Advertising: introduction

Advertising has been the focus of attack by media critics, philosophers, literary critics and the defenders of high culture for almost as long as there has been advertising. Taking a look through the quotations on he right, pulled more or less at random from the books lying around me, you can see that the criticisms of advertising amount to:

advertising is manipulative and therefore morally reprehensible

advertising is immensely expensive and therefore wasteful

advertising diverts our attention from the fundamental problems of a free society, e.g. class divisions and inequality, and instils in us values which are inimical to democracy

advertising heavily influences the way the media operate

advertising is responsible for social unrest

SAQ 1

There is no need for you to write anything here. Just pause for thought for a moment. Take a look back over those five damning statements about advertising. Are there any of them you agree with?

Maybe you dont agree with any of them. Perhaps you just take the common-sense view that ads are just ads and thats that. I would guess that most of us just see ads without much further thought. We appreciate their humour, their special effects, their high quality camera work and dont bother too much about whether they might be having any of the effects we have just listed. But, as we have just seen, some people are concerned about their effects. Some of those quotations are from the big guns in Communication and Media Studies: Berger, Curran, Dyer, McLuhan and so on so their criticisms should probably not be dismissed lightly.

The worry about the possible misuse of powerful media is not restricted to academics either. Do you remember the unit on Broadcast News? Can you remember any of the provisions of the 1990 Broadcasting Act? You may recall that there are a considerable number of restrictions on what TV can and cannot do in Britain. That legislation stems from the belief that TV is a powerful medium which has great potential to have harmful effects on society. For the same reason no doubt - because it is assumed to have the potential for harm - advertising is subject to a wide range of regulations.

SAQ 2

Do you remember the names of a couple of regulatory bodies for the advertising industry?

The ASA and ITCA probably occurred to you. There are other regulations too, which are listed below.

m ASAs British Code of Advertising Practice and the British Code of Sales Promotion Practice

m the British Direct Marketing Associations Code of Practice

m mail order protection schemes run by newspaper and periodical publishers

m publishers own controls: the right to refuse advertising in newspapers and magazines

m ITCAs Code on Advertising Standards and Practice, which it is statutorily obliged to operate

m Trade Description Act

m Consumer Transactions Order

m Food and Drugs Act

There are also numerous other laws and regulations which impose limitations on what the advertisers can claim for products or how they can present them.

Can you think of any other ways that advertising is limited or controlled? You might have read, or might subscribe to Which? That is the magazine of the Consumers Association, which, amongst other things, keeps a close eye on advertising and marketing. It agitates for changes in the law where it feels that consumers are insufficiently protected. Youve probably also come across various TV and radio programmes such as Watchdog or Thats Life which also call for changes where they think that advertising or promotional material may mislead the customer or not give important information.

In addition to those sources of pressure, there are pressure groups which are also concerned about advertising, such as Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), some of whose members considered that pornography and advertising were different ends of the same spectrum and that the sexist portrayal of women not only degraded women, but actually incited men to violence against them. At the opposite end of the political spectrum right wing groups such as the Festival of Light and the National Viewers and Listeners Association, headed by Mary Whitehouse, took a similar view of advertising images, namely that (as Kathy Myers expresses their point of view in Understains) pictures have the power to pervert. Offensive images dont make you just think dangerous thoughts, they make you do dastardly deeds.

SAQ 3

What is WAVAW?

What is the NVLA?

Who is the leader of the NVLA?

What do WAVAW and the NVLA have in common as regard their views of advertising?

WAVAW is a feminist group known as War Against Violence Against Women.

The NVLA is the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association.

The NVLA is headed by Mary Whitehouse.

The two groups, though at opposite ends of the political spectrum share the view that advertising has the power to pervert, WAVAW taking the view that it can encourage violence against women, the NVLA taking the view that it can deprave and corrupt.

So, as you can see, when dealing with advertising, we are dealing with a form of communication which is the focus of concern, not only of the communication and media experts, but also of our legislators, consumer protection groups and pressure groups across the critical spectrum.

