Advertising Shape Social Trends - Essay Example

Advertising Shape Social Trends Introduction: The world is changing and so as the needs of the people. In the past, people used to choose various products and services based on their daily requirement as the concept of social status or enjoyment or take some time out from daily life to have mind refreshment was far less. But as the time moves on demand of the people also started to change. In modern world, the requirement varies as per the social standard of the people. Financial condition of the people has a huge role to play in this social standard classification. Now, people demands more based on their social standard rather than their actual needs. In modern world, there are number of companies especially from the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) sector, electronics goods sector, fast food or clothes and garments sector who are taking number of initiatives to cash on these various requirements of people across the society. There arenumber of companies, who in recent years paying a great attention to make their advertising and promotional activities more and more attractive for the people. They have started to invest a large amount of money in branding and promotional activities for their product and services. In this paper, the main objective is to analyze the importance of advertisement in modern society specially to discuss how the advertising campaign adopted by number of companies from various sectors have played an important role to change or better to say how advertising plays a role in changing social trends. The analysis is focusing on both positives as well as well as some of the negatives impacts created by the growing trend of advertising in modern world. In recent times, some of the experts believe that advertising somehow induce people to choose or get associated with some kind of products or services which in the past not so much popular among the society. In the next part of this paper, there will be a discussion on how the technological development playing a role in the continuous development of advertising and promotional activities of companies across various sectors. Finally the paper will conclude with a discussion about possible future trends associated with advertising and promotion, whether those trends are justifiable taking into consideration the ever changing buying pattern of the people of this world as well as continuously evolving choices of the society. In the last part, there will be a detail discussion about possible future use of technologies in the advertising and promotional activities. Advertisement: Definition and Changing Pattern over the Years: Before going into details about how the advertisement plays an important role in changing the shape of the society, first discuss about the definition of the word advertisement and why it is important. In most simple words, advertising is a process by which organization tries to attract the attention of the people towards them. If one likes to define the term advertisement from an organization’s perspective then it can be defined as “desire to manipulate and encourage a target audience into not only desiring a product or service, but to feel a certain way about it and without this product or service, they will lack this feeling.”(Johnson, 2013) Let now discuss why advertising is important. From a general perspective, advertising is not only important to promote the offering of any company in front of their customer, but at the same time it is important for the organizations to established reasons in the mind of the customers regarding why their own product of services is better than that of the competitors. Another key point associated with the importance of the advertising is it “Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak.”(Johnson, 2013) It is an old thought associated with the advertising industry, but it still stands true. The most common goal of any advertising campaign is to sell the added benefits associated with any product or service. One can easily understand this concept associated with the advertising. For example, any individual can choose or purchase number of soaps for them as there are many brands in this industry. To make any brand stand high above the rest in terms of attracting people’s eye organization need to focus on attractive as well as out of the box promotional activity. One such example is of Irish Spring. In their advertisement, they “claim not only freshness and cleanliness, but according to the woman from the ad, its Manly, yes, but I like it, too, so it’s for both sexes. A company selling something knows you can probably get that something anywhere and you can get many versions of it, but they want you to buy their something because it makes you feel a certain way, and no other product can make you feel this way.”