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131
Chapter 11
Advertising and Commercial Culture
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Chapter Opener: Harnessing the power of social media has created a new advertising
opportunity—with 35 percent of 2017 advertising budgets committed to Internet marketing.
Media-savvy celebrities like DJ Khaled are getting in on the action by using sites like
Snapchat to share what’s happening in their lives and to promote various products.
I. The Early History of American Advertising: 1850s to 1950s
After the Industrial Revolution, the United States was linked by railroad, telegraph,
and print media, and merchants wanted to advertise their products in newspapers and
magazines.
A. The First Advertising Agencies. The first American advertising agencies were
newspaper space brokers, who purchased space in newspapers and sold it to
various merchants.
B. Retail Stores: Giving Birth to Branding. The creation of brand names and their use
in ads allowed manufacturers to differentiate their products and take control of
pricing from retail merchants.
II. The Evolution of U.S. Advertising: 1950s to Today
New types of ad agencies developed as consumers became more interested in imagery
and new media like the Internet became popular.
A. Visual Design Comes to the Fore. European designers in the 1960s and 1970s and
MTV in the 1980s and 1990s heavily influenced ad design, which is becoming
even more sophisticated thanks to new technology.
B. New Breeds of Advertising Agencies Are Born. The increasing importance of
visual design led to the development of two types of specialized agencies that
wield great control over the type of advertising we see.
1. Mega-Agencies. These agencies provide a full range of services including
public relations and broadcast production, but critics warn that their size gives
them inordinate power.
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C. Ad Agencies Develop a Distinctive Structure. Most advertising agencies have a
similar structure, with four main functions:
1. Account Planning. Account planning develops an effective advertising
strategy by combining the views of the client, creative team, and consumer.
2. Creative Development. Teams of writers and artists—the “creatives”—
develop ads to appeal to consumers.
D. Online and Mobile Advertising Alter the Ad Landscape. The Internet and mobile
technology have complicated advertising and have opened the door for new
competition.
1. The Rise of Web Advertising. Web advertising has become increasingly
sophisticated and includes paid search and spam. Online companies like
Google pose a real threat to traditional ad agencies.
2. How Online Ads Work. Agencies track how often ads are seen and how often
users click on them; they also gather information about consumers through
“cookies.”
III. Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
Ad agencies use a variety of persuasive techniques to get consumers to buy a product
or service.
A. Using Conventional Persuasive Strategies. Advertisers have long used a number
of standard strategies like the famous-person testimonial, plain-folks pitch, snob
appeal, bandwagon effect, hidden-fear appeal, and irritation advertising.
B.
Associating Products with Values. For many campaigns, ad agencies associate a
IV. Commercial Speech and Regulating Advertising
Advertisements are considered commercial speech. Debate persists about whether they
should be regulated.
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A. Targeting Children and Teens. Advertisers have targeted children because they
influence billions of dollars of family purchases, but critics worry that ads
sometimes promote unhealthy products or intrude in schools.
B. Triggering Anorexia and Overeating. Critics say that ultrathin female models
contribute to an unhealthy self-image for women and that food ads contribute to
obesity.
C. Promoting Smoking. One of the most sustained criticisms of advertising is its
promotion of tobacco.
D. Promoting Drinking. Many of the same complaints about tobacco ads are also
directed at alcohol ads.
E. Hawking Drugs Directly to Consumers. Critics worry that consumers are
vulnerable to misleading drug ads because the ads can’t convey all the cautionary
information that consumers need.
F. Monitoring the Advertising Industry. A few watchdog groups try to compensate
for the shortcomings of the FTC, which has faced cutbacks and is of questionable
effectiveness.
1. Commercial Alert. Since 1998, Commercial Alert has been working to “limit
excessive commercialism in society.”
V. Advertising in a Democratic Society
Advertising is the central economic support of our mass media industries and has
powerfully fueled our economy. Critics worry, however, that the consumer society it
helped create has widened the divisions between the haves and have-nots and that
political advertising has made citizens less informed and has undermined their
confidence in the electoral process.
LECTURE TOPICS
1. Describe the structure of the advertising industry, including the development of mega-
agencies and boutique agencies and the process of doing advertising.