In what sense could we think of advertising as being at the very centre of Communication and Media Studies? Advertising is of particular interest to students of communication and the media because advertisers deliberately set out quite consciously to manipulate us to an extent that the producers of many other media products probably dont most of the time. By that, I mean that advertisers clearly aim to influence our behaviour, i.e. to persuade us to buy a good or service. The producers of, say, the Nine OClock News or Coronation Street dont try to manipulate us in that sense, except to the extent that they want us to watch their productions rather than someone elses. Advertisers, as we have seen, have a tremendous amount of both continuous and specific audience research at their disposal; they have thorough knowledge of the media available to them and how and by whom those media are used; they have highly talented and original creative teams and a battery of communication techniques to choose from; they have huge funds at their disposal. All of these resources are what make advertising central to communication and media studies.

SAQ 4

Do you remember the Lasswell Formula? Can you sketch it?

If you cant remember the Lasswell Formula, take a look at the notes below. Sketch it anyway if you can't remember it, because that will help you to remember it.

How well do you think the Lasswell Formula represents what you try to do when you produce a media artefact in your project and assignment work? Ideally, when you produce a communication artefact, you look to determine as precisely as possible:

m the message (says what?)

m the audience (to whom?) - who of course also ideally determine how you say what youve got to say i.e.

m the most appropriate medium or combination of media (in what channel?)

m on the basis of what you know about the audience and the media, you try to formulate the message as effectively as you can in order to produce the desired effect on your audience (with what effect?).

If mass communication can work, in that sense of communicating a defined message to a defined audience and provoking predicted behaviour, advertising, it would seem, should stand the best chance of making it work. Certainly, judging by the number of legal constraints and the constant lobbying from pressure groups, as well as the huge sums of money invested in it, there are plenty of people who believe that it does indeed affect us.

Lets now take a look at some of those criticisms of advertising. Well take a look first of all at the argument that because advertising manipulates people it is morally reprehensible. Well look at that first, not because it is the most important argument in terms of Communication Studies or Media Studies, but rather because its a very personal point of view. How do you feel about it? Is it wrong to attempt to manipulate people?

If you feel that trying to manipulate people is wrong, then you might feel that its wrong whether the attempt works or not. In other words, you might take the view that trying to manipulate people is wrong - full stop. To me, the mere fact that it attempts to manipulate us doesnt seem morally reprehensible in itself. After all literature, art, music and religion also try to manipulate us and, on the whole, most of us have no great objection to that. Indeed the emotional appeals of literature, art and music are something we are encouraged in school to value highly. We need to bear in mind the frame of mind in which we receive messages. If we know that someone is trying to persuade us, we are likely to be more resistant to persuasion, particularly if we know that the persuader has a vested interest in persuading us. By law all advertising must always be clearly identified as such, so there is little chance of our coming across it without knowing that it is trying to persuade us.

Ultimately, though, because we are talking about morality here, the question of whether or not it is right or wrong that advertisers should be trying to manipulate us is for you as an individual to decide on. If you do find it morally wrong, then that might be because you feel it is wrong to use the tricks that advertisers employ.

The first major exposé of the methods used by advertisers was Packards Hidden Persuaders. Prior to this book, many major thinkers such as George Orwell, the author of 1984, the Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno or the literary critic Frank Leavis had agonized over advertising, but Packards was the first expression of concern which actually looked closely at the way that advertisers worked and at their own claims for the effectiveness of advertising. It paid considerable attention to Motivational Research (MR) and to the work of Dr Ernest Dichter, Head of the Institute for Motivational Research. Dichter made sweeping claims for the efficacy of MR, claims which are still referred to today in critics attacks on advertising. Whilst it remains a book which is still of interest, many of the methods Packard refers to have been outlawed in the USA and Britain and many were not employed in Britain in the first place.The Hidden Persuaders is, then, essentially a work of historical interest. Nevertheless, its an easy and entertaining read, if somewhat sensationalist, and well worth a look. It certainly provides convincing evidence for the claim - if there was ever any doubt - that advertisers do indeed attempt to manipulate us, basing their attempts on wide sociological and psychological research.

