Advertising and Consumption Analysis on Corporate Discourse - Essay Example

Analysis of Corporate Dis Analysis of Corporate Dis Introduction Modes of address constitute ways in which relations between the addresser and the addressee are constructed in a text. Effective communication requires the producer of any text or speech to make some assumptions concerning the intended audience, which may be discerned in the text. The modes address that organizations adopt to perform corporate discourse are influenced by textual context, social context, and technological constraints. Discourse is a way of seeing the world, describing things and an aspect that can be described (Bowles, 2012). The most common options that corporations opt for corporate discourse include synchronous interpersonal communication, asynchronous interpersonal communication and asynchronous mass communication. Advertising is the most widespread mode of corporate discourse in the United Kingdom. Corporations in the UK apply other forms of discourse in addition to advertising; these forms include corporate social responsibility, personal selling, public relations, and sales promotion. Features of various modes of address are designed to achieve essential characterizations that are suitable for the intended audience. Advertising Advertising agencies have maintained the discourse form of advertisements fresh and novel over years. This is achieved through continuously challenging communication conventions and practices by appropriating new textual forms (Hackley, 2005). The primary element that characterizes advertising is negotiation. Negotiation involves a dialogue between two or more parties with an objective of reaching an understanding, resolving a point of difference, or gaining advantage of outcome dialogue. During advertisements, the UK corporations strive to achieve product awareness by making the product features and price known to the target audience (Fowles, 1996). This negotiation procedure is indirect because the company has already set the price; the customers would have agreed with the set price if they choose to buy the product. Direct negotiation can also occur when customers see the price during advertising and decides to visit the company premises to request for lowering of the price for the product. Kotler and Armstrong (2012) define advertising as any form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor through the media. The non-personal presentation element implies that advertising is not done by people, but comprises recorded forms of messages that are presented repeatedly through the media. The goal of using advertising for product promotion is to ensure that information concerning the product and service reaches as many people as possible (Fowles, 1996). Advertisements have the potential for reaching masses of geographically dispersed buyers at a low cost per exposure. The ability to allow the marketer deliver repeat messages several times increases the probability of reaching several customers across time and place. Another feature of advertising discourse is that it usually gives additional information about the company. Additional information always constitutes some positive aspects about the company marketing the product (Johnson, 2008). These include the marketer’s size, popularity, and success. The company cannot just present product features when advertising the product, but it is essential to include other elements such as the organization’s vision, mission, or objectives. Sometimes the company may present its previous success in similar or related ventures. Institutional advertising is achieved through revealing the company’s processes and procedures of preparing its products. For example, towards the end of 2013, the consumption of coffee was rapidly increasing and consumers’ curiosity about the origin of their food was also increasing (Breeze, 2013). Starbucks’ UK branches launched an advertising campaign focusing on the quality of its coffee beans including their sources and preliminary processing procedures. The voiceover of the advertisement said, “The bean matters, because you cannot roast in quality, you cannot roast in complexity.” The documentary that accompanied the voiceover comprised of style black and white imagery of coffee plantations plus the roasting and tasting process. The 31-second advertisement ended with with a graphic saying, “”higher Arabica standards.” The objective of this advertisement was to confirm to the consumers that the company uses quality beans to produce quality coffee products. According to Hackley (2005), modes of corporate discourse consist of texts in contexts. Advertising acquires meaning through both content and context. An advertisement must have content, that is, the message that the marketer wants to send to the audience. The context refers to the target audience’s characteristics. Various products are meant for different customers. There are products meant for children, the youth, and the aged. Products demanders can also be classified according to gender (either male or female) across the three age groups. Effective advertisements are required to reflect the cultures and subcultures of the target audience. Leiss and Botterill (2005) posit that understanding the target audience is a critical step towards enabling the company to define its value propositions. It is necessary for the corporations to