Advertisement or Commercial Engaging a Value System in order to Sell - Essay Example

Analyze how an advertisement or a commercial for a consumer product engages a value system in order to sell that product. , Thesis ment How a company portrays itself through advertisement can make or unmake the company. Overview of Advertisement and its essence Advertisement is an important component in marketing and business management. Without advertisement, it is like marketing in the dark because consumers and customers would hardly notice the presence of goods and services. Today, by virtue of technology, advertisement has become easier and more productive.

This is because technology has come to make the media and avenue by which advertisement could be carried varying, vast and widespread. Sight must not be lost of the fact that in order to make a piece of advertisement achieve its purpose, there are certain principles that needs to be followed. In this direction, the Microsoft MSDN (2007) notes that “an advertisement typically has a delivery goal, date ranges, and target attributes.” An advertisement that has been designed within the right principles should also engage a value system in order to sell desired products.

This means that value system of an advertisement is very crucial in determining the success of the advertisement. Overview of Value System Ethics have remained an integral part of business management and marketing. Today, the importance and essence of value system in business has changed a lot. A lot of the attention regarding the value created by a companies and businesses has not shifted towards the customer. For this reason, the Change Management Leaders Centre (2011) states that “this shift is driven by an increased focus on customers and on the individual contribution that employees can make to the business.

” It is therefore true to argue that consumers purchase value more than product. The meaning of this saying is that given two companies or business outlets who deal in the same kind of products, customers would actually look at the values that these two companies and business outlets provide before deciding on the one to do business with. Value system should therefore not be under estimated by companies at all. Lately, a lot of concern has been raised on integrating value system creation in the advertisement put up by companies.

Elements of Advertisements `that promote value system Advertisements are important forms of communication. Like all forms of communication, there are components of the advertisement. Human communication comes with components such as facial expressions, gestures, verbalism and mood. Advertisements have two major components and these are visuals and text. In promoting value system through advertisement, it is important that all these two major components of the advertisement portray value. Visuals There are visuals in most forms of advertisements such as newspaper advertisement, internet blog advertisement, billboard, signposts, signboards, brochures and so on.

Action they say speaks louder than words but in advertisement, picture says a thousand. Indeed, advertisers are expected to use visuals to depict high sense of value. This can be achieved basically by refusing to use offensive images. Images are said to be offensive if they abuse the visual judgment and appeal of onlookers. Example of such visuals can be said to be visuals that depict violence, nudity, discrimination (race, sex or age), extreme wickedness and insults. Of late, there has been a concern in part of the media about how telecommunication companies use visuals to sabotage the progress of competing companies.

Some of these telecommunication companies are affiliated to specific colors. Therefore in their advertisements, they try to use colors of say the clothes won by people in the advertisement to stand for other companies. This way, they try to portray that those companies have negative service by virtue of what people in the adverts do – example someone in one color of cloth trying to make a call and the call not going through. This is an unacceptable way of creating value system through advert visuals.

Text/Audio The text or audio of an advertisement must also be in a position to promote value system for a company. Text or audio appear in all forms of advertisement including newspapers, television, radio, internet and signs. What is said through text in adverts is very important in portraying the value and ethics of a company. Recently, there has been a public outcry of how some advertisements are used to deceive the public because the try content of products they carry are not as the advertisements portray.

Apart from the fact that this practice has legal implications, it also goes a long way to tell of the kind of values shared by the companies. A company that respects its customers will certainly not try to deceive them. The use of text or audio to depict acts that does not show value for customers could vary from very serious legal offenses to lying about the distance of the location of a company from a particular spot. But whatever the case is, no offense should be too little to ignore. Impact of value system on consumer purchase The creation of value through advertisements should never be overlooked by advertisers and marketers.

This is because consumer fidelity has a lot of impact in determining the decisions consumers make. Clearly if a consumer cannot trust a company to be faithful through what they portray in their advertisements or consumers cannot trust companies to have value for value, chances are that consumers cannot trust such companies to produce wholesome or risk free products. For this reason, consumers would desist from making purchases from such companies. Again, a company that cannot be trusted though its advertisement can hardly be trusted to give customers value for money and so customers will avoid such companies.

Finally, the little acts of infidelity could be given wider interpretations by customers. For example a company who does not show fidelity in their advertisement could be tagged by customers as companies that are money conscious and are likely to cheat on customers. REFERENCE LIST Change Management Leaders Centre, ‘Value systems - the unanticipated effect of empowerment and accountability’ 2011. Web. November 7, 2011 Microsoft MSCN, ‘What is an Advertisement?’ 2007. Web. November 7, 2011