2. Detail the persuasive strategies and techniques in contemporary advertising, using
current print and broadcast examples.
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LECTURE SPIN-OFFS
The First Advertising Agencies
The first full-service modern advertising agency, N. W. Ayer & Son (established in 1869 in
Philadelphia), remained active until 2002. N. W. Ayer & Son’s more famous slogans
include:
• “When it rains it pours.” (Morton Salt, 1912)
• “I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” (Camel cigarettes, 1921)
Patent Medicines: Making Outrageous Claims
• Patent medicines associated themselves with the following appeals: exotica, the medical
knowledge of Native Americans, death, religion, patriotism, mythology, and science.
• Patent medicines for teething or colicky babies often contained morphine and alcohol.
• At the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. cities were reporting an alarming rise in deaths
due to heart, kidney, and liver failure. The powder acetanilide, an ingredient in a
number of patent medicines advertised for headache cures, was linked to the higher
death rates.
• Further Reading:
Visual Design Comes to the Fore
Before the introduction of Dockers pants (a division of Levi Strauss) on television in the
1980s, Americans had never seen handheld, “shaky-cam” camera work in commercials. The
extra movement, derivative of MTV video styles, created a kind of excitement and
suggested the inexperienced “human” camera work of people with camcorders, which were
then becoming popular consumer items. After the Dockers commercials debuted, the shaky-
cam formula was quickly adopted by other agencies, making handheld camera shots
commonplace. Dutch angles (shots with the horizon line askew) have also become
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Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
• Product placement has been around since the 1940s, when the diamond company De
Beers supplied jewelry for stars to wear on the screen. Here are some additional
examples:
• In the 1950s, James Dean used an Ace comb in Rebel without a Cause, which
caused sales of the comb to soar.
• A remarkable example of the financial power of product placement occurred
decades ago. The movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) was
entirely funded by Quaker Oats, which used the movie to promote its new Wonka
brand of candy and sweets.
• Here are some more brand partnerships: Snapple is the official beverage of New
York City; Coca-Cola has marketing deals with Huntington Beach, California, and
East Lansing, Michigan; and PepsiCo has deals with San Diego and Fresno,
• One of the earliest uses of a famous pop song for a television advertisement was the
long-running use of Carly Simon’s 1972 hit “Anticipation” for Heinz ketchup. The ad
campaign featured a person waiting for the presumably thick Heinz ketchup to exit the
tilted bottle. Leo Burnett Company was responsible for the 1974–1979 campaign. The
contract for the commercial rights to the song precluded Leo Burnett from using Simon
to sing the TV ad, but the music agency hired by Burnett did such a good job that most
viewers were convinced that they were listening to Simon’s version of the song.
Another famous pop song appropriation is the use of “I Heard It through the Grapevine”
• The years 2005–2007 marked a fascination with cavemen in the advertising industry.
The cavemen were associated with Mr. Every Guy. Geico cavemen worried about their
modern-day portrayals as simpletons; FedEx cavemen worried whether their packages
would arrive the next morning. Geico’s cavemen were also showing up at golf
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tournaments and at Hollywood dinner parties after the Academy Awards. The success
of these commercials prompted ABC to greenlight a 2007 half-hour sitcom based on the
cavemen characters (though the sitcom failed).
(You might want to play a Winston cigarette commercial from the 1960s—widely
available on the Internet—featuring The Flintstones cartoon characters. This early use
of cavemen in advertising provides several interesting comparisons to the Geico
campaign.)
The Burger King mascot is marketed to the same demographic: eighteen- to thirty-
five-year-old men. The Burger King “King” mascot has actually appeared in print and
• In 2015, a short called The Audition, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De
Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio (available on YouTube), was actually a commercial for a
resort and casino. The plot involved actors auditioning for a Scorsese film, but the
setting showcased the amenities of the resort. The $80 million production set a new
record for these types of films.
Targeting Children and Teens
• Exclusive marketing contracts with public schools are increasingly more common,
particularly with soft-drink companies. Pepsi, for example, pays a school a nominal fee
for placing soft-drink machines on school property; schools are asked to encourage soft-
drink consumption and to discourage the consumption of competing beverages. Pepsi
and Coke (as well as other companies) also purchase school property–naming rights.