examine the key features of each stakeholder group or audience after identifying their key features. The primary concerns of the marketer about the target audience include the size, structure, trends, and needs. Cook (2001) described the contexts of advertising discourse into six types. The first context constitutes the physical material that carries the text. These include the newsprint, radio waves, banners and billboards that carry the text. The medium also includes the music and pictures that accompany the text. The second context is the paralanguage of the text. Paralanguage includes the typography, gestures and facial expressions of the advertisement material. Television adverts for Nescafe Gold Blend, for example, featured romantically linked characters who led to the creation of a sexually charged atmosphere. The characters of the advertisement interacted in settings that suggested affluence and social poise (Cook, 2001). The third context is the place where the advertisement is located in relation to time and space; this can be near a busy bus stage, on a magazine cover, and during a commercial television break. Fourth, other texts that connect to the advertisement text such as other companies’ advertisements can affect the marketer’s message delivery. The fifth context comprises the connections with other social discourses such as intertextuality; these connections are usually implied in the advertisements. Sixth context discourse constitutes the participants. Participants include the intended audience and the originator together with their respective assumptions and intentions. Cook (2001) argues that advertisements should have a voice designed to give authority with its audience. For example, goods for children have children speaking in the voiceover; this is similar to goods and services for adults and the youth. The attitudes of consumers towards advertisements differ among the audience. Marketers have the responsibility of doing proper analysis and trying to understand the possible attitude of consumers towards the advertisement. The greatest factor determining the effectiveness of an advert the way in which the recipients will interpret and understand it. For example, a magazine advertisement that featured Yves St Laurent’s Opium perfume featured the model referred to as Sophie Dahl. The nakedness of the model in the advertisement elicited negative comments from the youth for whom the advertisement was initially designed to reach. The print advertisements on the billboards caused several complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority of the United Kingdom; the number of complaints received concerning the advert exceeded the number of complains that the ASA has ever received for a single advertisement. People viewed the magazine advertisement as sensuous and witty while the same advert on posters was considered obscene. The advertisement affected the demand of the perfume especially from prospective customers. The current consumers might have considered the advert as using unethical features to attract customers, a tactic that is not in line with legal and ethical aspects of advertising. Polysemy is an essential feature of advertising discourse that marketers in the UK strive to achieve. Hackley (2005) defines polysemy as the capability of an advert to have several possible meanings. Polysemy, however, cannot be achieved in the contexts of linear model of communication because it emphasises single and unequivocal messages. The equal strength that characterises polysemic meanings leads to diverse interpretations of messages to ensure consumer engagement with the advertisement. Through this, an advertisement gains power that attracts masses of audience to pay attention to it. Polysemic advertisements attract consumers using their integrative and entertaining features that attract and maintain the attention of the target audience (Egendorf, 2006). Advertising is the most expressive form of corporate discourse. This is because it allows corporations to dramatize their products through the use of visuals, print, sound and colour (McStay, 2010 ). The expressive feature of advertising is the fundamental consideration of marketers during the preparation of the advert. Expressiveness of the advert is evidenced by the use of colours, words, background music, and voiceover to pass the message concerning a particular product. There is a close relationship between advertising and culture. Advertising discourse has influences on the culture from which is draws its material (MacRury, 2009). The level of interest in advertising is great although there is a little consensus concerning its usefulness in society. Consumers across the world have developed widespread interest in advertising because it forms the basis for demand and purchasing. Critics of advertising argue that it corrupts the cultural life with its features of insistence and hectoring presence, which cajoles consumers to buy extra quantities of goods and services (Lewis & Nelson, 1999). Opponents of advertising have been engaged in vandalism as a form of organised consumer resistance due to the belief that it intrudes into social spaces. Most institutions of higher learning are paid to give exclusive rights to companies to advertise in campuses. Even the churches have not been immune from advertisements; companies prepare advertising slogans in aggressive colours