'Advertising doesn't sell things; all
advertising does is change the way people think or feel' (Jeremy Bullmore).
Evaluate this statement with reference to selected critical theories (past and
present).
Within this essay I intend to explore the statement by
Jeremy Bullmore that, ‘Advertising doesn’t sell things: all advertising does is
change the way people think or feel’, with reference to past and present
advertisements I will be able to look at the persuasive power of advertisement,
whilst applying the critical theory Marxism to help give reference to my ideas.
Marxism takes
into account the commodity culture where by what we buy and invest our money in such as goods and products are what shape
our characteristics. This is what Stewart Ewen calls ‘the commodity self’ and
is typified by Judith Williamson, ‘instead of being identified by what they
produce, people identify themselves through what they consume’ (Williamson,
2005; 13). Commodity culture spreads false needs, such as aesthetic innovation
where you might buy a toaster that looks extremely high tech and has many new
gadgets that may not be useful, but for a cheaper price and half as much you
can buy one that does exactly the same job and just as well. Advertising makes
us think that by buying this item our lives will improve and become better for
it. We are introduced to novelty products everyday that are considered to be
striking, original or unusual, therefore making us want to buy them. For
example the IPhone introduces a new handset every couple of years that is
perceived to be hundreds of times better than the previous model and because
‘everybody else has one’ many people are enticed into buying this new
evolutionary item. We as a consumer are also enveloped in the ever-winding
circle of planned obsolescence, whereby a product is designed to break, so we
are always forced into spending money on new products.
Advertising is
all around us, it is used to try and encourage and persuade an audience into
trying something new. They are created to be memorable and so when a brand is
viewed it becomes instantly recognisable, for example
‘the predominate colour red used by Coke and the predominant
colour blue used by Pepsi on there retrospective cans are ‘messages’ which increase
are learning about these brands’, (Heath, 2001; 41) this therefore shows how
recognisable a brand can be through the simple symbolical messages that then
refer us to there brand, ‘the more likely situation, surely, is
that consumers absorb something from the advertisement, perhaps without
consciously thinking much, if at all, about it at the time’, (Plessis, 2005;
7). An advert will use symbols and signs that associate the buyer to their
product, ‘another function of many symbols is to convey information that cant
be expressed in words’ (Pricken, 2002; 94), people will then see that shape or
symbol in everyday life and subconsciously will think about a product, for
example McDonalds, their M will be viewed everywhere, when writing, road signs
ect. Another example is reification where a product
is given human features and becomes personalised, they are developed into a perceived
form as sexy, romantic, cool. Such as the Calvin Klein advertisements for
perfume where their products are placed next to sexual, half naked extremely
good looking figures, they are there to try make it look like those
characteristics of the models are somehow transferred across to the product. This
then makes the audience think that by purchasing this product they will become
those characteristics of the female model showcased, they think somehow they
will become more sexually attractive and better looking (Figure: 1). Each product also has a sensual,
seductive name, making it seem like this is the effect the perfume will give
upon the person. All of this and the most important thing about the product
isn’t even mentioned, the smell.
These adverts are
very female orientated, but the same can be applied to the male market. This
method is epitomised with the aftershave by Diesel, just like the perfume
adverts they use very sensual and seductive male models. They also use slogans
and words to try and get across a meaning of manliness, the Diesel aftershave
bares the slogan ‘only the brave’, giving people the impression that to buy
this product they have to be ‘brave’. If they do purchase the aftershave then they
subconsciously feel better about themselves, along with the factor that the
aftershave makes you more attractive and sensual due to the model that
supposedly shows characteristics of the aftershave. Also like the woman
believing they could attract the perfect man the men believe the aftershave
will allow them to attract the perfect female. (Figure 2) These types of
adverts prey upon the average teenager who feels self conscious and will be
easily susceptible to the fake messages that are given by the aftershave.
Perfume and aftershave focus a lot on the sexual, romantic aspects of their
products but only indirectly mention the smell, due to the fact that it has a
bigger selling point when using all the seductive language and imagery because
they all make the audience feel better about themselves.
We come into
contact with advertisement everyday, it shapes the way we think about a
product, making us believe it’s the must have item and with it you become the ‘best’
person possible with the greatest product possible and without this must have
item you become a lesser person. As described by John Berger, ‘The purpose of
publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way
of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It
suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It
offers him an improved alternative to what he is.’ (Berger, 1972; 142) This way of
advertising has been shaping the way we think about products and goods for
hundreds of years, although advertising has changed considerably via the means
of new technology such as the internet and mobile phones, there incentive is
still the same.
