Controversial Television Advertising - Term Paper Example

CONTROVERSIAL TELEVISION ADVERTISING 1st November 2006 CONTROVERSIAL TELEVISION ADVERTISING Introduction The rise in consumerism has given way to increase in competition among businesses forcing advertisers to employ various methods to promote their products. In the past several years more and more contentious ads have been telecast in a desire to attract public attention and generate sales. But controversial television advertising influences typecasting and encourages other advertisers to market their products sometimes using extreme audio visual content in order to persuade the masses. Television Advertising Most advertising is straightforward with the idea to promote only the product and during the fledgling years of commercial television, advertising was seen as informative and educative. This image has since altered drastically due to the nationalization of television and the shift from disseminating information to focusing on persuading the masses. Today advertising is criticized as encouraging materialism, creating envy and obsessing with physical beauty, all this using various tactics such as manipulation, deception and typecasting. Consumers are treated like guinea pigs with products hung out in front of them. When people switch on their television sets they aim to watch not the commercials, but the programs or films aired on the multitude of channels. These channels make their business and profits through the advertising revenue generated by the telecast of the programs. Advertisements are an inevitable part of the business and channels are required to feature them at regular intervals during programs. The viewer at home has a choice, whether to watch the commercials or tune into another channel. Studies show that most viewers would watch a newly telecast commercial and are less likely to be interested in it after several repetitions. Some ads are watchable even after many runs, while the credibility of other ads appears to be the weak link (Ries 2004). The content of the ad is therefore the prime aspect that determines the watchability factor. A creative ad would always generate some interest in the product even if the ad has very little to do with it. Increasingly, innovative storylines are being used for a substantial part of the ad, with the actual product revealed at the very last moment. When the storyline approach cannot work for some products, other methods are employed such as use of film stars, sportspersons and other celebrities. Cosmetics, watches, cell phones are just a few of the products that ride on celebrity appeal. For advertising companies, celebrities play an important role in their overall marketing strategies. Celebrities are willing to endorse any product that supplements their income from their regular professions. The result is that the value of the product increases manifold and flows not just from the endorser to the product but from the product to the endorser (Twitchell 2001). Although a celebrity may endorse a wide range of products he or she is likely to feature in an ad which shows a good product but whose overall message has immoral or violent leanings. There are exceptions though. It has often been said that violent TV programs glorify guns and crime. But how much influence do violent TV commercials have the public Although crimes have existed for thousands of years before the advent of television or film, some people believe that violence in the entertainment media is a cause of violence and deteriorating moral standards in society. Most of the focus has been on TV programs and film but only recently with the increase in controversial and questionable advertising, more attention has been given to the content of commercials. Out of the thousands of commercials screened every year, only a fraction have any violent or objectionable moral content. Many advertisers, though they sponsor programs that contain guns and violence, would prefer to distance their products or services from the program content itself. But there have been a number of ads that have come out in the recent years which are controversial in nature using social taboo subjects to make their point. One 30 second ad shows the ejection of a few people, a gay couple, an African-American woman and an old man with a walker, from their church pews. A voice over says: "God doesn't reject people. Neither do we (National Catholic Reporter (2006)". Although this ad ran in a number of cable channels, it was rejected by the major networks deeming it unsuitable for telecast due to its references to gender, homosexuality and race. Identifying immoral advertisements Perhaps the most difficult factor in characterizing, identifying and measuring ad quality is the determination of what constitutes immorality since different people have different versions of what they think is immoral. While some would consider a certain commercial as adding to the moral decay, others might view the same commercial in a lighter vein, finding it amusing and creative (Hall 1980). Non cigarette smokers may consider smoking or tobacco advertising as immoral since they promote the habit, cause public nuisance and harm the health of smokers as well as non-smokers. Smokers on the other hand may find that these ads only justify their continuing the habit. Similarly drinking may be considered immoral by some but not by others. Whether a commercial shows just a picture of a cigarette or drink or embeds them in elaborate audio visual content, most people would still consider this as immoral or offensive to their tastes. But there are other subliminal ways in which immorality can be shown. A good way of measuring and identifying immoral or objectionable content in commercials is to categorize them. Most commercials fall broadly into six categories: violence, dishonesty, selfishness, disloyalty, sexual connotations, and