(Johnson, 2013). Companies need to set a benchmark for advertising and promotional activities – for this purpose different tools are used : “Jingles and Slogans; Mascots or Brand Ambassador of the company who often give a similar meaning at par with the brand; and most importantly real life Testimonials or Endorsement from other customers who are benefited from the particular product or services” (Johnson, 2013). Let now discuss why the advertisement is important from the customer’s perspectives. The most important thing associated with the advertisement is the message it tries to give to the customers. Different slogans, and mascots are tools which organizations use in order to give a good impression regarding any good to the customers. At times people are annoyed when the breaks due to advertisements appear in televisions, even during surfing activities same things happen. However they might be of great help before making a buying decision. Generally these advertisements influence the decision of the customers in a great deal in modern world. (Naik, 2011) Advertisement that Change the Way People Used to Think: Over the years, advertisement has changed a lot and in modern era advertising plays a big role in changing the way people used to think about the society. Advertisement affects the purchase pattern and also alters people’s lifestyles especially in current times. Here are few examples of how advertisement has changed the ways people used to think and at the same time changed the way society used to go about with various normal activities. DeBeers: It is one of the most well-known diamond ornament manufacturer of the world. Usually these products are linked with different people form high societies. But with their advertisement company able to change the mindset of the people. Fig: 1: Before the A Diamond is Forever ads, diamond rings werent the premier symbol of engagement; Connolly; (2011) With the help of their bold and aggressive advertising strategy, diamond giant DeBeers did rather extraordinary and able to persuade groups of men and women that the only satisfactory representation of an engagement or commitment to stay together whole life can be achieved with the help of a diamond ring. “Prior to the A Diamond is forever campaign - which launched in 1948 and was named by Advertising Age as the most effective campaign of the 20th Century - diamond rings werent synonymous with marriage or engagement. Peruse 19th Century literature and theres nary a mention of diamond engagement rings.”(Connolly, 2011). With their advertising strategy, the organization was able to make diamond ring a must for every marriage all over the globe. It not only helped them to boost their own business but at the same time it helps other manufacturers in this industry, the smaller one to grow faster. Volkswagen: One of the leading players in the automobile industry is Volkswagen. They have developed their business all over the globe and advertisement or better to say a well thought out promotional plan helped them to do so specially in the US market. During 1950s and in the early part of 1960s, the American consumers were hard to convince as they were “traditional gender stereotypes, earnest claims of product efficacy and aspirational characterizations of the American dream.”(Connolly, 2011). With their out of the box thinking, Volkswagen was able to change that convention forever. Fig 2: VWs Think Small ad pioneered the use of irony and wit in advertising; Connolly; (2011) In the past, USA people were not much fond of Beetle car because they were made in Germany usually and America had a bad relation with them. Apart from that, people of USA used to prefer big cars with strong machineries, elegantly structured and completed with bright fins. In order to capitalize the American market, Volkswagon had brought in Think Small campaign which was structured not just to popularize their manufactured cars but focus on the problems of the car which was under the preference of US customers. While discussing the campaign, Connolly in his report has mentioned that, “There was no pretty girl casting her flirty eye over the car. There was no cool guy driving it. It was nothing short of groundbreaking” and he also quoted the statement of Bob Garfield who was a consultant of Ad industry in the USA where he has mentioned that “it was self-deprecating. It was the first post-modern ad.”(Connolly, 2011) Later the organization had come up with another ground breaking campaign known as Lemon Ad, where they informed customers about the company’s policy of clearing out bad vehicles; thus discarding worries that the Beetle itself was a lemon for the US market and the new model which they are coming up with are more suitable for the US consumers. The Marlboro Man: Over the year, an iconic figure, whether it is real or imaginary is very much associated with the brand. The Marlboro Man is also one such kind of iconic advertising figure. It is important to note that this was not the first kind of Coca Cola nad McDonald which are also big firms in the segment. They had already capitalized on this tool of marketing. Ronald McDonald was very renowned and hence McDonald would not find it important to show their brand name even and similarly Coca Cola in 1939 played important role in “developing the modern image of a cheery, rotund, red-outfitted Santa Claus”. But the advertising of Marlboro Man is completely different. With this iconic brand image the brand is able to change drastically its situation in the market itself. From light cigarettes meant for women, Marlboro able to transformed into a craggy, highly masculine item. With the help of this promotional campaign, organization was able to increase their sales volume almost 300% in the year of 1955 (Conolly, 2011). Pic 3: The Marlboro Man transformed the brand into an ultra-masculine accessory; Connolly; (2011) Nike: This is a very renowned brand of the world and it has played a leading position in sports gear segment. The product was however not relevant compared to the logo of the company. Also the connection with the celebrity icon took away the importance. In