promoting religious performance and place them outside the churches (Hackley, 2005). It is difficult to ascertain the conventions of a particular discourse under the conditions of normal social interaction. The conventions and practices of advertising discourse are initiated and are characterised by variation across cultures and eras (Egendorf, 2006). Advertising is a complex and costly exercise because making effective advertisements requires a detailed understanding of the kinds of meaning a given interpretive community may assign to a given advertisement. Advertising gives suggestions and hints concerning the product; it does not have the potential to compel consumers to belief that a product contains the advertised values (Academy of Marketing, 2011). Convincing customers to buy products requires corporations to use extensive rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of persuasive speaking through use of figures of speech and other compositional skills. It requires use of logos (logic), pathos (appeal to emotions) and ethos (morality) to persuade and motivate the target audience. For example, perfume advertisement lifestyle use sensuous images with an enigmatic slogan that implies some abstract notion of the brand. Visual features are strategically organised to rhetorically support the implicit claims about the brand (Hackley, 2005) Other Types of Corporate Discourse in the United Kingdom Corporate Social Responsibility The business has changed from concentration on wealth maximisation to inclusion of corporate social responsibility in their policy statements. Corporate social responsibility provides the best way through which corporations in the UK communicate to their stakeholders particularly customers, the community, the general public and the government (Hunnicutt, 2009). Organisations espouse their desire to invest in communities and care fof the environment within which they operate. According to Chief Executive Officer, Tesco Uk, the company’s corporate social responsibility demonstrates the progress in the community and environmental performance across the group. The objectives of Tesco’s SCR policy are founded on two assumptions: customers are not forced to buy what they do not want and people be treated the way they like to be treated. Tesco’s CSR reports evidence orientation towards environmental friendly approaches involving recycling of the material, re-use of the organics, and eco-friendly packaging of products. Tesco has shown great concern regarding environmental conservation and maintaining a healthy environment over the years. Other companies such as Cuadrilla, Water UK, and the UK Onshore Operators Group agreed to work together on shale gas exploration and exploitation by signing a Memorandum of Understanding. The objective of working together is to limit the extent of environmental degradation caused by shale gas extraction. Corporate Social Responsibility constitutes a mode of corporate discourse because organisations get into contact with the community during execution of CSR projects (Crane, 2008). Personal Selling Personal selling implies face-to-face or outdoor selling of products and services. During personal selling, corporations use the opportunity to communicate the brand quality to both present and prospective customers (Rodgers, 2011). The companies’ sales force performs presentation of the products to the customers. The primary purpose of personal selling is to educate customers about the use of the product and build customer relationships. The most common forms of personal relationships include sales presentations, demonstrations and trade shows (Ryan & Jones, 2012). Personal selling is the most effective tool during all stages of the buying process especially in building up buyers’ preferences, convictions and actions. The fact that personal selling involves interactions between marketers and buyers makes it possible for corporations to achieve the objective of observing customers’ needs and characteristics to make rapid adjustments. Personal selling allows all manners of relationships to spring up; these relationships range from a matter of selling to making personal friendship. Companies such as Prudential, Unilever, Aviva, and BHP Billiton organise periodical personal selling campaigns that are aimed at reaching people who ignore advertisements and other forms of sales of promotion. It is through personal selling that these companies are in a position to establish long-term relationships with their target audience. Personal selling affords consumers greater need to listen and respond to the marketers’ presentations even if they cannot buy goods on the spot (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012). Salespeople can read the reactions of the consumers through face-to-face presentation and demonstration; the information gathered encourages flexibility in operations and tailoring of products to meet the needs of the right customer group. Public Relations Corporations communicate to their customers through the discourse of public relations. A public constitutes a group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on a company’s ability to achieve its objectives. Public relations (PR) include a variety of programs designed to produce or protect a company’s image and its actual products (Blythe, 2012). Companies use various tools to achieve public relations; these include