How are Third World countries depicted in contemporary advertising

Danny Coffey

How are Third World countries depicted in contemporary advertising?

This essay will explore the different ways in which advertisers from the first world or more developed countries have chosen to represent these countries to the Western audiences. I will investigate the three main ways these under developed countries are perceived. Firstly I will look at the perception of the Third world being in extreme need of aid and the impression of “desperation” which comes across from adverts concerning poverty, child labour and other types of advertising like this. I will look at the different ways in which this has affected the western society’s views on the third world. Secondly I will look at the advertising of countries in the third world as beautiful, tranquil places in which people from the developed world are persuaded to come and spend their holidays in. Thirdly, I will look at the ways in which the third world is depicted as being “out of control”, uncivilized and the opposite to first world countries. I will look at the creation of this through advertising which broadcasts a world of drugs, corruptions, gang violence and a ‘backwards’ society opposite to that of westerns societies. Even though it is true that much of these things do occur in developing countries especially in urban areas, I will analyse how true the advertisings depictions actually are. Finally I will draw together how these different advertising tactics have brought about many different views of the third world and how they actually compare to the reality of the situations many of these third world countries actually face.

Probably the most popular and recognisable image that many of us associate with the third world is that of “desperation” and need of help due to natural disasters, child labour and poverty. Various techniques are used by advertisers to attract the viewers such as through television appeals, newspaper and magazine articles, radio appeals and more recently; internet advertising has become a large promoter. Charities use various techniques to represent the people in the third world and to try and win over the audiences in the west for donations. However it must be made clear that advertising is the promotion of a commodity to the audience to try and get them to buy it. With charity appeals, a commodity is not exchanged for money, the money gathered by charities are more of a ‘gift’. However the same advertising techniques are used in order to persuade the audience to donate and this form of advertising does have the same effect regarding the images implanted in the audiences’ minds. For example, child labour is a large issue with many charities in this day and age and is a large problem in the third world, especially in Southern Africa due to the death of many of the economically active due to HIV/AIDS. The wide-eyed child, smiling or starving, is the most powerful fundraiser for aid agencies (Paddy Coulter, 1989). The Christian Children’s Fund uses pictures mainly of sad women and children in order to encourage the “guilt” factor among the audience and to persuade them to donate. Powerful messages are used such as “Help change one child’s life – forever” (http//:www.newint.org, 1989) sends a powerful message that we can help and influence real people’s lives. The also constant reference to the terms ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ the apparently helpless ‘them’ being helped by the neo-colonial ‘us’ (http//:www.newint.org, 1989) which creates a kind of separation between the ‘third world’ and the ‘first world’. We also see a lot of images through advertising of the positive effects of our efforts and the ways the money has been spent to improve third world villages such as the video clips of locals using a new well instead of having to walk miles to the nearest river. However, many of these charities, such as the Save the Children’s Fund actually work in partnership with national governments or indigenous voluntary organisations, but there is no mention of these partners in the advertisement and therefore the adverts mask the ways in which the money is actually being spent to help these people and when the audience thinks their money is having an effect, direct action or immediate action may not be occurring.

This is a preview of the whole essay

There are also many ways in which third world countries are depicted as being attractive and exotic to “first world” tourists. Contemporary advertising seems to have the tendency to focus instead on the “high arts” of the landscape and literature (Jackson, 1996) often obscuring the reality of these places to tourists. Tunisia in North Africa is an example of this and in recent years the Tunisian tourism promoters have broken out of the “three S’s” – sun, sea and sand, and began to offer a distinctively Third World tourist product: the exotic (http://www.newint.org, 1984). This creates a sense of excitement and curiosity amongst the audience and attracts many tourists who wish to explore Tunisia’s medinas (old towns) and beaches. The increasing amount of wildlife documentaries due to channels such as the National Geographic Channel and Discovery Animal planet is also encouraging audiences to imagine these places as peaceful, undisturbed paradises. Although these TV channels are not direct advertisers of the third world, they do provide a channel to which adverts can be broadcast for travel agents, charity campaigns etc, which carry these images in. When looking at the examples of the advertising of African wilderness safaris in travel brochures and through TV adverts you get the classic images of rolling “untouched” surroundings filled with wildlife such as lions and in the background a red sunset, but most importantly no human interference. This creates the image of real nature, untouched and undisturbed by humans. However this also masks to western audiences’ the existence of indigenous civilisations and a false sense of ‘pristine’ nature overrides this. These images also depict a sense of danger and savagery as these places are seen as all natural and the non existence of people also creates a sense of danger and “aloneness” to us and highlights the cruelness of nature especially to western city dwellers that are totally alien to this.

Another popular method of advertising third world countries in contemporary advertising is the depiction of an ‘uncivilised world’ or the opposite to the first world, a mysterious place where strange events occur and a place teeming with violence, corruption and drug cultures. This image is often a strong depiction amongst many western audiences and television is a strong promoter of this through televised adverts. For example the 2003 advert from Peugeot motors entitled “Bombay Dream” is set in India where a group of three males living in the dusty and crowded city of Bombay see a scudded up, but still shiny poster of a Peugeot 206 hack back and dream of having this product from the ‘western world’. They then take an old Morris oxford car, an old British car and a product of colonial times which shows how the third world is almost trapped in the past compared to us and mould or re design it by battering and hammering it into the shape of the shiny car on the poster. They even use an Indian elephant to sit on the car and show how the wilderness interacts in the community and is almost depicted as one with the people, creating this mysterious and almost “backwards” impression to the western audiences who most would have never experienced this. At the end when the men have their copy of the car, the advert depicts them driving around in it, which firstly seems strange to us to how a car could be working after all the hammering into shape, but mainly the reaction of the local people of Bombay, now that their car has been ‘westernised’ they get attention and it is seen as fashionable. This point draws back to the image of “them” and “us”, that they want to be like us and re enforces to us the difference between the people of the third world and us of the first world.

In conclusion I think it is fair to say that many of our images of third world life are in many cases blurred by contemporary advertising. Whether it is by television charity appeals or those glossy pictures of third world paradise in travel brochures, we often rarely see the true realities of the situations in many of these third world countries. Instead we get a ‘mirage’ of the true picture which will only representation of a small part of the third world life.

Sources

http://www.newint.org/issue194/pretty.htm , new internationalist issue 194 - April 1989, Pretty as a picture, Paddy Coulter

, new internationalist 142, December 1984, Selling the exotic, Scott Malcomson

Peter Jackson and James Taylor, 1996, Geography and the Cultural Politics of advertising: Progress in Human Geography 20: 256 – 271

http://www.directline-holidays.co.uk/Tunisia, 2005

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1045.html, 2005-10-23

Peugeot Motors “Bombay Dream”, 2003