They’ll supply the school with a football scoreboard, for example, while prominently
displaying the company logo.
Meanwhile, childhood and teenage obesity rates are soaring. Childhood obesity has
more than doubled in younger children and more than quadrupled in adolescents since
the 1980s. More than one in five children or adolescents were overweight or obese in
2017. Advertising of less healthy foods was listed by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and one of the reasons for the increase.
Further Reading:
“Childhood Obesity Facts,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated
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• During the 1989-90 school year, Channel One was introduced into thousands of schools.
Channel One offers free video and satellite equipment in exchange for a twelve-minute
• BusRadio was a company that put radios with advertising on school buses. Like
Channel One, BusRadio boasted that it would “take targeted student marketing to the
next level” and give advertisers a unique and effective way to reach the highly sought-
after tween and teen market. The ads would even target elementary school children as
young as six. The program ceased operations in 2009, apparently a victim of the
economy rather than school concern over advertising to kids.
Hawking Drugs Directly to Consumers
In August 1997, the Food and Drug Administration permitted changes in the way
prescription drugs are advertised on television. Until then, pharmaceuticals were advertised
in vague terms, with suggestions to “ask your doctor” for more details. Specific health
claims required lengthy explanations of possible side effects, which advertisers were
reluctant to do. Under the new guidelines, ads for prescription drugs can make specific
health claims as long as they briefly list major side effects and provide a source (a toll-free
Monitoring the Advertising Industry
• Some online publishers place advertising word links within the text of magazine
articles. A company called Vibrant Media has developed the system, called IntelliTXT.
Basically, advertisers pay Vibrant to be associated with particular words. When these
words appear in the articles of participating publishers, IntelliTXT creates a link, which
is underlined twice. Clicking on the link brings the reader to the advertiser. Rolling over
the link reveals a pop-up box with the words “sponsored link” and additional ad copy.
This practice raises new questions about the distinction between journalism and
advertising.
• Areas advertising has encroached upon:
• Produce: In the late 1990s, advertising started appearing on fruit, including apples,
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• Airport baggage carousels and lounges.
• Cash machines.
• Gasoline pumps, which are installed with televisions and speakers, inundating
people with commercials as they pump.
• Cars and trucks: Numerous companies, such as Brand on the Run and Autowraps,
Inc., now sell ad space on trucks and rental cars. Private citizens can also earn
money by driving around in an ad-covered car. Some communities have allowed
ads to be placed on police cars and school buses.
• Floor tiles in grocery and convenience stores.
• Motion-sickness bags.
• Trays used in airport security lines.
• Video screens in elevators.
• Video screens in taxicabs.
• An interactive ad for Adidas appearing in New York City’s Herald Square subway
station. Passersby said they liked the sign, which looked like a static picture of a
sneaker until someone walked past it, triggering a motion sensor that sent a spray of
miniature sneakers flying.
• Toyota projected ads for its Scion cars on the sides of buildings in fourteen cities,
including Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas.
• Major brands Dunlop and Dunkin’ Donuts have hired face space and
customized hairstyles to promote new products.
• When Toyota launched the Scion TC Coupe, it paid a group of skinvertisers to
walk around Times Square with temporary tattoos on their foreheads.
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Disney’s Hercules: From Zero to Hero. According to the Village Voice, the subversive
coloring books looked like Disney products until one realized that in this story
Hercules’s friend Meg discovers that the Disney Hercules merchandise “was being
made in evil factories called sweatshops.” Meg beseeches the mighty Hercules to stop
Disney, saying, “If they’re going to make shoes and shirts with your name on them, they
ought to pay the workers a living wage.” The Modern Action Club also distributed a
Space Jam sweatshop coloring book and subway stickers aimed at Guess! clothing that
read, “Guess! who uses sweatshops?”
• Free software called Adblock Plus helps eliminate the ads that accompany many Web
sites. The software works as a proxy, standing between the browser and the Internet and
checking every HTTP request for each resource against a blockfile of URLs before
sending it over to the user and stopping ads and cookies as a result. The software can be
used to block whole sites or to accept some cookies. Besides helping Internet users
enjoy a less ad-intense surfing environment, the software also enables Web pages to
load up more quickly without the extra graphics.
