978-1319102852 Chapter 11 Part 1

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267
Chapter 11
Advertising and Commercial Culture
In this chapter, we will:
Examine the historical development of advertising—an industry that helped transform
numerous nations into consumer societies
Look at the first U.S. ad agencies; early advertisements; and the emergence of packaging,
trademarks, and brand-name recognition
Consider the growth of advertising in the last century, such as the increasing influence of ad
agencies and the shift to a more visually oriented culture
Outline the key persuasive techniques used in consumer advertising
Investigate ads as a form of commercial speech, and discuss the measures aimed at regulating
advertising
Look at political advertising and its impact on democracy
Preview Story: The digital turn has shifted how products are bought, sold, consumed—and
advertised. By 2016, the only older, or “legacy,” mass medium whose global advertising revenue
was not totally disrupted by the Internet was television—both cable and broadcast, which
includes ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. In fact, television’s nearly 38 percent share of worldwide ad
revenue in 2014 represented a 2% rise between 2007 and 2015. However, in 2017 Internet
advertising surpassed TV for the first time—up to 35.1 percent—while TVs share fell to 34.7
percent. Print newspapers (8.4%) and magazines (7.8%) continued on the decline (down
respectively from 30% and 14% in 2005).
I. Early Developments in American Advertising
A. The First Advertising Agencies
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B. Advertising in the 1800s
1. Trademarks and Packaging
2. Patent Medicines and Department Stores
3. Advertising’s Impact on Newspapers
C. Promoting Social Change and Dictating Values
1. Appealing to Female Consumers
2. Dealing with Criticism
D. Early Ad Regulation
II. The Shape of U.S. Advertising Today
A. The Influence of Visual Design
B. Types of Advertising Agencies
1. Mega-Agencies
2. Boutique Agencies
C. The Structure of Ad Agencies
1. Account Planning, Market Research, and VALS
2. Creative Development
3. Media Coordination: Planning and Placing Advertising
D. Trends in Online Advertising
1. Online Advertising Challenges Traditional Media
2. Online Marketers Target Individuals
3. Advertising Invades Social Media
III. Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
A. Conventional Persuasive Strategies
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B. The Association Principle
1. Disassociation as an Advertising Strategy
C. Advertising as Myth and Story
D. Product Placement
IV. Commercial Speech and Regulating Advertising
A. Critical Issues in Advertising
1. Children and Advertising
2. Advertising in Schools
3. Health and Advertising
a. Eating Disorders
b. Tobacco
c. Alcohol
d. Prescription Drugs
B. Watching over Advertising
1. Excessive Commercialism
2. The FTC Takes on Puffery and Deception
C. Alternative Voices
V. Advertising, Politics, and Democracy
A. Advertising’s Role in Politics
B. The Future of Advertising
Examining Ethics: Do Alcohol Ads Encourage Binge Drinking?
Media Literacy and the Critical Process: The Branded You
Global Village: Smoking Up the Global Market
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LECTURE IDEAS
Preview Story: Mobile Advertising
Internet advertising revenue continues to grow at a quick pace. It overtook newspaper
advertising for the first time in 2010. But some large companies like Apple and Google are
already looking ahead to the next step for marketing: mobile technology. By 2015, 68 percent
of Americans owned smartphones, and 45 percent owned tablets (Pew Research Center). In
2017, Internet advertising surpassed TV advertising for the first time, rising to 35.1 percent
while TV’s share fell to 34.7 percent. Print newspapers (8.4%) and magazines (7.8%)
continued on the decline (down from 30% and 14%, respectively, in 2005).
Short demonstration videos of mobile ads are available at Google’s AdMob Web site
(http://www.admob.com) and at iAd (http://advertising.apple.com). Apple even has an iAd
Gallery app where you can view a selection of iAd campaigns.
Steve Jobs on iAd: “iAd offers advertisers the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the
Web, and offers users a new way to explore ads without being hijacked out of their favorite
apps.”
I. Early Developments in American Advertising
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).
“A diamond is forever.” (De Beers, 1948)
“Reach out and touch someone.” (Long-distance telephone service for AT&T, 1979)
“Be all you can be.” (United States Army, 1981)
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N. W. Ayer & Son was also responsible for the Absolut Vodka campaign.
Explain the rise of advertising in the United States, the troubling claims of some early
brands, and the significance of advertising in the historical shift from a producer-driven to a
consumer-driven society. If you or your students are familiar with nations in Eastern Europe
or Asia, or developing countries elsewhere, you may wish to discuss advertising’s role in the
shift to consumer society in those places, too.
Early twentieth-century advertising appeals threatened citizens with social failure if they
didn’t consume the product. Here are some examples:
Listerine: If you don’t use Listerine, you’ll have bad breath, which will lead to
spinsterhood.
Antidandruff shampoo: People with dandruff are “guilty.”