the world of shoes, there are very little difference between normal pair of shoes and training gears. Pic 4: The globally recognized swoosh is one of Nikes advertising successes, Connolly; (2011) Nike has been able to alter the different advertisement methods in a way which invited success. Nike was able to convert themselves as the biggest player in the sports gear industry where their logo is everything and people do not need the name of the brand. Nike was the first company who was able to establish the idea in the mind of the people that with the brand people can get along with the athlete also. Nikes great perception was forget the shoe, own the athlete. As experts rightly suggested that Nike was successfully able to develop a thought in the mind of the customers which suggested that Nike is not a design or a style. Its an idea. They own sport - its passion, its grit. Absolut Vodka: The advertising campaign of Absolut Vodka is same as the DeBeers where they were successfully created a market where one was not present. In 1981, Absolut started an advertisement campaign that would run for approximately three decades using humble ads with noticeable images of their distinct vodka bottle and plays on the word "absolut". Prior to that, there was very little advertisement related to vodka as a hard drink. In the past there was no premium vodka industry. The advertisement of absolute Vodka, specially the word Absolut converted a good into a marked brand. (Connolly, 2011) Pic 5: Absolute Vodka created a new market, Connolly; (2013) Advertising changes the way society used to look at products. It is more or less true in every scene. Organizations use advertising not only to promote their offerings but at the same time are trying to change the way people in a particular society looks at particular products. Let discuss about the fast food industry. In modern world, fast food industry is growing in a rapid pace, People specially the young generations are more eager to taste every new product introduced by various organizations. In recent years, fast food companies started to target the young generations more and that too not by advertising their offerings such as steaming, juicy burgers, but by showing various toys and other gifts that they used to give with their offerings. A recent study about how this advertisement playing a role in changing society’s shape clearly mentioned that related to nationally televised commercials from foremost fast food cafeterias targeted at adults, companies associated with marketing kids’ meals were more likely to include toy and other giveaways, and there were very less promotion of food staff. “ Between 2009 and 2010, when the scientists conducted their analysis, nearly all of the fast food ads –99%–that were aired nationally on children’s TV channels such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, were from McDonald’s and Burger King, and 70% of them included toy giveaways, frequently linked to child-friendly movies, to promote their product.”(Sifferlin, 2013) Despite knowing the fact that fast food is not well for the health of the children, people are likely considerably inclined to purchase those as advertising by these companies make children associated with fast food in every possible ways. While discussing how the advertisement changes the way society it is very clear that advertisement has both positives as well as negatives associated with it. How Advertising Negatively Affect Society: Children in modern era are one of the prime targets of various organizations across the sector. In various analytical reports, experts have suggested that the principal objective of any advertisement is to persuade the spectator about the superiority of the product and develop an urge in his or her mind to purchase the same. In modern generation, “advertising plays an important role in the society, as it tends to influence young minds in particular.”(Lad, 2009)To attract children they need special packaging, special offering and often specific slogan or logo to attract children. Very often,the younger generation “tends to misinterpret the messages conveyed through the advertisement. They end up having wrong notions about many issues. Advertising influences the minds of children, which creates a need to own that particular product being advertised.”(Lad, 2009) If not guided properly they might buy up with a certain kind of lifestyle that might not be the perfect for the society where they live. Often advertisement can create social and regional disruption. Creativity is the main thing associated with advertisement but people at the same time need to be careful about how they are using words or logo or image of their brand ambassador or even sometime some famous icon of the past. Often this can pull down the image of the organization also. For example, “Jesus is being used to peddle cell phones, but even that doesn’t receive a lot of attention anymore.”(Bhatt, 2012) It is important to promote product in the society keeping in mind the financial condition of the people of this society. Often, with aggressive promotional activities, the “economic value of a person becomes more valuable than the real relationships between humans.”