Further Reading:
• In what is often called “culture jamming” or “subvertising,” artists from New York to
San Francisco have been hijacking billboards for years to either parody advertisements
• Digital-media artist, activist, photographer, and independent journalist Jonathan
McIntosh has created a series of video mashups critiquing the advertising industry and
culture at large. For example, McIntosh has taken a Kodak commercial (which
originally featured two women driving around Europe, taking snapshots and then
exalting in their developed photos) and edited war images from Iraq in place of the
travel photos.
Further Reading:
Jonathan McIntosh, “A History of Subversive Remix Video before YouTube: Thirty
• A recent trend in advertising allows consumers to create their own ads and post them on
company Web sites. Chevy tried this tactic but must have regretted it as soon as
someone took the iconic imagery of its SUV advertisements—images showing SUVs
driving through forested terrain—and accompanied it with a negative message track
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MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES
IN BRIEF: ADVERTISING’S EFFECT ON YOUR CAMPUS
As a class, consider the effect of advertising on your college campus. Are any buildings or
sports facilities named after advertisers? Are any on-campus dining facilities run by fast-
food franchises? What company has the soda franchise on your campus, and how much does
it pay? What companies dominate the advertising on your campus, and where do they place
their ads? Should college campuses be free of advertisements? Why or why not? Are any
places in society free of ads and corporate sponsorship?
IN DEPTH: ANALYZING MAGAZINE ADS
From a business perspective, magazine ads function to promote advertisers’ goods or
services over competing brands and to place these goods or services before consumers so
that they can make informed buying decisions. We know, however, that ads mean more than
what advertisers intend because readers form their own opinions. We know, too, that ads
function as popular culture. They operate on a symbolic level to affirm cultural values.
In a three- or four-page analysis, compare and critique three magazine ads. The ads
should all feature the same type of product but should be taken from contrasting magazines
(e.g., three alcohol ads from women’s and men’s magazines or three clothing ads from
various kinds of publications).
1. Description. Take notes on your three choices, laying out what is going on in the ads.
Briefly describe each ad. Is a narrative apparent here (setting, characters, conflict, etc.)?
What different persuasive strategies seem to be at work?
2. Analysis. Figure out common patterns or differences that emerge among the three ads
and then develop an argument that you want to prove. For example, you may notice that
one ad demonstrates more social responsibility than the others or provides better
consumer information. In your critique, use the association principle to deal with the
ads’ cultural meanings. Your analysis should go beyond the issue of whether the ads
successfully market their products.
3. Interpretation. Now think about these questions in regard to the ads you have chosen:
What’s going on? What different sets of values are being sold (e.g., ideas about
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5. Engagement. Examine the advertising—both classified and display—in your school
newspaper. Are any of the ads offensive to students? Do any of the ads promote
unhealthy products or lifestyles? Contact the newspaper if you have suggestions on how
the advertising staff could better serve the campus.
IN DEPTH: YOU ARE WHAT YOU WEAR
Pre-Exercise Question: If you wear a piece of clothing with a logo on it, is it personal
expression or corporate advertising?
This Critical Process exercise is designed to help students rethink the reasons behind
name-brand logos on T-shirts, shoes, baseball caps, jeans, and so on.
1. Description. Prior to the day of this exercise, ask your students to inventory their
wardrobe and identify all the pieces of clothing and footwear that have visible logos.
Make sure students record the logo name as well as the type of clothing the logo is on.
Also have students note where the clothing or footwear came from (e.g., bought it,
received it as a gift).
2. Analysis. In class, chart students’ collective findings. What patterns emerge from these
closet wardrobes in terms of logo wear? Which companies had greater representation?
Did some clothing items have higher levels of logo branding? Did gender matter in the
number and types of logos in wardrobes?
3.
Interpretation. Why have corporate logos become a part of our wardrobes? Why do we
IN DEPTH: MALE STEREOTYPES IN TELEVISION ADS
(Note: A broader version of this activity – Gender Stereotypes in Television Ads – is now
available on LaunchPad for Media Essentials. See the Media Literacy Practice Activity for
this chapter.)
Pre-Exercise Question: Are men like the guys in television ads?