By the 1920s, agencies began to associate more positive experiences with product use
and focused on the pleasure of consumption. Some examples:
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company: You’ll have a happy, robust life.
Soap advertising: You deserve an afternoon of leisure.
Kodak Girl: Like the Kodak Girl, you will radiate happiness every time you take a photo.
. . . Kodak cameras were so simple that “even a girl could do it.”
During the 1960s and 1970s, there was much talk about subliminal advertising. In fact, the
FCC actually banned subliminal advertising from the airwaves in 1974. However, in 2006, a
team of Dutch researchers concluded that if conditions are right, subliminal advertising can
successfully promote a brand. The researchers asked their subjects to count Bs on a screen.
They then flashed a millisecond image of the words Lipton Ice among the Bs to one group
and the nonsensical words Nipeic Tol to the other group. After the test, people from the first
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test group were more inclined to choose Lipton Iced Tea than people who were in the second
group.
II. The Shape of U.S. Advertising Today
Discuss the evolution of both print and broadcast ads. Track the aesthetic influences on ads’
visual design. Look at changes in the use of language in the ads’ phrasing. Explore the
interaction between advertising and popular culture.
The first TV commercial ever was a twenty-second spot for Bulova watches in 1941 that was
placed for a cost of $9. The ad played during a Dodgers-Phillies baseball game and consisted
of a rather boring twenty-second-long shot of a ticking Bulova watch.
Here are some famous TV advertising slogans:
“No More Tears.” (Johnson & Johnson)
“Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee.” (Sara Lee)
“Mama mia, that’s a spicy meatball!” (Alka-Seltzer)
“M’m, M’m, Good!” (Campbell’s)
“Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is!” (Alka-Seltzer)
“Built Ford tough.” (Ford)
“Snap! Crackle! Pop!” (Kellogg’s Rice Krispies)
“See the USA in your Chevrolet.” (Chevrolet)
“The best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup.” (Folger’s)
“Melts in your mouth—not in your hand.” (M&M’s)
“Think outside the bun.” (Taco Bell)
“The King of Beers.” (Budweiser)
“Tastes great, less filling.” (Miller Lite)
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“The Other White Meat.” (National Pork)
“The Un-Cola.” (7-Up)
“Fabric of our lives.” (Cotton Inc.)
“Finger-lickin’ good.” (Kentucky Fried Chicken)
“Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids.” (Trix Cereal)
“Two great tastes that taste great together.” (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups)
Describe the structure of the advertising industry, including the development of mega-
agencies and boutique agencies and the process of doing advertising.
Explain the use of the Values and Lifestyles (VALS) strategy in advertising. Consider its
uses and limitations in determining consumer orientations. Take your students through a
VALS psychographic survey during class (see
http://www.strategicbusinessinsights.com/vals/presurvey.shtml).
By 2015, more than 21 million American college students had a spending power estimated at
about $523 billion a year (Refuel Agency 2015 College Explorer study; available at
http://research.refuelagency.com/reports/college-explorer-2015). Although many of them best fit
into the VALS “experiencers” group, they are still considered to be hard to pin down as a target
audience. Here are some of the ways the college market has been described by ad agencies:
“restless, easily disinterested”; “smart enough to have their own opinions”; “don’t buy into the
idea of corporate America”; “a hard sell, but a smart investment”; and “there are already signs
that this generation is not enamored with commercialism.”
Discuss the evolution of online advertising, from early spam and pop-up ads to sponsored
links on search-engine results, to e-mail programs (like Gmail) that search messages for
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keywords that trigger specific ads, to mobile marketing on smartphones and touchscreen
tablets.
Here are some facts about Facebook and its advertising:
Facebook’s global ad revenues for 2012 were estimated at $4.3 billion, a 13 percent
increase over its ad revenues in 2011. In 2015, Facebook earned $5.6 billion in sales (mostly
from advertising) in just the fourth quarter of the year.
According to the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project report “State of the News
Media 2015,” Facebook accounts for 24 percent of all display ad revenue and more than one-
third of mobile advertising revenue. (See http://www.journalism.org/files/2015/04/FINAL-
STATE-OF-THE-NEWS-MEDIA 1.pdf)
According to Business Insider, the top advertisers on Facebook in 2013 were Samsung,
Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, AT&T, and Amazon.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has hundreds of millions of users. According to
eMarketer, Instagram will likely quadruple its mobile advertising revenues between 2015 and
2017. Instagram would then still only account for about 14 percent of Facebook’s overall ad
sales, but it would surpass Google in mobile advertising. (See http://wwd.com/media-
news/advertising/instagram-ad-revenue-google-10193070.)
III. Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
Detail the persuasive strategies and techniques in contemporary advertising, using current
print, broadcast, and online examples.
