Subvertising and advertising culture - Essay Example

?SUBVERTISING AND ADVERTISING CULTURE Subvertising is a blend of two words “subvert” and “advertising”. It is about making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements, so as to make a statement. Subverts take the form of a new image or an alteration of an existing image or icon, generally, in a satirical manner. It is also a meme hack and a part of social hacking or culture jamming (Posner 1982). It mimics the look and feel of the targeted ad and the viewers suddenly realize they have been duped. Their primary goal is to damage political candidates and campaigns, corporations and other targets. Subverts create cognitive dissonance by cutting through the hype and glitz of mediated reality and, momentarily, reveals a deeper truth within." History In 1972, the logo of Richard Nixon's reelection campaign posters were subvertised with two x's in Nixon's name (as in the Exxon logo). It referred to the corporate ownership of the Republican party. In 1977, The Billboard Liberation Front, used this technique in San Francisco . After the U.S. presidential election of 2000, John Kanis, a supporter of the Republicans, designed a saying "Sore Loserman" to mock Democratic party candidates Gore-Lieberman. However, the Supreme Court, halted the process. Over the years, no large organization or brand, has managed to escape the wrath of subvertising. Examples of such targets include Ford, Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, BMW, Visa, Nike, Marlboro, Smirnoff, Absolute Vodka, Benetton, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and a horde of the other best brands in the world. Even politicians and other celebrities like Richard Nixon, George Bush, John F Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Paris Hilton have not been spared. Subvertising vs advertising (Advertising is any paid) form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor. (Subvertising refers to the) practice of making spoofs and parodies of corporate and political advertisements. The following table draws up a comparison and a contrast of the two concepts. \Advertising Subvertising Paid form Unpaid form Non-personal in nature Non-personal in nature Promotes goods, services Depromotes goods, services Sponsor identified Unidentified Creative Destructive Promotes brand building Encourages brand killing Encourages consumption of goods and services Discourages consumption of goods and services Humorous Satiric Positive message Negative message Initiated by marketers Initiated by anti-consumerists Wide reach and long lasting appeal Wide reach but short-lived appeal Benefits outweigh disadvantages Effects doubtful Positive publicity Negative publicity Subvertising - Strengths and weaknesses Subvertising does enjoy a host of advantages. They are: 1. Attention grabbers 2. Highly creative 3. Positive intent 4. Can be used for good causes 5. Promotes sustainable consumption 6. Highly inexpensive 7. Easy to create Subvertising is popular, essentially, due to its tremendous attention grabbing effect. It shocks the viewer into a moment of reflection and thought. Obviously, subverts are highly creative. Parody and spoofery does require a lot of brain racking and though the individual does not have to create the subvert from scratch, unless it is very creative, the spoof will miserably fail. Though the subvert is negative in nature and tone, the intent behind the act is, can be, positive. The purpose is to make the viewer think about the negative aspects of advertising and create a positive influence. Though, most or almost all the time, Subverts are used for wrong purposes or causes, at times, good cause subvertising also exists. Subverts on smoking advertisements, promoting sustainable consumption, Greenpeace initiatives are a handful of cause-related subvertising examples. Advertising, essentially, encourages limitless consumption, for purposes of sales and revenue generation. Subvertising on the contrary forces us to think of sustainable consumption in harmony with nature. Since Subverts need only to mimic the advertisement and bring about cosmetic changes, they are highly inexpensive and easy to create. Contrast this with the billions of dollars spent of advertisements and product launch campaigns of marketers worldwide and their creation. Downside of subvertising The following are the disadvantages : Depromotes goods and services Highly destructive Unidentified sponsor Discourages consumption Encourages brand killing Satiric Negative message Initiated by anti-marketers Short-lived effect The whole idea of subvertising is to desist the consumer from buying goods and services. All classes of goods – healthy and unhealthy - are targeted. As contrasted with advertising, subvertising is creative in the negative sense. Generally, the content is of bad taste. Subvertising is practiced by individuals and organizations alike and much of the time, is done stealthily and the creator unknown. Sustainable consumption is promoted by subvertising and recommends a decrease or total ban on consumption of goods. Subvertising is also known as adbusting and is aimed to badly hurt the brand image of the organization or the product. Satire thrives through subvertising and, unfortunately, has many takers. The content is negative in intent and tone. Use of dirty words has become commonplace. Since reducing consumption of goods and services is the prime motive of subvertising, it is resorted to by individuals who are opposed to all kinds of marketing activity. The greatest drawback of subvertising is its momentary, short-lived effect. True, it