Applied Buyer Behaviour in Global Context - Essay Example

Applied buyer Behavior in global Context By Presented to Applied buyer Behavior in global Context The ‘Keep Walking’ advertisement by Johnnie Walker uses dual and complex image branding to create purposes for the product. Elements of tradition and heritage form the pictorial basis of the development. First, the golden striding man within the video is a critical sign used in branding of products from the Johnnie Walker brand line. This essay intends to analyze the advertisement in light of the commercial communication expressed in the video. The main character is male and is inferred from subsequent codes through style of clothing and tall hat alongside the stick. The elements define dressing styles from the British heritage of the 19th century and signify tradition and high social statuses. The man is presented as walking through presumably confident and the fast pace is a symbol of impacting confidence in the unpredictable future. Further, the text running on the screen is a signifier of elegance, tradition, and success as the golden color refers to wealth. The white and clear font comprising of the taglines illustrates the contemporariness and future for which there are reservations of subtlety and tradition (Lamb, Hair & McDaniel, 2011, p 45). Black background within the video accompanies the text signifies the uncertainty and has an arguably opposition to the courage that is inspired by a striding man. While signs have several fixed and essential meanings, the video narrows down to the context of possible interpretations. There are specific levels where the commercial depicts differences in terms of interpretation. Further, sumptuous architecture and statues coupled with bookshelves, dark color scheme, lighting, and other old objects promote the tone of calm voices. The orchestral music signifies history and tradition. Moreover, the video version shows a symbol of innovation and technological success in terms of discovery (Onkvisit & Shaw, 2008, p 38). The concept also highlights the scope of progress with a central concern to the ‘Keep Walking’ advertisement. The focus also shows that the extensive meaning of the advert is related to systems of differences that enable signifiers such as the striding man, the furniture and the hat to illustrate the differences the objects and concepts represented. Branding allows for the application of certain codes that help in telling success stories and the advert assembles various meanings that target audiences have to decode. The meaning of the decoding includes the possibilities involved in shared meaning systems as well as cultural codes with a direct relationship to the marketing discourse (Shimp, 2010, p 156). The success concept is largely transferred through Johnnie Walker while the entire brand is given a success meaning. The meaning of the brand is transferred on to people using it, and those who buy Johnnie Walker as a product and not the whiskey bottled in the packaging. The association of Johnnie Walker value proposition with individuals’ results in reflection based on how individuals are perceived for aspects of branding and the use of social meaning for such brands. The Johnnie Walker advertisement shows how people use the product brand and the regarded to being successful. The advert presents various forms of decoding that may result in different forms of responses from the audience. Dominant responses include high levels of understanding of as well as agreement with the advertising message. The reason for the interpretation is the potential consumers share the belief that success is a constant self-improvement process without the need of involving matters of material wealth (Onkvisit & Shaw, 2008, p 85). The approach is most likely to face influences from the message of the audiences and influence them towards buying Johnnie Walker products (Lamb, Hair & McDaniel, 2011, p 37). Radically different approaches to responses are considered while audiences reject and misinterpret the advertising message. Application of this concept to the Johnnie Walker advertisement shows oppositional responses that allow for audiences to interpret success as equitable components to material wealth and high professional statuses. Individuals falling in this category have a high likelihood of buying Johnnie Walker because of the disagreements with the definition of success as presented by the brand. The element of difference is based on a misinterpretation of the content. Finally, audiences could accept segments of the advertising message through giving negotiated responses. Some of the customers may agree with the fact that success involved self-improvement while regarding success based on wealth and status (Manning, 2012, p 74). Negotiated decoding in Johnnie Walker’s advertising message has a less likelihood of amounting to high product sales irrespective of the sales attained. Johnnie Walker’s advert can be used in determining indirect responses based on two-step flows and involvement of advertising messages sent to opinion leaders who may send similar messages to less active