Product placement has been around since the 1940s, when the diamond company De Beers
supplied jewelry for stars to wear on the screen. In the 1950s, James Dean used an Ace comb
in Rebel without a Cause, which caused sales of the comb to soar.
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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 a marketing deal with Huntington Beach, California, and East Lansing,
Michigan; and PepsiCo has deals with San Diego and Fresno, California.
In 1968, HAL, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, was actually a disguised IBM
computer (count one letter back in the alphabet to get HAL), something that surely wouldn’t
happen today.
MGM’s release of the James Bond movie Die Another Day (2002) set a record for product
placements. The company sold spots in the movie to more than twenty companies, including
Omega (watches), Norelco (razors), Aston Martin (cars), and Finlandia (vodka). Because
MGM was, at the time, the only major studio not affiliated with a conglomerate and had less
synergistic opportunities as a result, it heavily depended on product placement. The movie
cost $100 million to produce and $30 million to market. Eleven companies spent $100
million to create ads that associated their product with Agent 007 and Die Another Day, and
the movie was criticized for its overabundance of product placement. By the time the 2006
Bond movie Casino Royale was released, Sony had purchased the struggling MGM,
significantly altering the number of product placement deals in the film. However, there are
enough shots featuring Bond with Sony’s then-new Vaio laptop to make the movie look like
an ad for the laptop. Casino Royale also features a most unlikely product placement for an
action film: underwear that shows the British brand name Sunspel. Sony also signed a six-
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figure deal with Heineken to showcase the company’s beer, taking James Bond away from
his martini routine and positioning him as a “tough every guy.”
Read or hand out copies of the following quotation, and have students react and reflect on
Marshall McLuhan’s view of advertising agencies:
“. . . Ad agencies are so very useful. They express for the collective that which dreams and
uncensored behavior do in individuals. They give spatial form to hidden impulse and, when
analyzed, make possible bringing into reasonable order a great deal that could not otherwise
be observed or discussed. Gouging away at the surface of public sales resistance, the ad men
are constantly breaking through into the Alice in Wonderland territory behind the looking
glass which is the world of subrational impulse and appetites. . . . The ad agencies and
Hollywood, in their different ways, are always trying to get inside the public mind in order to
impose their collective dreams on that inner stage. . . . The ad agencies flood the daytime
world of conscious purpose and control with erotic imagery from the night world in order to
drown, by suggestion, all sales resistance.” (McLuhan, Marshall. The Mechanical Bride:
Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: Vanguard, 1951, p. 97.)
IV. Commercial Speech and Regulating Advertising
Outline some of the problematic aspects of advertising, such as advertising aimed at children
and the impact of advertising on health, and discuss any resulting advertising regulations.
Teenage girls are a prime target for advertisers. Alloy Entertainment is making a profit by
creating the books and movies the girls love and by courting the advertisers who want to
reach them. Alloy is behind such franchises as Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars. According
to a 2010 Businessweek article, nearly 21 million teens logged on to Alloy’s Web sites, and 6
million saw Alloy’s ads in school on Channel One each month. However, seeking more
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control over its messages to consumers (and therefore the profits), Alloy’s newest frontier is
Web series. Its first, Private, had nearly 14 million hits. Further Web series, including the
current Wendy, have followed. This shift is important. According to Businessweek:
“On the Web, Alloy hopes to do what it can’t on television or in film: control the content,
the distribution, and the advertising sales, and thus the profits, for its shows. If all goes
according to plan, Alloy could be a digital studio and broadcaster in one. It could own the
teenage girl, and maybe even the holy grail of demographics, prized for its spendthrift,
trendsetting ways: the 18- to 34-year-old woman.” (Berfield, Susan. “Alloy Wants to Own
Teenage Girls,Bloomberg Businessweek. October 14, 2010. Retrieved from:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-10-14/alloy-wants-to-own-teenage-girls.)
A 2015 study by Common Sense Media found that “on any given day in this country, tweens
(8- to 12-year-olds) spend an average of about six hours (5:55) and teens (13- to 18-year-
olds) spend about nine hours (8:56) with media—outside of school or homework—including
TV, video games, social media, the Internet, print, and music.” Here are some of the specific
findings:
“Despite the variety of new media activities available to them, watching TV and listening
to music dominate young people’s media diets.” Among thirteen-to eighteen-year-olds, 67
percent listen to music every day, and more than half watch TV every day. Youths in the
United States spend, on average, about two and a half hours a day watching videos (TV,
DVD, online) and more than an hour a day playing electronic games. Older youth (thirteen-
to eighteen-year-olds) listen to music almost two hours per day and use social media more
than an hour per day. “Even among teens, social media use still lags behind traditional media
use.”
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Ownership of smartphones (not just cell phones) was 24 percent among eight- to twelve-
year-olds and 67 percent among thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds.
Forty-seven percent of eight- to twelve-year-olds and 57 percent of thirteen- to eighteen-
year-olds had a television set in their bedrooms.