publications, events, news, speeches, and service activities. Company publications can take the forms of newsletters, memo, magazines, catalogues and company reports. Corporations hold events such as product launches, employee of the year award ceremonies and special anniversaries, which bring people together to share the companies’ milestones and strategic goals. During these events, various speeches are offered concerning the company. Stakeholders get to understand the company’s state of affairs through the day’s speeches. Most corporations believe that public relations are very effective as modes of corporate discourse. Public relations efforts have the potential for reaching several prospects who may avoid sales people and advertisements (Blythe, 2012). This is because messages reach people as news rather than sales-directed discourses. PR, however, is not a popular method of creating awareness for many marketers since they use it as afterthought. According to Wilcox and Cameron (2012), a well-thought out public relations campaign used with other promotions mix can be very effective and economical as methods of communicating the brand to both current and prospective customers. PR efforts are designed to influence some group’s attitudes or opinion towards the organisation. The groups that PR focuses on include publics such as government agencies and people living near the corporation. Sales Promotion Sales promotion consists of a diverse collection of incentives, mostly short-term, that are designed to stimulate quick and greater purchase of a product or service (Bowles, 2012). The primary objective of sales promotion is to give an incentive to buy. Forms of sales promotion includes samples, prizes, coupons, patronage reward, point-of-purchase displays, and prize-offs. Sales promotion is a mode of corporate discourse since corporations use it to attract more customers to the business than they can attract them at normal prices. The incentives attract consumer attention to interact with organisations through communication and negotiation (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012). The difference between advertising and sales promotion is that, while advertising says “buy our product”, sales promotions say “buy it now”. During the year 2013, the United Kingdom corporations spent 55 billion pounds on promotions, but two-thirds of the amount went on price promotions. This implies that companies spent only 33 percent in was budgeted to value-added promotions (Gatti, 2013). Sales promotions are also done through the new media such as websites, mobile phones and social media sites. For example, Nestle printed individual codes on KIT-KAT packaging; purchasers would enter the codes into a specified website and see if they had won prizes. Another strategy of sales promotion are Buy-One-Get-One-Free (BOGOF) and Customer Relationship Management incentives. Most sales promotions in the UK offer participants the choice to enter through the internet, particularly the companies’ websites. Conclusion Corporate stakeholders believe that effective corporate discourse results from strong relationships and clear lines of communication. The United Kingdom corporations strive to achieve effective corporate discourse through use of extensive advertising campaigns. Regardless of its costs and impersonal nature, advertising is very expressive, can trigger off quick sales, build long-term term relationships and ensure a wide coverage of the market. Corporations have adopted other modes of corporate discourse apart from the mainstream, product-based advertising; these include corporate social responsibility, personal selling, public relations and sales promotions. Additional modes of address are crucial in strengthening the relationship between customers and marketers in addition to giving further details and education concerning the quality and usability of the product. Effective corporate discourse requires integration of several modes of address to ensure reaching people who cannot be reached through product-based modes of discourse. References Academy of Marketing. 2011. Academy of Marketing Conference 2011: Marketing fields forever. Journal of Marketing Management, 27, 13-14. Blythe, J. 2012. Public relations. London: Henry Stewart Talks. 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Imaging in advertising: Verbal and visual codes of commerce. New York: Routledge. Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. 2012. Principles of marketing. Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall. Leiss, W., & Botterill, J. 2005. Social communication in advertising: Consumption in the mediated marketplace. New York: Routledge. Lewis, H. G., & Nelson, C. 1999. Advertising age handbook of advertising. Lincolnwood, Ill: NTC Business Books. MacRury, I. 2009. Advertising. London: Routledge. Rodgers, M. 2011. Accelerate the sale: Kick-start your personal selling style to close more sales, faster. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ryan, D., & Jones, C. 2012. Understanding digital marketing: Marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. Philadelphia, PA: Kogan Page. Wilcox, D. L., & Cameron, G. T. 2012. Public relations: Strategies and tactics. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Appendices Appendix 1: The banned Yves Saint Laurent Opium Advert Sophie Dahl Appendix 2: Tesco’s 2014 advertisement Read More