The portrayal of women in advertising has generated a considerable amount of
controversy, but what about the portrayal of men? This critical process exercise is designed
to evaluate the visible stereotyping of men in advertising.
1. In preparation for this exercise ask your students to watch (and record, if they can) all
the commercials during one evening’s prime-time schedule. Ask them to describe the
depictions of men in these commercials and to bring the information to class.
a. Description. What sort of categories do these male characters fall into? For each
category, what are the characters’ typical behaviors? What do they look like,
including their normative body types? What is the range of their actions? If they
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were coupled with a female counterpart, what did she look like? What are the male
characters’ relationships with other men and with women?
b. Analysis. Look for patterns in the descriptions of male characters in prime-time ads,
especially with regard to body type, behaviors, race and ethnicity, social class, and
relationships with other men and women. Is there a certain kind of male character
that predominates in these ads? If so, what is that character?
CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES
VIDEOS/DVDS/CDS
Art and Copy: Inside Advertising’s Creative Revolution (2009, 89 minutes). Documentary
about the advertising industry and the influential personalities behind famous
commercials. Companion web site: www.artandcopyfilm.org.
Big Bucks, Big Pharma (2006, 45 minutes). This video pulls back the curtain on the
multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is
used, manipulated, and in some instances created for capital gain. Distributed by the
Deadly Persuasion: The Advertising of Alcohol & Tobacco (2003, 60 minutes). In this
video, Jean Kilbourne exposes the manipulative marketing strategies and tactics used by
the tobacco and alcohol industries to keep Americans hooked on their dangerous
0089.
Emergence of Advertising in America: Advertising Ephemera (2007, 4-CD set). This set of
CDs has brought together hundreds of examples of early advertisements, dating from
the early 1840s, that appeared in newspapers, in independent publications, as posters,
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The Naked Brand (2013, 57 minutes). Documentary about the influence of corporations,
their ability to persuade, and the consumers’ ability to hold them responsible.
No Logo: Brands, Globalization and Resistance (2003, 42 minutes). Adapted from Naomi
Klein’s book of the same name, the video uses hundreds of media examples to show
how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and
replacement of real jobs with temporary work—the dynamics of corporate
globalization—impact everyone, everywhere. Distributed by the Media Education
The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (2004, 32 minutes). In this
powerful video, Juliet Schor scrutinizes what she calls “the new consumerism,” a
national phenomenon of upscale spending that is shaped and reinforced by a
The Persuaders (2004, 60 minutes). Current analysis of today’s marketing and advertising
The Real Mad Men of Advertising (2017). Four-part Smithsonian series exploring the ad
Sell and Spin: A History of Advertising (2000, 96 minutes). Explores the techniques that
have pushed everything from patent medicines to Volkswagens; revisits the slogans,
WEB SITES
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Professional advertising organization.
Represents marketing communication agencies.
Professional organization for marketers and advertising professionals.
A Web site focused on branding.
International advertising awards.
Publication for professionals in visual communication.
Membership organization for digital media and marketing companies.
Web site for the book No Logo, a look at the history of various multinational
corporations and their brands.
National organization for media literacy.
Association focusing on “out of home” advertising.
Providing public access to documents released by Phillip Morris USA detailing, among
other things, their advertising practices as related to cigarettes.
Serves member radio stations.
A survey designed to determine what kind of groups consumers identify with, which
businesses often use to determine marketing strategies.
Advocacy group for advertisers concentrated on video content.
FURTHER READING
Cialdini, Robert. Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2016.
Essex, Andrew. The End of Advertising: Why It Had to Die, and the Creative Resurrection
to Come. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2017.
Goldman, Robert, and Stephen Papson. Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising.
New York: Guilford, 1996.
Goodrum, Charles, and Helen Dalrymple. Advertising in America: The First Two Hundred
Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990.
Jacobs, A. J., and Ken Tucker. “The Pauses That Refreshed.” Entertainment Weekly, March
28, 1997.
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Jacobson, Michael F., and Laurie Ann Mazur. Marketing Madness: A Survival Guide for a
Consumer Society. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995.
Holiday, Ryan. Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and
Advertising. London: Profile Books, 2014.
Linn, Susan E. Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood. New York: New
Press, 2004.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York:
Vanguard, 1951.