Maybe you find it distasteful that advertisers use appeals to sex or snobbery or that they use sub-threshold effects. Perhaps you feel that they should present their messages more directly and plainly. If that is your view, then consider for a moment what we do in colleges. We offer our students courses which will enable them to communicate more effectively. We teach them how to make effective presentations, how to present themselves effectively in interviews, how to write an effective letter of complaint, how to write an effective curriculum vitae or even how to write effective essays about the media. What do we mean by this term effective? I think we mean something like persuasive or even manipulative. Do you think its dishonest to wear a suit to a court appearance if you normally wear jeans? Is it dishonest to write a letter of complaint to the Gas Board using a different style of language from the more natural style you use when you communicate with your boyfriend? Is it wrong for us to teach students how to use non-verbal communication to mask their natural feelings? Should we not teach students how to appeal to emotions in public speaking because that is often likely to be more effective than detailed presentation of facts? You might feel that it is dishonest to do any of this. Indeed I was once roundly criticized by a colleague for teaching just this kind of dishonesty. The Labour Party was long opposed to employing advertising in their campaigns, apparently because there was something morally wrong with selling politics like soap powder. They would not, however, have had any objection to the emotional appeals employed by their best orators addressing a crowd in a conventional rally. Is there any difference in kind between the tricks of public speakers and the tricks of advertisers? If you share my colleagues view, then you will find the tricks of both advertising and public oratory morally wrong.

However, if you do have objections on moral grounds, ask yourself for a moment whether its the means or the ends that youre objecting to. I think that most of us would be more concerned with the intended effect of the persuasion rather than the mere fact of the attempted persuasion itself, whatever tricks might be employed. During the last election I was often offended by the tricks employed by the Tories, but much less so by those used by Labour, not because Labour used fewer tricks, but simply because I found Labours message more attractive than the Conservatives. We might have great admiration for the skill and artistry of the German director Leni Riefenstahls film Triumph of the Will, but still be disturbed by that films propaganda message for Nazism. Most of us probably have no quarrel with the COIs attempts to persuade us to treat chip pans with proper respect or to look and listen before we cross the road. However, when the COI produces a video on the arms race which is designed to persuade us of the need to preserve a nuclear deterrent, then some of us may feel some disquiet. Could it be that you have no objection to manipulation for what you see as a worthwhile end, such as safety or charity, but that you do object to it if the aim is to persuade us to buy unnecessary goods? Is that because you think its a waste of money, perhaps? Certainly, the ASA seems to distinguish between the advertisers ends as justification for the means, permitting appeals to fear for public information and charity campaigns, but not for consumer goods.

We might also get into an area where, whilst we may not find anything wrong with the essential buy brand X message, we do have misgivings about other values which appear to be communicated along with that message. Here are a few examples of the kind of thing I mean:

m An ad from the 1890s for Chlorinol Bleaching Soda shows two black children and a white child with Negroid features sitting in a boat made from a wooden Chlorinol crate. The two black children are each holding up a packet of Chlorinol. The headline on the boats sail reads We are going to use Chlorinol and be like de white nigger. Whilst we might have no quarrel with the buy Chlorinol message, we immediately find such an ad objectionably racist.

m A Christmas 1968 Johnnie Walker ad has a bottle of Johnnie Walker in its unopened package standing on a table. Sitting at the table is an elegant, upper class blonde in a red dress. Behind her is a Christmas tree. The headline reads: For the man who has me. Perhaps we feel that the ad is communicating ideas about women which we find unacceptable.

m When an ad attempts to sell us a lawn sprayer we may have no great objection, but when it attempts to do that with a photo of a half-naked woman manacled to the lawn (as was the case with a Walkover Sprayers ad of 1990), then we may find that disturbing.

m When a poster for a Fiat car has the headline If it were a lady it would get its bottom pinched, then we feel some sympathy for the feminist who sprayed on it: If this lady was a car shed run you down.

m As an experiment, I once took the first ten seconds or so from a commercial for Kingfisher tiling on a roll (wallpaper made to look like ceramic tiles) and broke them down into a series of freeze frames. I then showed these to my students and asked them to guess what kind of production the frames were from. Their view was that the frames must be from a soft porn movie. It was only when they saw the frames at their original speed that they deduced from the speed of the editing that this was in fact a commercial. Certainly none of them could guess that it was a commercial for wallpaper. None of the students had any objection to the message Buy this wallpaper. However, many, particularly the female students, found it demeaning and objected to the portrayal of women as sex objects to sell products.

