COM 445- Exam #1

Advertising as art: Warhol and mass production

"All of Warhol's work was commercial. He turned grocery store items — Brillo, Coca-Cola bottles, Kellogg's Cornflakes — into gallery art and elevated the humble can of soup, repeat ad infinitum, into high art. Warhol applied the same techniques of screen print repetition to cultural icons — Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong — depicting them as commodities just as he was presenting actual commodities as art."

Functions of Advertising: Economic

'Point of entry'- allows new competitors to enter the market; can permit cost savings through maximizing point of contact info about the product

Referent

-Always means the actual thing in the real world to which a word or concept points -External to the sign, whereas signified is a part of the sign -A person or thing to which a name refers to

Sectors: Media

-Connection between the company and the consumer -Key: message must be delivered to the right people

Sectors: Advertising Agencies

-Develop, prepare and place advertising media for sellers -NYC, Chicago, LA -Full service or media buying service

Importance of differentiation

-Differentiation between one product and others in the same category -Provides the product with an 'image'- this image succeeds only if it is part of a system of differences

Signs address somebody

-Entering the space between the signifier and the signified, between what means and what it means -That space is the individual as subject: he or she is not a simple receiver but a creator of meaning -Ads invite us freely to create ourselves in accordance with the way in which they have already created us -Inviting the consumer to fit the pieces of the puzzle together

Guerilla marketing

-Guerilla marketing is a disciplinary project meant to train people -A normalizing discipline on consumers -Psychology research attests that we are naturally attracted to definitions of self that involve our membership in a particular group -Any depiction of a particular social group will exclude other potential depictions of that group -Articulate a vision of what the recipient's identity should be -"Targeted consumers are meant to brand themselves, constructing their own marketable self-presentations and accepting their role in a society organized by battles for individual attention."

Challenges in advertising entertainment

-Intrigue without spoiling -Need to build reliability -'The same but different' -Engage as many senses as possible

Criticisms of Advertising

-Manipulative -Exists mainly to create demand -Confuses 'real' needs and indulgences -Distorts values and priorities

Meta-systems (how meaning is created)

-Meaning is created by an irrational mental leap invited by the form of advertisement -Any kind of aspirational quality of element that is part of a product

Marshall McLuhan: medium is the massage

-Medium is the message (the way we send and receive info) -High definition (hot media)- such as print or radio, are the fill of info and allow for less sensory completion or involvement -Low definition (cool media)- telephone or TV, which are relatively lacking in info and require a higher sensory involvement in the user -These different 'mediums' affect the way we receive the message or info

Subliminal Advertising

-Meeting psychological needs -Use of images and sounds to influence consumers responders without realizing Ex. breast in ice cube ad

Colonizing new ad spaces

-Move to infiltrate formerly commercial-free spaces -Shift to guerilla marketing: outside the normal ad zones (TV commercials, magazine ads, radio ads, banner ads) -Disruptive and attention-getting -Focuses on unusual or unexpected spaces -Layer additional advertising onto preexisting commercial spaces -Pre-film advertising good example (consumer reaction minimal) -Shopping carts, seatback tray tables, elevators, automated teller stations, doctors offices, gas station fueling areas

Sell & Spin History of Advertising Video Clip insights

-Movement from radio to TV advertising -Unique Selling Proposition -Shift to 'cool, distinct and ironic' -Buying what you get from the product, not the product itself -'Selling is about emotion, not necessarily the product. What does the product mean to the consumer.' -Entertainment style storytelling

Objective correlatives

-Objective correlatives- a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that emotion -Result of connecting 2 systems is that the links originally made in terms of relationship very soon take on an 'objective' or independent status and exists not as parts within a system but on their own

Advertising as art: the commercials of Sofia Coppola

-Oscar winning director and screenwriter -Known for The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, The Bling Ring, The Beguiled -Distinctive visual style and storytelling practice -Ability to create a mood, establish character and a story in 60 seconds -How to Make a Sofia Coppola Film -Marni for H&M -Miss Dior -Panthere Cartier

Defenses of Advertising

-Part of an advanced, high-idustrailized society -A form of communication and only one among hundreds that bombard people every day

Goffman: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

-People divided into performers and watchers -Continually in the process of constructing ourselves -Dramaturgy

How does technology impact human connection (and advertising)

-Print technology created the public. Electric technology created the mass. -The public consists of separate individuals walking around with separate, fixed points of view. -The new technology demands that we abandon the luxury of this posture, this fragmentary outlook

Revising the Brooks Brothers ad (know the problems with the original)

-Problems with the original is that it was not emotion provoking -Very staged -Did not tell a story, consumers could not relate directly to the feelings portrayed -Message is completely lost by the end of the ad -Unclear who they were trying to target -Failed to grab attention

Filling an absence in advertising (why does it happen? What is the function?)