shocks the viewer into thinking. But, the effect is fleeting and easily lost. Critics argue that subverts serve no real purpose at all, and in fact, promotes undue publicity for the brands and individuals by bringing them into the limelight. Advertising culture Culture, essentially, represents a way of life. The following iceberg of culture highlights the various components : The cultural wheel (Bob Sjogren, Bill and Amy Stearns) elucidates more clearly the cultural dimensions globally. Cultural quotient (Earley and Mosakowski 2004) came into use about four years ago but is now widespread in the business world. It comprises three domains – cognitive (the head), physical (body) and emotional/ motivational (the heart). The four components of Cultural quotient are : Knowledge Interpretation Behavior, and Perseverance. Two path breaking cultural theories are the Hall and Hofstede frameworks. Hall’s (1990) cultural concept outlines three major cultural variables viz. High context and Low context cultures, dimensions of time and relationship of man with nature and space. In the high context cultures, the advertising message is implicit and implied. In the low context cultures, it is explicit, unequivocal and unambiguous. The time dimension views the time orientations of people across a culture, whether it is in the past, present or the future. The third dimension relates to the attitude of humans compared to nature in terms of mastery or subjugation. Hofstede’s (2006) five dimensions include power distance, masculinity vs feminity, uncertainty avoidance, long or short term orientation and individualism vs collectivism. Power distance refers to the level or extent to which the powerful members in a society are willing to distribute power unequally. Individualism is the degree of selfishness to protect oneself and the immediate family as against the overall protection granted to one and all in a society in exchange for loyalty. Masculine or feminine dispositions are expressed through desire for achievement and success or caring for others and quality of life. Uncertainty avoidance is the fear and threat of uncertain or the unknown and the extent to which people avoid such situations. Long and short term orientations look at the pragmatism and abstract perspectives against the backdrop of time. Advertising culture is definitely an economic activity but a cultural exchange, too. Culture encourages development of value-added goods. Advertising culture is manifested in dimensions of the humanism spirit, psychological framework and the human environs. Advertising is one form of mass communication and is bound to be affected by the culture of a society. Debates continue as to the reflection of culture in advertisements. A study on the effects of advertising would help marketers know the acceptance of their advertising messages. (Popular culture, also known) as pop culture, is the totality of distinct memes, ideas, perspectives and attitudes that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture. Pop culture is what has been made out of products and practices of mass produced culture. It manifests itself in myriad forms of music, fashion, slang, entertainment and even the Internet. The chronology of music can be summarized as follows : 1. Hippies 2. Elvis Presley 3. Michael Jackson 4. MTV Generation, and 5. Millennium generation. Advertising traverses beyond the mere promotion of goods in the pop culture. Images and symbols, for example, become iconic It exerts power to promote both positive and negative images and thereby influence culture. Perhaps, the greatest benefit of advertising is it wide array of choice provided to the customer. As the customer becomes choosy and tends to patronize only quality products, marketers are forced to improve the quality of their product offerings. The major criticisms against advertising are that it promotes materialism, stereotypes women and unnecessarily, use children in advertisements for even those products which are of no use to them. It is partially true that advertising through the might of its brand cult and brand power leads to feverish consumption patterns. Consumers are driven to purchase goods and services which they do not need at all. Also, the consumption of necessary goods is unhealthily promoted as the customer is in a state of constant want and no amount of consumption makes him feel content. Stereotyping of women and use of sexism and sexuality in advertising is one of its low points. Women are portrayed as objects of desire and the men folk are unwittingly seduced through these advertisements featuring women. Unwittingly, women too play on and this develops an unbreakable shell of stereotyping, with no avenue of escape or freedom. Though stringent laws limit or prohibit the use of children in advertisements, the world over, legal loopholes help marketers and advertisement creators, to circumvent them. As a result, children are a regular and permanent feature of any advertisement, irrespective of the usefulness of the product to a child or otherwise. This is an ideal case of subliminal advertising and children viewers fall easy prey to this form of treachery. Another offshoot of this heinous practice is the growth of pester power. Pester power represents the power a child wields over a parent or a superior, through sheer pestering for a given product. Usually, the world over, children are loved beings and the superiors, more often than not, give in to the child’s repeated demands. Commercialization of culture Commercialization is a process of introducing a new product into the market which has been previously