By now, we are all alive to the issue of racism. Increasingly, we are aware of sexism. Even the ASA, which for years rejected complaints about the portrayal of women in ads, now takes complaints about sexism seriously. Racism and sexism are examples of values which are - or were - transmitted to us via advertising. Could it be that there are also other values which we are less sensitive to? We have touched on this before, especially when we were considering news production, but its something we need to bear in mind whenever we consume any media products. We could for example see Michael Winners film Death Wish as just entertainment or just a thriller about a man whose wife and child are raped and who then sets out on his own private vigilante war against muggers and rapists. But could it also be a film which is set within the framework of particular values within which violent action against antisocial elements is legitimate? Does the film provide an argument for wiping out anti-social elements? Does advertising also come laden with values?

We'll now remind ourselves of some of the various views of media effects and see how they apply to advertising.

SAQ 5

Do you recall the hypodermic needle model? Make a quick note of what it suggests about media effects.

The 'hypodermic needle' model, also referred to as the 'silver bullet' model, suggests that it is possible to use hte mass media to 'inject' messages into audiences or to set the audience members up as targets and, by carefully 'targeting' them, 'shoot them down' with the message. This view, which sees audiences as a fairly passive mass, derived largely from fears about wartime propaganda.

The hypodermic needle model was never really a fully developed theory and there has never been a great deal of evidence to support the view that the media can simply inject messages into audience members and have an immediate effect, regardless of who the audience member is. It may perhaps be a reasonably accurate model of what happens in very special circumstances of 'stimulus isolation' when, say, all the newspapers are under the control of a single political party, all foreign broadcasts are successfully jammed and the frontiers are kept sealed. Those are circumstances which do not normally pertain in our society. Nevertheless it does remain a popular view of the way that the media work. Michael Ryan supposedly massacred the citizens of Hungerford because he watched Rambo films, delinquents engaged in violent crime because they watched Marlon Brando in The Wild One, people voted Conservative because Saatchi and Saatchis campaign told them to.

Now, although theres not much evidence to support this view of media effects its not all that dissimilar from the kind of research that advertisers will carry out during and after a campaign. Did sales increase? Are more people aware of the product? Do they now have a more positive attitude towards the product? But there is relatively little attention paid to the longer term effects of the campaign and certainly none is paid by advertisers to the possible broader cultural effects which concern media critics. If Collett Dickenson Pearces camapign for Pretty Polly tights uses the line When was the last time a man said you had a nice pair of jeans?, what CDP want to know is: does it sell more tights? Could it be that this line reinforces the view that women should dress to gain compliments from men and thereby encourages acceptance of the subservient status of women? Whether that happens or not, then it's not the concern of market researchers.

In the United States the dominant approach was the empirical sociology of mass communication.

SAQ 6

Do you recall Katz and Lazarsfelds investigation of American Presidential elections which led them to formulate the two-step flow model? Can you sketch it? See the next page if you can't.

Katz and Lazarsfeld's investigation of American Presidential elections was what we would call an empirical study. 'Empirical' means 'based on experience'. Therefore empirical research in the social sciences centres on filedwork - the collection of evidence on observable human behaviour. It will be based on research into the effects of media messages by questionnaires, interviews, examination of voting intentions, voting behaviour and other standard methods of market research, as well as laboratory-based experiments, all concerned with the measurement of media effects. The intention, ideally, is to provide the 'objective' evidence we get from the natural sciences.

This research established that the audience is not a homogeneous mass: different audience members belong to different social and class groups. Such factors as a persons class or his family relationships act like filtering screens around him and any potential influence of much of media output is therefore somewhat limited. This is the two-step flow model, which is part of what is often known as the limited effects paradigm, i.e. the view that the effects of the mass media are sharply limited by our pattern of social relationships.