Before 18th
century there was little means to advertise because of the lack of new technology,
though in the late 18th century there was a printing boom allowing advertisement
to be reproduced on a large scale. One of the first people to take advantage of
this was the lever brothers who were one of the first multinationals. ‘I was
the first to advertise extensively (and pre package) a tablet of soap… the
result was I lifted sunlight soap to a class by itself’ (Lever in Lewis, 2008; 62)
They were founded in 1851 and today they own over 900 hundred brands worldwide.
Lever brothers always had the audience in mind, even their factory was opened up
to the public, so they could have an insight to how the soap is made and
packaged, they then become more involved and interested in the product and are
then more likely to purchase it. They added brand value through advertising,
their achievement was ‘to convince people all over the world that they did not
just want this product, they needed it’ (Port Sunlight Museum, 2009). Another
strategy the Lever brothers used was putting contemporary art paintings on their
products and in adverts, this became easy to do because of technology, which
allowed them to have paintings reproduced. One way in which they did this was
to put contemporary paintings on soap boxes, this then got the paintings into
homes that that family wouldn’t of ever been able to afford in the first place,
therefore giving them more of an incentive to buy more soap boxes because it
made them feel ‘special’ and ‘better off’, this a strong example of the
statement by Jeremy Bullmore. The Lever brothers also made each box have a
different image and so people could collect a number of different paintings,
this again would reinforce the audience’s belief that having them would make
them more important, ‘the more the better’, plus encouraging them to purchase
even more boxes. They also convinced the audience to buy vouchers and save for
print outs of the ads. This all just from selling soap.
An
example of how the Lever brothers used contemporary paintings was ‘The New Frock’ (1889) (Figure 3). In this advertisement
Lever uses a cute little girl holding her extremely clean white apron, this
image would appeal to a housewife and mother due to the strong bond between
them and there children. The advert also speaks directly to working class
housewives, because there is a much larger audience there, especially as they
would have more children and a bigger connected family. The cleanliness within
the advert is also clear to see, thus making connections between the
cleanliness of the frock and the main attribute of soap, to clean. The child
also has a very clear look of pride, showing the world her clean apron that
people may think was cleaned by the soap. This advertisement though holds a lot
of irony; the original artist used the image to comment on the short-lived and
uselessness of ‘worldly things’, whereas Lever has used it to sell such an
object. This could in a way could be
termed commodity fetishism, hiding the actual meaning of the painting. This
like the previous advertisements I talked about plays on the emotions of the
audience, even more so here because of the emotional attachment people already
have with small children. Using children helps to convey a product that is
innocent and because it has been the hands of children, it must be okay. This
same type of approach whereby a cute innocent person/animal is displayed next
to a product, to maybe distract the audience from what may be a boring or not
so appealing item is used in the Andrex advertisements. The dog is very cute
and so grabs the audiences attention and takes it away from what is a not so
attractive item, ‘Andrex ads are well produced and the puppy is invariably very
cute. The chances are that the first time consumers see an Andrex ad they will
pay explicit attention, certainly to the puppy.’ (Heath, 2001; pg100) As described by Robert
Heath, although using a dog these same aspects can be applied to children and
babies, both are extremely cute and give off feelings of love and a ‘growing’
family.
Looking again at
the Lever brothers and their advertisements they used the same method explained
above in many of their works. They often used children to advertise their soap,
these methods provided a message that was displayed in a innovative and
interesting way. Along with this they used a slogan on their adverts, these
simple end lines changed the meaning of an image to Levers advantage, similar
to the lines used on the Diesel adverts. An example of this is shown on (Figure
4), as well as having the child in the image that gives the impression of joy,
purity, blessings, innocence and life, as does every advertisement that
includes a child, it also has across the bottom ‘Does work-Does play:- “That’s Sunlight”’, insinuating that the
product is multifunctional, keeping the child quiet as she paints the Soap box,
this again would appeal to the mother who’d feel that just by looking at the
image she could get some peace and quite and keep her child entertained with
such a simple item, a bar of soap, this therefore making her believe that this
item is so much more than what it really is.
Despite all the extremely clever and thought provoking advertisements of
the Lever brothers, their use of soap and especially after they formed
alliances with Margarine Unie and created the company Dove, there use of palm
oil has cause for concern because in the process of getting the palm oil it
causes a lot of damage to the environment, Dove are the single biggest users of
palm oil in the world. This is an example of how advertisement can bring so
much in that it encourages unnecessary production and consumption, therefore
exhausting the world’s resources and spoiling the environment.