protested. Advertisements, mass production, sacrificing quality for time and quantity considerations and the desire for more bigger and more better etc. are all problems associated with commercialization. Cross cultural advertising can be a responsible effort to provide solutions to a society’s problems. This is achieved through cross cultural psychological segmentation of the target group. The consumers are generally divided into two major categories of groups namely higher resource group and lower resource group. The higher resource is further sub-categorized into innovators, thinkers, achievers and experiencers. The lower resource group is sub-divided into believers, strivers, makers and survivors. Advertising culture is influenced by all the cultural factors as explained below. Messages can take any of these forms, depending on the culture prevalent in a society. Advice is handed down by the superiors to the younger generation or the youth contribute in the decision making activity. Frequent use of “I” or “We”. Teamwork or individual achievement is encouraged. A strong urge to win at all costs or providing a caring touch. Focus on performance or results as against the need for elaborate explanations, persuasion and obvious results. Saving for tomorrow and handing down something for the younger generations or living in the now. The marketer needs to consider and incorporate all these aspects into the promotional message to be successful. This is the reason multinational corporations fine tune their global advertising campaigns to suit local flavours. The watchword is “Think global, act local”. The challenges faced by advertisers in international advertising are manifold. They can be succinctly listed down as under : Legal considerations Language limitations Cultural diversity, and Media limitations. Different countries have different advertising laws which need to be understood. For example, many countries do not allow comparative advertising messages. Language is a major barrier to effective communication and the problem is complicated by the large number of languages prevailing in a country. Common, everyday words have different meanings and many a time, even pronunciation causes problems. Everywhere in the world, cultural factors largely determine the way various phenomena are perceived. Perception differences complicate communication delivery, understanding and feedback. Some countries such as Italy and many African countries do pose media limitations vis-a-vis number of exposures etc. Stories abound of advertising campaigns of leading global corporates who failed to pay heed to these values, turning disastrous. Coke, Pepsi, KFC, General Motors, Schweppes, Ford, Toyota, Electrolux are just a handful of examples. Each and every one of us is a consumer of some product or the other. Economic and social divides, globalization and a host of other factors create huge disparities in the distribution of wealth and consequently on the consumption levels and patterns worldwide. It appears to be true that consumerism may not lead to better and enriched quality of life. Gross levels of consumption impact the natural environment leading to natural disasters such as global warming, climate change, earthquakes, tsunamis and what not. Also, we need to spare a thought for the well being and prosperity of our future generations. This leads us to the principle of sustainable consumption. The rise of the consumerist society can be traced to the 1980s which was one of capitalist production and consumption. This human phenomenon led to great financial prosperity for the giant corporations of the world and the governments too benefited by way of increased tax revenues. For a short period of time, citizens experienced better living standards and greater quality of life. \The following visual delineates the supply chain view of well being. Early critics of consumption go back to the days of 1960s who advocated restoration of pride in prudence, quality, maintenance of the eternal balance and being content with a enduring style of life. Post modernism consumerism was heralded through highly differentiated product offerings with a shorter lifetime. All frills marketing gained prominence over content and consumers were wowed by outlandish presentation and style. Ecotourism, Space tourism etc. were newer, surefire weapons in the hands of marketers of nature. The higher consumption levels more than offset the benefits of cleaner production. The Living Planet report of WWF highlighted the consumption pressures on the environment. Businesses shape consumption through the products and services offered. Marketing and promotional activities of organizations through the various elements of the promotion mix such as advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, integrated communications and publicity helps define the cultural context of a society. Disposable incomes in the form of monetary and non-monetary compensation for work done, define the size of household time and financial spend. (Sustainable consumption means) consuming less, consuming responsibly and consuming differently. Consuming differently refers to consumption of environment-friendly goods. Subvertising is also known as adbusting or culture jamming . Spoof ads are created to reduce consumption and or decrease brand power. Campaigns such as “Buy Nothing Day”, “Buy Nothing Christmas” , “TV Turnout Week”, “Corporate Flag of America” have been huge hits in recent times. The popularity enjoyed by these subverts can be gauged by the fact that around 70 million people adopted the TV Turnout Week. Self-styled as culture