The findings of this research are certainly well understood by advertisers. You may remember that in the campaign to save the Greater London Council BMP were anxious to influence to opinion leaders. During the preparation for introducing the poll tax, the Government was keen to influence local councillors before leafleting the general public. In the 1992 General Election campaign, the producers of the election broadcasts were at pains to include facts and figures in their broadcasts. Much of the aim of such broadcasts is not to influence people who are opposed to your party - after all, the research suggest that they wont be watching anyway - but rather to provide those who do support your party with facts that they can use in conversation with their workmates, in the pub and so on.

But you could argue that this kind of research misses the point. It considers how media messages are filtered through the norms, values and beliefs which are there in our social relationships. It considers that in the short term, but what it doesnt do is to consider the long-term rôle that the media may play in creating or sustaining those values.

SAQ 7

Do you remember uses and gratifications research? Can you say briefly what it suggests about the way the mass media work?

Uses and gratifications research on the media-audience relationship suggests that the audience is much less passive than often thought and that people actively or purposefully use media products according to their circumstances. The medias effects can thus be thought of as being dependent on the functions that they perform for individual audience members, whether they are used as sources of information, entertainment or escape.

This research tends also to fit into the limited effects paradigm .A member of the audience, it suggests, cannot be influenced by the media if they do not fulfil or gratify a need. For instance, if a person leads an active, varied life and is secure and stable, no amount of advertising which appeals to fear or loneliness, to fear of being a social outcast or to snobbery will succeed. In general the research suggests that the media reinforce rather than change a persons prior dispositions and are capable of satisfying a plurality of needs. In addition, audience members are held to be active and involved in their understanding/interpretation of the media and not totally passive.

Ronald Weintraub, the former owner of the American underwear manufacturer, Flexnit Company, refers (in his contribution to On Signs ed. Marshall Blonsky, 1985) to a focus group session relating to the planned launch of a new bra design. In that session it was noted that three of the women made hostile comments and kept their arms firmly folded across their chests. In trying to find a connexion between these three that might explain their common behaviour it was discovered that they all had A-cup breast size. Further discussion with the women revealed that they all had difficulty finding attractive bras in A-cup size. Flexnit investigated the potential market for A-cup bras and discovered that some 15% to 20% of adult women might be that size. They went ahead and developed a product (called the A-OK) for that market and, selling it with the line Youre an A-cup woman and youre A-OK. The range was introduced in 1979 and by 1981 had sales of $5,000,000.

He also relates how focus groups were used to uncover a need in many women to wear very sexy bras and panties. Many needed them to stimulate their dull sex lives. It emerged that they felt that mainstream underwear manufacturers had neglected sex. The women wanted sexy underwear to be available in department stores and to see sex treated as a fact of life and as beautiful, more full of excitement and delight. As Weintraub puts its, we had discovered a market segment that could be described in terms of psychographics rather than demographics or body type, a consumer whose lifestyle included a need, as yet unfulfilled, for exciting, sensual, intimate apparel. (in On Signs ed. Marshall Blonsky). This was a need which the company also met by manufacturing a new product range. These are examples of a company using a technique (a focus group) which may discover hidden motivations and needs. These needs then form the basis of a new product development which is marketed to the group perceived as having those needs.

Is this an example of cynical manipulation by manufacturers and marketers creating false needs in women consumers? Perhaps it is, but in the same article Weintraub discusses his and other companies failed attempts to market a new cotton bra. Cotton bras had been very successful in Europe and Weintraub was convinced that they could be marketed in the USA too. His company and the other companies marketing cotton bras put the emphasis on the naturalness of cotton, but that failed because, as Weintraub points out, even attractive American women believe their figures to be in some way 'flawed'. They therefore want a bra which will in some way enhance their figures, not just leave their bodies looking natural. He sums up: It was evident that consumers decode products in terms of their own prejudices and emotions despite efforts by the manufacturers to influence them. Even the most imaginative theme backed by large ad budgets would not have succeeded. (in On Signs ed. Marshall Blonsky).

SAQ 8

Do you remember Maslows Hierarchy of Needs?

Which need do you think is being satisfied by the production and marketing of the A-OK bra?

Maslows hierarchy of needs suggests that people have the needs set out on the next page.