-Subject is created through the idea of filling the absence -We 'insert' ourselves into this space and are asked to play the roles created for us -The things in the ad signify us, the absent -Absence leads to narrative in the ad -Part of this creates a flexibility in the meaning of the ad -Allows for several meanings at once -Leads to the puzzle ad, we must complete the picture

Totemism

-Theoretical concept of structuralism that aims to observe the belief of kinship between a certain group of people, or an individual in that group, and a natural object like a plant or animal -The objects that create these totemic groups are NOT natural, and not naturally different, although their differences are given a 'natural' status -'the way of the world' as presented by advertising -Advertising is creating social relationships -You must feel that you already belong to a particular group and therefore you buy the product

Decoding ads: entertainment vs. consumer product

-What is the role of information -What is the role of an image -What are the challenges in advertising an entertainment product

Use of color Assignment insights

-You can't analyze color without thinking about how the ad operates overall-color is just one element -Contrast in color is key in many examples -A single color can have a range of many meanings -Font makes a big difference -Other colors in the ad -Relationship of the color to the other graphic -Color palette seems largely validated by the project -Color taps into emotional 'backstory'

Normalization and advertising

A part of ad creep and results from 'when advertising is free to enter new territories' and this then 'articulates a particular vision of the consumer that has discursive power, actively constructing identities and narrowing the ability of individuals to seek self-definition outside an ever-expanding commercial sphere' -this allows for the advertisements to construct our identities and takes away individuality

Sign

A thing that has a particular meaning to a person or group of people. It is neither the thing nor the meaning alone, but the 2 together

Advertising

Any form of non-personal promotion of goods and services usually paid for by a sponsor -Directed towards a large group -Typically paid for -Sponsor identified in the process of an ad

Marketing

Broader: any coordinated effort to communicate with and persuade customers to purchase, use and repurchase your product through multiple points of influence -marketing involves research and buyer behavior

Media Advertising

Collaborative effort, no one creates an ad alone, learn/grow from peers -don't let your creativity be constrained by the past -let lessons from the past create learnings for you

Role of color in print advertising

Color is used to make correlations between a product and other things Color: -Tells a story -Connects an object and a world -Connects an object and a person

Marketing Platform

Coordination of all activities (advertising and marketing

Functions of Advertising: Social

Dialogue between consumers, advertising reflects the current opportunities, mindset and limitations of our society

Selectivity

Does the medium actually reach the potential customer?

Denotation

First order of signification, everyone thinks the same thing

Reach

How many people can get the message

Efficiency

How much does it cost to reach a certain number of people- usually expressed as cost to reach a thousand people

Frequency

How often will the message be received

Sectors: Advertisers

Local or national

Ad Creep

Mark Barthlomew: "Advertisers increasingly insert themselves into our lives, colonizing once commercial-free territories, surveilling our every keystroke and mouse click, studying and scripting our emotional responses, and encouraging us to mimic the same techniques of self- presentation as the celebrity pitchman."

Functions of Advertising: Marketing

Marketing:

Advertising as art: arguments for and against

Mary Warlick: "I don't consider advertising art," says Mary Warlick, an art historian and executive director of The One Club, the New York trade organization that recognizes creative excellence in advertising. "Art is a visual imagery that is meant to elevate thinking in an aesthetic context. What advertising does is give a visual record of our cultural ambiance and history, our tastes, our trends, our wants, our needs, our buying. It is never meant to elevate us to that higher plane." Charles Sabel: "Of course it's art," counters Charles Sable, curator of the William F. Eisner Museum of Advertising & Design in Milwaukee. "Advertising is the truest vernacular art form. The fine arts represent a rarified strata of American society. Advertising appeals to the average person."

Functions of Advertising: Informational

People learn from new products and services

Connotation

Second order of signification, individuals come up with their own meanings

Sign = Signifier + signified

Signifier - object, word or picture Signified- particular meaning it gives

Semiotics

The science of signs