Twenty-two percent of eight- to twelve-year-olds and 34 percent of thirteen- to eighteen-
year-olds had a video game console in their bedrooms.
“There are substantial differences in the amount of time young people spend with media,
based on family income, parent education, and race/ethnicity.” In addition, “There is a large
‘digital equality gap’ in ownership of computers, tablets, and smartphones.”
“Tween and teen media consumption is highly mobile. Even though ‘traditional’ media
activities such as watching TV and listening to music still dominate, new methods of
accessing that content are widely used. Overall, mobile devices now account for 41 percent
of all screen time among tweens and 46 percent among teens. Both tweens and teens now
interact with media content across a diverse set of devices. For example, among teens only
half (50 percent) of all TV- and video-viewing time consists of watching TV programming
on a TV set at the time it is broadcast; 8 percent involves time-shifted viewing on a TV set;
22 percent involves watching online videos on platforms such as YouTube; 7 percent
involves watching DVDs; and 14 percent involves watching TV shows or movies on another
device such as a computer, tablet, or smartphone. The time spent watching videos or TV
shows online is divided such that 43 percent is watched on a phone, 31 percent on a
computer, 17 percent on a tablet, and 9 percent on an iPod Touch.”
See the full report: Vicky Rideout, The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens
and Teens (San Francisco: Common Sense Media Research, 2015), available at
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https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-
tweens-and-teens.
Ad portrayals of girls as princesses and in relation to cosmetics and shopping continue to
draw criticism. According to Colby College professor Sharon Lamb, here are some of the
worst marketing messages targeted to girls in the early 2000s:
Dora the Princess: Dora has a makeover from adventurer to little princess (Dora’s hair
grows and shortens at the touch of a jewel in her crown).
Bratz party plane with “juice bar”: “Rock Angelz” Bratz use the on-plane hot tub; primp
at the primping station with the supplied makeup kit; play a board game about fashion
runways; watch movies on the plane’s flat-screen TV; and read a magazine that glorifies
drinking cosmos, flirting with boys, and clubbing.
American Girl: Purchased by Mattel in 2006, this doll is now partnered with Bath and
Body Works to sell body lotion, fragrances, and lip gloss to American Girl doll owners.
Victoria’s Secret: As part of its Pink line, Victoria’s Secret sells stuffed animals in front
of its stores so as to get younger girls inside the door.
Advertising in schools has increased as exclusive marketing contracts with public schools
have become more common in the last few decades, 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. For example, they’ll supply the school with a
football scoreboard that prominently displays the company logo. Meanwhile, childhood and
teenage obesity rates are soaring. Approximately one-third of children in the United States
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are overweight or obese. Most middle schools and high schools have vending machines that
sell soda (and some of these schools are paid large sums by soft-drink companies). About 75
percent of teens in the United States drink soda every day, although teenage consumption of
soft drinks has fallen since 2007.
Complete broadcasts of the advertising-based school news program Channel One are now
available at http://www.channelone.com.
V. Advertising, Politics, and Democracy
During his first run for office, President Barack Obama became the first presidential
candidate to advertise inside a video game. Using the online connection of game consoles
like the Xbox 360, the games can be updated so that ads appear on things like billboards and
other signage in the background of the games. In the weeks leading up to the 2008 election,
the Obama campaign targeted ads to ten states that allowed early voting. The ads appeared
for about a month in popular games such as Guitar Hero, Madden ‘09, and Burnout:
Paradise. Game manufacturers such as Electronic Arts say similar ad arrangements have
been struck with businesses like the Ford Motor Company and Puma.
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 19741979 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
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” by the California Raisin Advisory Board.
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Beginning in 1986, the Marvin Gaye (and Gladys Knight & the Pips) hit accompanied
commercials with dancing claymation raisins. The Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” was part of
Microsoft’s huge campaign to introduce Windows 95. A 1990 study on the use of Top 40 hits
in television advertisements found that, for better or worse, associations of a song with an ad
can endure in people’s memories years after the conclusion of the original ad campaign. (See
Christopher R. Martin, “Top 40 Music in Television Commercials: An Exploration of Certain
Exposure Effects,” thesis, Emerson College, Boston, 1990.)
A mysterious group called the Modern Action Club has distributed free, innocent-looking
coloring books in public places in New York City to draw attention to labor issues that
advertising and corporate campaigns gloss over. For example, when Disney held a huge
parade in New York City on June 14, 1997, to promote its new movie Hercules, the Modern
Action Club handed out hundreds of coloring books titled Disney’s Hercules: From Zero to
Hero. According to the Village Voice, the subversive coloring books look like Disney
products until one realizes that in this story Hercules’s friend Meg discovers that the Disney
Hercules merchandise “was being made in evil factories called sweatshops.” Meg then
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 (for Firefox browser users) 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

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