On the other hand advertising describes or draws attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance. It is an important tool of sales promotion. Advertising consists of all the actions involved in presenting a non-personal, oral or visual, sponsored message regarding a product, service or idea. The add must grab the readers attention and create a desire to check out the companies product or service.
What do we understand by the word promotion? It is an important element of marketing of a business enterprise. The function of promotion is concerned with establishing direct contact with the customers. Advertising is one of the many ways of promotion. This is often used to inform people about the availability of the product in the market and also create among them the desire to buy the product. No firm can ever succeed in its mission of profit or even survival without publicizing its product, organization or venture. Promotion has become a necessity in today’s world due to the stiff competition and widening of markets. They are shown how the products offered by the firm will satisfy their needs. Consumers make many buying decisions every day. Most large companies research consumer buying decisions in great detail to answer questions about what consumers buy, where they buy, how and how much they buy, when they buy, and why they buy. Promotion helps in differentiating a particular product of the firm from the competing products of other firms. It also highlights the utility of the product.
We experience the world predominantly through our eyes. Identification of vision’s unique power has led to the development of many new forms of visual communication. Our eyes today are seen as precious goals for visual content—messages written which reach out to tingle our retinas and thus our minds—hoping to make an impact a great impact. Visual communication comes in many forms, many of which are designed to entertain us through moving images, such as film, television, and video games. Visual technologies such as these have become quite sophisticated, but some forms of visual communication remain primitive by comparison, crudely attempting to deliver information that is far too important to be displayed so poorly.
THE POWER OF VISUAL PERCEPTION AND THE MIND
Of the total sense receptors in the human body, 70% dwell in our eyes. Visual perception delivers the world to our brains at high speeds and with fine keenness. If we want to present information to people’s eyes, we must understand a little about how the eyes work, including some very real limitations.
One of the leading lights in visualization research today is Dr. Colin Ware of the University of New Hampshire. He expertly explains the importance of visualization and how it works.
“Why should we be interested in visualization? Because the human visual system is a pattern seeker of enormous power and subtlety. The eye and the visual cortex of the brain form a massively parallel processor that provides the highest-bandwidth channel into human cognitive centers. At higher levels of processing, perception and cognition are closely interrelated, which is the reason why the words ‘understanding’ and ‘seeing’ are synonymous. However, the visual system has its own rules. We can easily see patterns presented in certain ways, but if they are presented in other ways, they become invisible...The more general point is that when data is presented in certain ways, the patterns can be readily perceived. If we can understand how perception works, our knowledge can be translated into rules for displaying information. Following perception- based rules, we can present our data in such a way that the important and informative patterns stand out. If we disobey the rules, our data will be incomprehensible or misleading.” (Information Visualization, Second Edition, Colin Ware, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2004, page xxi)
What we see has a severe effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are. Through skill, experience and test, we frequently increase our understanding of the visual world. Research at 3M Corporation concluded that we process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Further studies find that the human brain decodes image elements simultaneously, while language is decoded in a linear, sequential manner taking more time to process.
Relatively speaking, in terms of communication, textual ubiquity is brand new. Thanks to millions of years of evolution, we are genetically wired to respond differently to visuals than text. For example, humans have an inborn fondness for images of wide, open landscapes, which evoke an instant sense of well-being and satisfaction.
People think using pictures. “The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." Dr. Lynell Burmark, Ph.D. Associate at the Thornburg Center for Professional Development and writer of several books and papers on visual literacy, said, "...unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2). This is why, just by the way, that we have 7-digit phone numbers. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are ineradicable engraved." Therefore, it is not surprising that it is much easier to show a circle than describe it.
By this example off course we can make a mention that visual communication looks indeed more attractive than even colorfully written text.
What kind of emotions arise when you see such a picture? How quickly did you feel that way? Can you see how this image could be used to quickly obtain a strong emotional response and influence you? If I were to textually describe this picture, your emotional reaction would not be as strong and it would take more time to understand the information. Try thinking it yourself – “ an extremely joyous newborn having light green colored eyes with his cut little fingers in his small mouth.” I a, sure you don’t get the same instinct as you got in the earlier visual explanation.
"More pleasing graphics, higher-quality look and feel..." -F, 52, Tennessee
The ability of visual stimuli to communicate and influence is indisputable (totally beyond question) and unavoidable. Through evolution, human beings are compelled to view and disseminate visuals. Recognizing the importance of visual communication is key to your success. Allen Ginsberg, poet and author, stated, "Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture." As early as the late nineteenth century, advertisers, based on their collective experience, were convinced that illustrations sold goods. World War II propaganda posters were very effective at manipulating popular opinion.
What is the NEED and IMPORTANCE of ADVERTISING?
The importance of advertising has increased in the modern generation because of large scale production and tough competition in the market. There is no doubt about the fact that in the absence of advertising in our life, we shall be deprived of many valuable things.
Advertising helps in introducing new products. A business enterprise can introduce itself and its products to the public through advertising. It can create new taste among the public and encourage them to buy the new product /old product through effective advertisement even those products which they never thought of buying. It helps to increase the sale of prevailing products by entering into new markets and attracting new customers. Advertising makes purchasing easy for consumers by reducing the time and effort involved in shopping. People become aware of the source and availability of different products and need not search them out. Advertising provides employment to persons engaged in writing, designing and issuing advertisements. Increased employment brings additional income with the people, which stimulate more demand.
Research Findings:
Communication is most successful when you write neither more nor less than what is pertinent to your message. People discern visual differences in an information display as differences in meaning. The visual properties that work best for representing quantitative values are the length or 2-D location of objects. People become aware of differences in the lengths or 2-D locations of objects fairly factually and interpret them as differences in the actual values that they represent. People perceive things that appear connected as wholes and things that appear disconnected as separate. People pay most attention to and consider most important those parts of a visual display that are most predominant. Short-term memory is limited to about four types of information at a time.
Conclusion
I draw a close to my essay by saying that visual communication indeed plays an important role in advertising. Effective visual communication is ataned by displaying information in a way that enables people to clearly see an accurate representation of your message and understand what they see.
References and Bibliography
Done as when required just alongside the reference taken in MLA system.
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radhika987654321 (student)