Touching back on something that was mentioned earlier, commodity
fetishism, the example given was although not the best example and a extremely
minor case it is in a lot of advertisement and is a huge issue. Commodity
fetishism is where the history of a product is kept quite and hidden, the
method and production is concealed due to the fact it may be illegal or an
extreme exploitation of something or someone. This is all unknown and unseen
within an advert, we as a market are fabricated into believing that the all
shining, glittering product has been produced in a acceptable method and little
attention is ever paid, something summed up by Karl Marx, ‘From the taste of wheat it is not possible to tell who
produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist.’ (Wikipedia, Jan 2013), here he is giving a perfect example of how a consumer
may think, not intentionally but that thought process has become instinct in
todays culture, with it being so easy to source different goods from around the
world, minute thought goes into the production. This is a perfect example of
how companies cover up what’s really going on behind there advertisements. The clothing industry is a perfect example of
this, because of their mass market, huge amount of consumers and the need for
new products on a regular basis they rely on a huge workforce.
A very public example is Nike, where they used child labor in poor
countries where they could be exploited due to the lack of money, at a very
small price a child will work for hours and the product they make is then sold
for a vast amount more than what it was made for, all of this creates a lot of
unnecessary production that in this case is harmful and unhealthy to people. This
is all overshadowed and overlooked by the consumer who just assume because its
Nike, with there history and tradition of being such a big company it blinds
people from the truth. This type of advertisement is used everywhere today and
this distortion of a product through advertisement can be applied to the food
industry as well. Many products are showcased to be a extremely healthy and
posses never heard of items in their food that a consumer believe to be good
for them, they also make a customer invest in food that is unhealthy by using
many symbolical messages, ‘Corporations and governments are
obsessed with subliminal messages because they are effective at controlling our
thought patterns without our knowledge’ (USAHitman, Jan 2013). Adverts also try
and give a health benefit the food has, such as ‘nutritious wheat puffs’ to try
and gloss over the parts of that product that are not healthy, for example
where Sugar Puffs use the fact that they have wheat that it makes it a healthy
product, but they fail to mention the extremely high sugar intake. Also the
fact that this product is advertised towards children through the use of a big
cuddly soft creature it becomes very attractive to children who will then
pester their mums and dads to buy this product. This along with my earlier
points about children show how a child is targeted by advertisement and how the
use of images encourages the audience to buy products and brands that are
unhealthy.
Advertisement is extremely
powerful, it manipulates the consumer into thinking a number of things about
ones self, making them believe they are not good enough or don’t have enough to
fulfill their everyday needs. That manipulation is aimed at us in an extremely
obvious way or subconsciously; they can hold strong messages that hide the
truth about a product yet we still are enticed to buy it. This manipulation is
sometimes taken to extremes and when forced upon children it becomes even more
powerful, twisting and turning young minds that are easily beset into trying
something new, captivated by images and symbols. This is also applied to the
older generation, especially teenagers who will see a sexy male or female model
and because of being at that tender age they see them and want to be them,
therefore advertisement is aimed at them profoundly. Although advertisement is
extremely controlling, though we may not see it, they are extremely powerful,
nonetheless in the end they are just trying to sell a product and ‘Advertising, from the moment
it was born, was trying to entertain us’ (Hegarty,
2011, p9) and we are however the controllers of our own mind. But through the
use of commodity culture, commodity fetishism and reification they perpetuate
false needs that do indeed change the way we think and feel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berger, J. (1972) ‘Ways Of Seeing’,
London, BBC & Penguin Books.
Heath, R. (2001) ‘The Hidden Power of Advertising’, Oxfordshire, Admap
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Hegarty, J.
(2011) ‘Hegarty on Advertising’
London: Thames & Hudson.
Lewis, B. (2008) ‘So Clean’, Manchester, Manchester
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Media Hitman . (2012) ‘The Hidden Truth of Subliminal Messages. Available:
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Plessis, E. (2005) ‘The Advertised mind
Ground Breaking Insights Into How Our Brains Respond To Advertising’, London,
Millward Brown and Kogan Page Limited.
Port
Sunlight Museum. (2008). Available:
http://www.portsunlightvillage.com/page.asp?pageid=MUSVIL. [Last
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Williamson J. (2005) ‘Decoding
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