(Bhatt, 2012) Then there can be some social disturbance as well. It is not right to develop human interaction or develop human values based on how much they can spend on purchasing goods or services. Often advertising should be to take over how the media or other television channel will represent the news across the society. It is very important for people to know the real fact and media is the key for that. If the media sources are being promoted/ sponsored by any particular organization, then there will be nothing against that company or how they are operating. “This relationship most certainly degrades both the artistic and moral quality of the media” (Bhatt, 2012)and affect the balance of the society. Companies endorse messages with market value, and when associated with proper advertising, all these messages have the power to change democracy into consumer democracy. One of the great examples is the performance of dairy industry and their influence on the American diet and the food pyramid. With the growing popularity of the dairy products, government was forced to change rules associated with it in order to increase revenues by getting people to drink more milk. “This example shows how control can be taken away from the people and transferred to the advertisers” despite knowing the fact that more mild can often create bad health and many diseases. (Bhatt, 2012) While making advertisement for the future organization must remember following points: 1. Choice: Ad views will be controlled among the audience of all section of the society; 2. Control: It has to ensure that all the end users must play an important role to maintain the balance of the ecosystem and the same information have to be provided by the company with enough value and control; 3. Charm: Advertisement has to be more communicating and beautiful in terms of measurement scale; 4. Connected: Ads will help people to relate their life as it is with the product or services without changing their own social standard and finally 5. Calibration: all advertisement must be measurable economically as well as from CRM or customer relationship management perspective. (Hof, 2013) Technology and Advertisement: Technology like every other field plays an important role in the development of advertising and promotion. In the past, advertising was more or less in form of posters or in the print media. Companies with higher financial abilities could afford advertising in big road side hoardings. But as the time moves on with the innovation of technology, the pattern associated with advertising has changed. Now organizations are happier to communicate with people through social media, advertising on digital media as well as on television and radios. Facebook, Twitter all are key medium associated with the new age advertising. In an overall perspective, the technology has changed advertisement in two distinct ways – depth and speed. Over the years, mainly in the 20th century, the development of advertisement is more or less similar to that of development of psychology. Both of these are associated with the human behavior, prediction and ultimately helped to influence the final decision. Technology is playing a key role in motivating people to take those decisions. Internet is a great tool which helped people to increase their depth of knowledge about the product and at the same time helped the organization to understand people’s behaviors. With the innovation of internet technology at present people don’t need to rely on the magazine or any market research data to understand how their brands are performing in the industry. One key technology innovated by Double-click in the year 1995 is still helpful for various organizations to track the behaviors of various customers. Not only that, technological development helps a great way to understand the criteria of the customers and also help the companies to understand research data related to consumer behavior more easily. Internet also helped the companies to reach out to the mass in a far better way. For a long period of time various organization use Arizona as the testing ground for all their new products and advertisement. They used to launch any new product or advertisement in that stateand wait for 2-3 weeks to get the market data. If the product or advertisement gave positive results they used to launch it elsewhere. With the help of internet this tactics change as companies now launch product online and the process is faster. Before launching the product they use to promote the same with the help of print and digital media as well as through social media and internet. They often do customer survey before launching the product on the basis of advertisement only which gave them as advance idea of how the new product or service will perform.(Wieczorek, 2012) One of the key technologies associated with advertising is DTP or desk top publishing. In modern era, organization using this technology in a great way to create more advanced style of advertisement with more eye catchy diagrams, logos as well as appearance in the digital backdrops. Following are the few paths breaking software’s associated with DTP in modern era: Scribus: It is one of the most advanced tools associated with DTP. This application is associated with some of the most advanced features like CMYK and spot colors, ICC colour management, direct editing of vector drawings, extensive PDF support etc. All these are important in development of flyers, brochures etc. This is one of the most advanced technologies and people might need some time to master the same. Adobe Project ROME: It is one of the most interesting Adobe AIR based tool or application which helps organizations to create as well as published all kind of content letterheads, flyers etc. This application