jammers, they claim to work towards curbing the power of corporations and the way meaning is produced in the society. Adbusters resort to all kinds of Subverts such as fashion, tobacco, alcohol, food and other miscellaneous Subverts. Targets of these attacks have been established brands like Calvin Klein, McDonalds, Absolute vodka, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Marlboro etc. Newer targets of adbusters are the commercial media and mass media by adopting latest technology such as websites. They firmly believe that the structure of present mass media is designed to foster mass consumption which would consequently destroy our environment, our mental health, political systems etc. (A culture jammer) is someone who creates a space where ordinary understandings of media become so extraordinary. So, one is required to stop and try and reinterpret the meaning of the message at the point of consumption. In a minority of cases, subvertising can also be towards a good cause. Greenpeace the organization known for its activities to save the environment such as the Ban Whaling campaign, is now fighting to save the Olive Ridley Turtle habitats in Orissa. The globally popular Tata group, one of the best business houses in India, has announced setting up a port at Dhamra in Orissa. This threatens a nesting site that is amongst the last honeymoon suites for the remaining Olive Ridleys, a highly-endangered species that swims all the way here from places as far away as Australia and the Philippines. Following up on their signature campaigns and candle light vigils against the project, they have now taken to subvertising. Adbusters believe that the omnipresence of advertising is claustrophobic and is a devious means of making people part with their monies. On the face of it, one becomes immune to advertising and it no longer affects the individual. However, the continuous bombardment of advertising content leads to a sense of disquiet in our subconscious. They argue that advertising and the media have painted a glossy, all good image of the world and the consumer. Advertising affects the whole world around us and defines and shapes the world we live in, our lives and the view of our own self. It promotes greed, angst, jealousness etc. and instills a sense of inadequacy with what we have. We tend to want more and more, much more than what we can afford. Subvertising offers a great chance to get even with the marketers escape and that is precisely why this form of parody and spoofery exists. Subvertising and Hacktivism Hacktivism, a form of protest, emerged in the 1980s. It involves destruction and damage of the content of web pages by highlighting a particular issue. This also takes the form of disabling of websites and databanks of organizations. These individuals consider freedom of information, human rights and freedom from electronic surveillance as their birth right and when they are not provided, they vent out their disappointments and frustrations through hacking. Hacking has claimed substantial victories in that websites of large corporations the world over, states, defence and nuclear establishments and even governments have been attacked. Both Subvertisiing and Hacktivism are present day forms of civil disobedience. In conclusion, Subvertising is a perverted form of attracting attention and gaining publicity for an issue or a cause. Adbusters may argue that since the intent of the act is good and that it makes an individual to pause and reflect upon an issue or give a rethink to an existing idea, subverts need to be encouraged. However, one cannot deny the tremendous losses incurred by marketers towards brand building and advertisement creation being upstaged by individuals and groups, with a few cosmetic changes. Billions of dollars get wasted and the target brand or organization has to spend even greater amounts of money to undo the damage, to the extent possible. In most of the cases, the damage inflicted is beyond repair and restoration. Also, the usage of vulgar words and expressions in the subvert, leaves a very bad after taste. This is an unhealthy and dangerous practice and needs to be banned forthwith. Surely, there are much better ways of creating subverts beyond spoof and satire. Advertising on its part also needs constant self-regulation. It must strive to eliminate the inherent drawbacks and give importance to green initiatives throughout the organization. Sustainable consumption needs to be broadcast and cultivated since it is also in their own long term needs of business survival and prosperity. Stereotyping of women needs to be curbed and eliminated altogether besides the urgency of stopping child advertisements. Subvertising can also be used for just and good causes, if it chooses to. Cases in point are the Greenpeace initiatives with reference to the Whaling expeditions in Japan and the saving of Olive Ridley Turtle habitats in India. Also, subverts, without vulgar content, against smoking and drugs, are worthy of emulation. Given the rising popularity of subvertising especially in the Western countries, w have, perhaps, reached a point of accepting the subversive act. Subverts, devoid of satire and vulgarity, may prove to be an answer. References Ries A & Ries L, The fall of Advertising and rise of PR, Harper Paperback, 2004 Does it pay to subvertise, Mother Jones Magazine, May-Jun 1999, Pgs. 33 & 35. Tipping R, Subvertising, Redfox Press, 2008 Ireland Goldman, Robert and Stephen Papson (1996) Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising. New York, NY: Gilford Publications Posner J 1982, Subvertising, Available from Read More