The idea is that the needs motivate us to satisfy or gratify them. Once we have gratified a need at one level, then we are motivated to gratify a need at the next level. This will vary from one person to another. In todays unstable economic climate, many people will be tormented by the fear of unemployment and thus be more concerned with hanging on to their job (security needs) rather than with gaining the respect of their work-mates (esteem needs). The boss, on the other hand, who has a secure job, a posh house and plenty of sycophantic friends and colleagues can concentrate on his self-actualization needs.

The A-OK bra is likely to be seen as satisfying esteem needs. Women who were A-cup size could not find bras made specifically for them. A manufacturer who did produce one would be showing them recognition of their importance.

SAQ 9

Do you remember the needs which, according to McQuail and Blumler, people seek to gratify in their consumption of media messages?

Can you see how ads for sexy underwear might gratify any of those needs?

The needs are:

m diversion - meaning entertainment, escape from everyday problems

m personal relationships - company for lonely people and topics of conversation for others

m personal identity - meaning that the media provide models we can identify with or use as points of comparison

m surveillance - meaning that the media satisfy a need to know whats going on in the world

You could readily see how the ad for sexy underwear could satisfy the need for diversion, promising an escape from a boring and humdrum sex life, as well as offering something frivolous which promises a change from cooking, cleaning and taking the kids to school. The ads could of course also appeal to the other three needs but what Weintraub says suggests that the main focus would be the need for diversion.

Although we have referred to it as the American tradition, there is of course much of that kind of research carried on in Britain and elsewhere, for example the work conducted by Professor Halloran of Leicester University. Generally speaking, it tends to show that the effects of the mass media are limited. As we have seen, it is difficult even to determine something as apparently straightforward as whether or not an advertising campaign increases sales. It is possible that this kind of research is in any case inappropriate to determining whether or not there is any substance in the kinds of criticism we quoted at the beginning of this chapter. It could be that this empirical research concentrates too much on short-term, readily measurable effects.

From the point of view of advertisers, the results of this kind of research are rather depressing, since they suggest that the power of the media to persuade is very limited. From the point of view of those who fear the power of the mass media, the results are very optimistic. But what this research tradition generally fails to do is to consider the long-term cultural effects of the media. It may well be that American women reject cotton bras however hard the advertisers promote their benefits. But, the question remains: if American women reject cotton bras because the bras do not shape their bodies which they consider to be fundamentally flawed, where does this view of their bodies as being flawed come from? If a body eats, speaks, sees, farts, sleeps, drives cars and performs all the other manifold tasks we expect of it, then it would seem irrational to think of it as 'flawed' in any way. How then do we get the idea that a body, however well it works, should look like this, that or the other - otherwise its flawed? Could it be that this view of what bodies ought to be like comes advertising? Could it be that the need to wear a bra at all comes from advertising? Such questions take us into the much wider area of the broad cultural effects of advertising, beyond what is readily measurable.

SAQ 12

Do you recall Marxs formulation of dominant ideology, which we have looked at before? Try to write it down if you can - that will help you to remember it.

Marx s view was that the ideas of the ruling class are in every age the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the dominant material force of society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force.

SAQ 13

Do you recall that in the unit on effects research and in units on interpersonal communication we mentioned socialization? Can you state what that means?

You may remember that we discussed socializing agents. Can you say what they are?

Socialization is the process by which individuals become aware of the expectations others have of their behaviour, the process by which individuals acquire the norms, values and beliefs of a social group or society.

Agents of socialization which transmit these values, norms and beliefs include the family, the school and friendship groups. In other societies, the church may be considered to be an important agent of socialization. In our society the mass media are agents of socialization and are generally seen as being particularly influential in transmitting awareness and expectations concerning a wide range of societal behaviour.

Combining these two ideas, we could see the agents of socialization as socializing us into behaviour which serves the interests of the ruling classes in society. Since advertising is used principally to sell goods and is therefore in the service of capitalism, it is not surprising that the most sustained attack on advertising as acting in the interests of the dominant classes in our capitalist society comes from the political left. The family, the church, the education system and the mass media act as what the French Marxist Louis Althusser referred to as Ideological State Apparatuses. Althusser argued that all of these institutions are bits of apparatus for the state to use in order to manage the consent of society. Ideology has many shades of meaning and we are doing the concept something of a disservice by oversimplifying it here, but the oversimplification will serve for our purposes.