How Advertising is used in our society today Celebrities and Advertising.
Siobhain Bowen
SIS Media
Bernie Grummel
How Advertising is used in our society today
Celebrities and Advertising
Introduction
Every day we are exposed to over 300 adverts, and by the time we are 60 years old we will have seen an average of 50 million ads. Adverts are so widespread nowadays that most famous companies can be recognised anywhere in the world using their logos. Like the M for McDonalds, this can be recognised in countries that don't even use the same letters as us, for example. China or Russia. Advertising is the way in which companies promote their products to the general public. The advertising companies make the ads they do as enchanting and as captivating as they can. Advertising really took off back in the 1930s when manufacturers started making more products than they were selling so they had to determine a way to persuade people to buy more products than was necessary, this way was advertising.
Advertising can sometimes have a major impact on people's lives, such as one particular woman who was reputed to earn £30,000 a year but she got into a debt of twice as much as she earned. She said that she could not control herself and had to have the latest model of everything. This is one example that demonstrates the power of adverts and they how they can subliminally brainwash people which is what the companies want. With respect to competition, adverts would not work without it because the people who design them, intend their ideas to look better than the competition to encourage the consumer to buy their product.
Television is a media form that most people believe to be the most effective form of advertising as billions of people around the world tune into their televisions everyday. When advertising on the television, adverts can cost hundreds of millions of pounds or dollars. Classically, during the super bowl in America, when the vast population are glued to their televisions, adverts can cost up to $1 million a second. Different types of advertising is used in television; some companies choose to follow a story, this is where they produce a series of adverts that follows a theme and each new run of adverts carried on with next part of the story. This captures the audiences' imagination and they become engrossed with the story line, waiting to see what comes in the next advert that contains the next part of the story. Shock value is another method; this shocks the viewers by having something outrageous happen during the advert, and is done so that people remember that particular advert. Two other ways that are used in ads on TV is humour, to make the viewers laugh and hence remember it, and depicting a sexual theme in their adverts, this is because sex sells, especially in this country!
Another form of advertising is through the printed media such as magazines, newspapers, buses, billboards and posters etc. In magazines and newspapers the adverts are strategically placed on the back, inside front cover and the middle. Where the advert is placed affects its cost, if they are placed in the areas I specified then it will be more expensive. The thickness and paper quality that the ad is on also give a sub-liminal message to the reader as better quality paper links to a better quality product. Slogans are very powerful when used appropriately and can stick in ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Another form of advertising is through the printed media such as magazines, newspapers, buses, billboards and posters etc. In magazines and newspapers the adverts are strategically placed on the back, inside front cover and the middle. Where the advert is placed affects its cost, if they are placed in the areas I specified then it will be more expensive. The thickness and paper quality that the ad is on also give a sub-liminal message to the reader as better quality paper links to a better quality product. Slogans are very powerful when used appropriately and can stick in the mind, like "have a break, have a Kit-Kat" for Kit-Kat.
Radio adverts must rely on sound alone and cannot be expressed through visual means, so they nearly always feature jingles in them, which are often catchy but also sometimes annoying and simple which is what the advertisers want because it will stick in your mind. New media is the type of adverts that you get on the Internet like "pop-up boxes", junk mail. Spam and adverts can also be sent to your mobile phone now via text messages.
There are also other techniques used to encourage sales such as product placement. This is when companies pay to have their product appear or be used in a popular TV programme or film. Free samples are also distributed so the public can sample the product before they buy it so they can explore options they wouldn't have if the sample was not free. Sponsorship s another factor that is used, this is when a company pays for celebrities to appear in their adverts, for example, Gary Linekar appearing in the Walkers adverts, or David Beckham and Roberto Carlos in the Pepsi adverts. Sponsorship is also used in many sports, for example, football and the Grand Prix; they will have the companies' logo on either the football shirt or on the side of the cars. Endorsement is where a celebrity is paid to wear or use a company's product, for example, a celebrity will wear hair gel or football boots. The adverts we see are designed to relate to how our sub-conscious sees the adverts and this is the part of the brain that thinks without us being aware of it. Subliminal advertising is used in every advert, which locks in with the sub-conscious, and means something that has an effect on us without us knowing it.
Actual Topic?
For my research of gender roles in today's society, I decided to look at how men and women are portrayed in advertising. I watched three hours of prime time television commercials to see which products were directed at which gender. I developed criteria for my research to distinguish between commercials of and for men and commercials of and for women. I looked at location (inside or outside of the home), roles (professional, domestic), product type (home, child, outdoor, car), and gender of central character and whether or not they had a spouse and/or children present. My secondary research came from journal articles published on the same topic and from our class textbook. The first criterion I focused on was the role of families in the commercials.