helps in development of animation and websites as well. This application was started to lose its importance since 2010 but there are no advanced form of the same which is ready to replace this application. Photo Pos Pro: Generally the smaller organizations do not need the full DTP package as sometimes that full package seems to be not cost effective. For them, often a good and cheaper image editor is helpful for them to do the necessary advertising works and Photo Pos Pro is a perfect example. It helps organizations to develop small images and pamphlets in a faster pace with very less cost and this application is enrich with useful graphics editing options, layer support to develop eye catch effects of colour and advanced tools like Text on a Path to add a professional touch. (Williams, 2013) Future of Technology in Advertisement: To make the advertisement of future more attractive and more helpful for the customer to understand the offerings of the company and at the same time to make it easier for the companies to understand what the people actually are looking for-advanced and more simplified technology will play a major role. If one considers this same technology that is DTP the technology need some improvement to make it easier for the companies to use. First of all DTP need to be more simplified , as the above discussed technologies need to be combine in to one single operation; secondly DTP need to incorporate application to change any printing advertisement or catch line without tampering the overall appearance of the logo. It has often been observed that after launching a new advertisement, within a few weeks’ time company feel like making some minute changes to that. DTP must have the technologies to incorporate those minute changes. It will not only save the time but can also reduce the cost. Thirdly, it is important desk top publishing software must be classified as per the broader application and that is large advertisement on papers, hoardings or pamphlets and small printouts. If this is there, then small companies can also use the application on their own rather relying on agencies to design their own advertisements. The above discussed ones are some common as well as small changes which can be helpful for companies to use DTP in a bigger ways. One must also remember that it is not only the technology that needs to be updated; people associated with making advertisement also need to update their mindset with the time. Conclusion: On the basis of above analysis, it is very clear that technology is very much associated with the modern era of advertising and at the same time advertising is playing a key role in changing the way people used to live in the society or look at various things. Advertising not only helps people to associate with good habits by promoting various social messages against smoking, drinking or rash driving but at the same time it also helps people to choose better among the best. But this is only the positive side as there are negatives also associated with the advertisement and specially the way it dominates young generation and children. Rigorous advertising of fast food, high cost video games, branded clothes often make young generation attracted towards those and might create some social differences as well as there are various families who are not in a financial condition to afford those. But Young mind often not in a position to understand the same so it might create differences as it may create social disturbance. So one can say, as advertisement is important for the people as well as the organization but at the same time companies must keep in mind that advertisement must not create social misbalance both economically as well as status oriented. References: 1. Bhatt, P; (2012); 6 Ways That Advertising Negatively Affects Us; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from http://www.pathikbhatt.com/2012/6-ways-that-advertising-negatively-affects-us/ 2. Connolly, K; (2011); Six ads that changed the way you think; BBC News; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11963364 3. Hof, R; (2013); Heres The Future Of Advertising, According To Google; Forbes; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/04/10/heres-the-future-of-advertising-according-to-google/2/ 4. Johnson, M; (2013); The Importance of Advertising: Selling the Sizzle, Not the Steak; Udemy/Blog; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from https://www.udemy.com/blog/importance-of-advertising/ 5. Lad, K; (2009); Effects of Advertising on Children; Buzzle; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/effects-of-advertising-on-children.html 6. Naik, A; (2011); Why is Advertising Important; Buzzle; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/why-is-advertising-important.html 7. Sifferlin, A; (2013); Forget the Food: Fast Food Ads Aimed at Kids Feature Lots of Giveaways; Time; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from http://healthland.time.com/2013/08/29/forget-the-food-fast-food-ads-aimed-at-kids-feature-lots-of-giveaways/ 8. Wieczorek, M; (2012); How has technology changed advertising? Marktaw; retrieved on 8.8.2014from http://www.marktaw.com/b/pm/how_technology_has_changed_advertising/ 9. Williams, M; (2013); Best free DTP software: 6 programs to help you create top-quality documents; Techradar; retrieved on 8.8.2014 from http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-free-dtp-software-6-programs-to-help-you-create-top-quality-documents-1139625 Read More