young girls that it is okay to behave this way (that is clearly illegal) but to also bash being at all intelligent.  Diesel has always had controversial ads but I found this one particularly important to the subject of ethics.  Again, Diesel did the job of catching my attention, but I don't believe this ad brought any good attention. What I gather from this ad is,
"Girls, it is far more fun to be stupid and shake your boobs around than to read a book." 

Just for fun, here is another Diesel ad -- 

Yeah, this is obviously not ethical. Somehow Diesel has been known for this kind of advertisement and keeps going with it. These ads are a perfect example of crossing the line of ethics, but being recognized for it.

These are only a few examples. The advertisement does not personally offend me. I internalize it and think Burger King kind of stepped over the line with the sexual innuendo, but it is also brilliant because every person who walks by this ad or sees it in a magazine will stop and look. The general public probably talked about this ad for a while after it came out. I am sure that is exactly the reaction that Burger King wanted from it. People I imagine are still talking about the Diesel ads. Just for the record, I think being smart is way cooler than flashing my boobs to a camera. 

When does a human’s mind become numb to sexual images?  I have pondered this fact a lot since the beginning of the semester. In class when we were watching “Killing Us Softly 4,” I did not see those images that she showed in the documentary as offensive as she did. I always see sexual ads as a reason for money and attention. What alarms me is the fact that I now know that my mind is numb from being offended by these images because I have seen so many of them on TV, magazines, newspapers and the internet my whole life.  After thinking this through I can understand the statistics that the documentary stated about eating disorders and low self-esteem. Women are constantly being told to act as sexual beings and dumb ourselves down as well.  The fashion industry has geared toward making women objects of sex other than a form of art (like in the ads shown on Killing Us Softly 4)

What is an ethical ad? The line is so blurred that there are many ways to answer that question. Personal morals and beliefs are the basis of most answers to the ethics question. I am curious to see what is "ethical" in the future, and how numbness to this kind of material will advance.

All Images Taken from Bing Images

Blog Post #5 Diversity in Advertising

Being “Different” Taking Over Advertising

The cool factor has become a booming business

The PBS Frontline documentary “The Merchants of Cool,” was my inspiration for this blog. Diversity automatically puts race, gender, sexual orientation and other vague categories into my head. After watching this documentary I understood more about how advertisers and corporate brands are paying a lot of money to define and sell what is “diversity” or a young adult vocabulary translation – “cool.”

What is it to be diverse or “cool?”  Corporate brands and Web sites like the Better Business Bureau formulate surveys like the one we did in class with Frank to decipher what commercials, television shows, clothing styles and music could encompass that into a package that is sellable. As modern advertising keeps changing, it seems as if ads are not just selling a music artist, soda, or beauty products anymore, they are selling a lifestyle. This is the fastest and easiest way to get to a young target group.

Teenagers are the main focus of many companies or researchers that are trying to sell products. A statistic from “The Merchants of Cool” states that teenagers occupied 32 million people of the United States population in 2001. The documentary also claims that this generation is “even larger than their baby boomer parents.” The vast amount of teenagers with their own money and their parents’ money to blow is an obvious reason of why they are targeted.

A perfect example of a company that zeros in on teenagers and in many ways develops and sells what is “cool” in the millennium generation is MTV. It launched in 1981 (i). MTV was defined as Music Television. But shown in “Merchants of Cool,” they were so much more than that.

MTV has always been an icon of diversity and “cool.” Bands like Limp Bizkit became famous because of MTV. MTV also used their music and placed them in a scene that would catch on with the teenage viewer and also made another brand apparent to the teenage scene (Sprite.com party with MTV cameras everywhere.)  However, this was the 2001 MTV, present day MTV has been taken over by trashy reality television that for some reason captures many young adult and teenagers’ attention. Ed Hardy was non-existent and definitely not cool until Jersey Shore first aired in December of 2009 (ii).

“The Merchants of Cool” also uses the television show 7^th Heaven as an example of a marketing strategy. The television channel WB wanted to make a television show that a family could watch together. This was a show that I used to watch with my mother’s daycare kids on a daily basis. But when a show like Dawson’s Creek comes along with a sexual edge and portrayed “realistic” story of teenager’s life during high school, tasteful 7^th Heaven goes down the toilet.

 

                                                     A small trailer to five an idea of what Dawson's Creek is about
                                                                                            -- YouTube

7th Heaven Season 11 Opening Credits

--YouTube

This raises a question to me that asks, how radical will media mega companies like Viacom or consumable brands like Sprite go to get teenagers or anybody’s attention? How far will companies push the envelope to be “cool” or have the most diverse products on the market?  The competition to be the most diverse television channel or product seems to always veer toward a sexual image.

Take the Dove campaign that was mentioned in class. Yes, the idea behind that campaign was supposed to be about real women being as beautiful as the models and airbrushed celebrities on all other commercials. But is it necessary to portray these “real” women and their beauty with pictures of them nude or in their underwear? I don’t think so. This is what made Dove diverse. They were the only company that had a campaign with older women or unique women as their spokeswomen at the time. And the best way to grab a consumer’s attention and make them think that Dove is the right product for a natural and real woman is sexual images. It is another example of how sex is proven time and time again to almost guarantee an ad campaign to stand out and shine.

Diversity is something that makes advertising possible. It betters the industry in some ways, and is also a downfall in others. What makes a product “cool” always goes back to the consumers that purchase or watch these products.  The word “cool” will be something that advertisers will spend millions of dollars trying to keep up with. It is a never ending process that I am hopeful to become a part of after the Bemidji State chapter of my life is finished.

    

These three images are all from the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign. All taken from Bing Images
i -- Wikipedia on MTV -- MTV History

ii -- Jersey Shore Wikipedia

Frontline "The Merchants of Cool" - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p70&continuous=1