"Not only are women underrepresented on television, but in advertisements, they are more often associated with domesticity and inexpensive products associated with appearance." Here is another example from the same article, also written by Jason Low, "Women in radio commercials are also more likely to be portrayed in dependent roles and in the home". In addition, from the same article by Jason Low, "Gender role content analyses of magazines also reveal that the primary concerns of women are with regards to appearance, household activities and romance." Of these commercials, I found that the majority of interaction with the children was by the mother, except for playing with and teaching the children. Mothers were the ones who got up and got their child medicine in the middle of the night. Mothers were the ones who washed little Timmy's soccer jersey for the big game the next day. Mothers were the ones who packed just the right lunch for little Johnny and little Suzy. The expectation of the mothers to be the primary caregivers in raising the children is enforced by the verbal advertising that goes along with the scene. The mother is the authority on children's products because she is more involved with raising the children. "The brand more moms choose." "The brand mom likes best." These phrases imply that father does not participate in the selection of the products used with their kids. Fathers are seen more often tossing the ball with their sons or reading to the children at night. This makes it seem that the "fathers 'help' with the parenting, but mothers are never seen that way". Furthermore, according to Kaufman, men are more likely to be seen interacting with male children compared to female children. The father and son do "manly stuff" together. In one of the commercials, I observed the father is out on a fishing boat with his young son and giving him the benefit of his great wisdom while they bond out on the lake. This commercial reinforces the stereotype that men interact more frequently with their male children and that the interaction comes more in the form of playing than making decisions regarding the general upbringing of the child.
The next area I focused on was setting. I found a great difference in the setting of commercials depending on whether the central figure, if they were alone, 87 percent of the time they were outside the home. If they were with a spouse and/or children, they were still slightly more likely to be outside the home (example: driving the family on a vacation), but there was an increase of being shown inside the home. This information was supported when Furnham and Mak found that 53 percent of the time men were presented outdoors while women were presented indoors 61 percent of the time. On the other hand, I found that women were shown primarily in the home regardless of whether a spouse and/or children were present.
When a spouse or children were present, I found that 91 percent of the time the setting was in the house. I feel as if this brings back the old adage, "a woman's place is in the home". Here is a partial quote from an article from Internet, "[...] location (men shown in occupational settings and women in the home)[...]" I feel like men have more authority over women just because they work and bring bacon to the table. Women are able to do the same thing! Who is to say that just because a woman has a family that she stays cooped up in the house all day. Not surprisingly, the out-of-the-home activities that the "family" women performed were family oriented. I observed women grocery shopping for their families, driving the kids to little league, and picking them up from school. A woman is not defined by her status as a mother but that is what these commercials are working very hard to convey.
In this new millennium, men, and women are both very much involved in the work force. Both men and women hold positions of respect, such as doctors, lawyers, and business executives. Based on my observations, I would never guess that women share these standings with men. In all my three hours of watching commercials during prime time television, which both men and women watch, I saw only 10 commercials with women even looking like executives or business orientated. In the commercials, I watched it was clear that men were in professional roles and women were in domestic roles. Even if the woman is the central character, we often hear a man's voice in the background, pushing the product. Do the advertising executives think that the woman could not sell the product by herself? Often the man's voice is a voice of authority. For example, I see a woman standing in front of the mirror brushing her teeth. She is attractive with very nice teeth and she seems to be enjoying the toothbrush. Then we hear a man's voice in the background say, "The toothbrush 4 out of 5 dentists choose most". Subliminally, this brings to mind male dentists because it is a man's voice. Even though there are no males in the commercial, we still get the image that these male dentists are the authority. Why couldn't the woman in the mirror be one of the 4 dentists? It is because women are not seen as authoritative and thus the statement is not as strong with a woman saying it. According to Lindsey "Ninety percent of voice-overs are male." In Craig's study in 1992, he found that "males are more likely to be portrayed as celebrities and professionals and females as interviewer, parent/spouse, or sex object [...]" According to our textbook, "Although the use of men as sex objects in advertisements has increased, it is not nearly so frequent as for women." However nine years later, we are still seeing the same trends.
The final area I looked at was product advertised. Advertisements aimed at women
are frilly, fluffy, set to fun music and make cleaning products look fun. In a
commercial for Palmolive dishwashing soap, two women are dancing and singing
around the kitchen to the song "spring is in the Air". In the advertisement for men,
we see power tools, sports cars and rugged all-terrain vehicles, and computer and
electronics equipment. The message this sends is that women only need products
that are used for cooking and cleaning and that men have more important things to
do like repair the roof or engineer a new software program. Additionally, the styles
in which these products are presented give the impression that both are happy in
these roles. In 1992, Craig found that only 6 percent of products sold by females
are for use outside the home. Kaufman found that "only 1 percent of women with
children but no spouse appear in commercials for computers [...]." I am a woman
and I use a computer. I bought it myself, so why not advertise to me?
I watch a lot of television and therefore many commercials, but until this assignment, I did not realize that advertising is perpetuating the same stereotypes from 50 years ago, just with better technology. I found myself getting more and more offended as my tally of commercials with women just loving their laundry detergent went up. Single men wash clothes too, where are the commercials for them? I am also increasingly discouraged that these stereotypical commercials are similar all over the world. One of the journal articles I used did a study of commercials in other countries and the results were all the same: women are domestic and stay in the home while the men go out and earn the money or "fix things." I hope that someday we will see a more realistic portrayal of gender roles in commercials because I would hate the real world to move ahead of stereotypes while advertising keeps pushing them back in our faces.