evil prevailing over good. Some commercials have one or more of these factors in them, making them quite objectionable. It is a rare commercial that contains all these factors. The largest of these categories is the commercials with violent content or content indicative of crime. Even when the violence is not directly shown but only indicated or referenced, it can still be called objectionable. A Reebok commercial featuring rapper 50 Cents shows him counting to nine, suggesting the fact that he has been shot nine times. Since the ad was targeted to impressionable young teenagers, it was deemed inappropriate with its allusion to gun crime. An example of a commercial featuring selfishness: two truckers walk into a diner one evening. One orders Coca Cola, the other Pepsi. Soon, one offers the other his drink and takes it back. The other sips the Pepsi but refuses to return it. A fight breaks out. The fight is not shown but heard, with the sounds of punching and tables and chairs crashing. Such a commercial shows selfishness and with the indication of violence to show how one product is better than the other. Another category is dishonesty and one example of this is a Jell-O commercial. In this a mother-in-law showers praise to a woman for baking a delicious tasting dessert which is actually a ready-mix Jello-O pudding. Another example is the Mitsubishi ad which appeared in 1997. Here the car driver tells another person that the car is his when in fact the car's real owner is his boss. Disloyalty is another category and one example is the Burger King commercial which shows McDonald's employees eating their meals at Burger King. They remark that a Burger King burger is tastier, better prepared and contains more beef. Another subcategory is the use of sex to endorse a product or service. But there is a line between showing a fully clothed attractive woman or man to sell something and showing a scantily clad woman. The former would have thousands of commercials with these visuals whereas the latter would fall under the sex commercial category as would ads containing sexual references or innuendos. The sixth subcategory has commercials which illustrate bad triumphing over good. One example of this kind of ad shows the owner of Wendy's Dave Thomas in discussion with his personal angel and devil about the ingredients that should go into making a new sandwich. Both the devil and angel offer conflicting advice but it is the devil who wins in the end. There is another debatable concept and that is of positive deviance. Society is seen as having certain norms: men do physically intensive work, women look after the kids at home, male engineers discuss computers and engineering etc. These are stereotypical gender oriented roles. Some commercials flip this idea on the head and show a female construction worker or a man changing diapers or women discussing computers etc. This is positive deviance and the messages given out is of change and shift in attitudes. The effect of these commercials is that they might counter balance the often repeated commercials that feature stereotypical content. Networks and Time slots Sports and music channels quite often feature questionable commercials whereas family oriented channels show a quite low percentage. Networks differ in the frequency of airing questionable commercials. Some entertainment channels believe that featuring borderline ads, rather than being counterproductive, might actually bring in the audiences, since ratings are what matter most to the survivability of programs. The number of objectionable ads is also quite low for the various times slots. Even during prime time slots reserved for highly rated shows, such as crime programs, a relatively few number of ads featuring violent content are aired. There is also no great difference in content of the commercials aired in weekdays as opposed to weekends. But since prime time over weekends are not as important as prime time during weekdays, the questionable commercials aired during weekends appear throughout the day and are not time slot specific. Conclusion The presence of various watch dog organizations who analyze television programming and advertisements makes it difficult for objectionable content to reach the viewer's living rooms. These groups look for offensive or morally negative content but advertisers are wary of giving them anything to object about. On the whole, the advertising community is interested in promoting their products using the most effective methods possible, audio visual messages which are easy on the eyes and conscience. The fear is that the discerning viewer might perceive violent or immoral content negatively, even so far as to provoke fear. Although viewers might be persuaded by commercials showing socially threatening subjects such as dandruff or body odor, advertisers and channels do not want to risk taking the message too far by over doing the ad. In highly rated programs, advertisers may hesitate to use violent or immoral content in their ads. Most advertisers seem to apply the principle of the "ideal norm" proposed by Robert Snow in 1983. According to this, by associating their products with certain ideals, for example: perfect family, happy kids, healthy living, physical fitness, working hard etc., advertisers are in better position to market their products, rather than link them with the negativity of violence or immorality. REFERENCES 1. Gallup Poll. Public Opinion 1993. Wilmington, DE: Scholar Resources 2. Hall, Stuart. 1980. Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies. Pp.128. Hutchinson. 3. Ries, Al & Ries, Laura 2004. The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. Collins. p.5 4. Snow, Robert. 1983. Creating Media Culture. Sage. 5. Twitchell, James 2001. Twenty Ads That Shook the World: The Century's Most Groundbreaking Advertising and How it Changed Us All. Three Rivers Press p.213 Read More