persons. For the case of Johnnie Walker, opinion leaders have a direct input in the campaign while adopting oppositional, negotiated or dominant responses. Their responses are sources of influence among the groups who are opinion leaders. The implication is that such individuals facing influences from opinion leaders have a possibility of adopting responses similar to them. Johnnie Walker’s advertisement is highly visible across media such as the Internet, ideas from opinion leaders are placed in digital contexts. The application of two-step flow among social websites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, allow Johnnie Walker’s campaign team to reach consumers with extensive access to other individuals online (OGuinn, Allen & Semenik, 2008, p 126). Making simple posts through advertisement integrate the video’s message of Johnnie Walker products on YouTube. For instance, this results in brand awareness based on diverse populations. Johnnie Walker manages to work continually with wider marketing contexts and on different media for characterization of convergence based on media platforms and advertising message that it is delivered. For processes that take place within the company, the interpretation of the consumer is based on media convergence for purposes of achieving high levels of success for Johnnie Walker and significance in determining better presence in terms of Johnnie Walker brands. The audience is in a position of interacting with such brands on different media such as TV, Internet and magazines (Onkvisit & Shaw, 2008, p 374). Convergence of Johnnie Walker advertising efforts is achieved through communicating unique messages on different media. The advertisement differs from other forms of advertising as it is partly created based on individuals’ opinions. This is the point of view for which marketers adhere to in terms of devising meanings of the messages and broadening the scope of culture based on the ease in recognizing the interpretation of the segments. The most apparent element of the advertisement is the elements of the market established by previous campaign productions as revealed within aspects such as opinions of audiences about success and their respective group ages. There is a critical contribution of the most possible elements of high achievers, lifestyle and social class. The advertisement sells something else other than consumer goods because Johnnie Walker offers a reflection success values, opinions and perceptions of the audiences. The marketers sell us the concept of value and extrusion (Manning, 2012, p 278). The idea relates to ways in which such an advertisement targets the audiences and achieves strategic application of emotion. The major elements of emotions are targeted based on the Johnnie Walker campaign of sustained happiness, because of the strong emphasis attached to different adverts for individuals attaining happiness based on personal and non-material successes. In the Johnnie Walker commercial, there is a series of affect emotion elements such as the uplifting orchestral music and tone of voice together with silenced music coupled with clear words of ‘one great thing’ (Mohan, 2009, p 132). The music plays as the man walks along. Words such as ‘much longer’, ‘stronger’, ‘faster’, ‘great’ and ‘can achieve immortality’ are contributors to the audiences’ emotional appeal. The shot for the close-up nonverbal illusion of direct address triggers a critical emotional involvement for the audience with an arguably high and latter feeling of happiness and self-confidence. The implications to the viewer are that customers have positive attitudes to the hold onto the campaign (Onkvisit & Shaw, 2008, p 94). The concept promotes rational appealing to work based on the effective and emotional appeals that insist on advertising as a ‘specific and factual’ elements of selling generalizations and puffs. The marketers of the Johnnie Walker advertisement argue that the appropriateness of emotional appeals for the scope of advertising can be underrated. The concepts of Johnnie Walker within the campaign are highly successful based on the sales focused on emotions. The emotional appeals allow Johnnie Walker targets men who are inferred by representations of gender within various commercials. The fact that myths of communication systems have different meanings on the message that reinforces concepts of Johnnie Walker masculinity, the message targets the male population. The marketers achieve this through establishing myths like the top hat on the walking man to signify tradition and the upper class of 19th century in Great Britain (Pricken, 2008, p 126). The Johnnie Walker commercial dwells on the myth of technology and progress. The scope of age, class, and gender involves other discourses that focus on Johnnie Walker’s product line. The man featured in the advertisement is between young and middle-aged and helps Johnnie Walker address a broader range of male audiences. The characters within the advert tend are involved in a less than usual activity that reflects on the courage, good professional status or a significant change. Irrespective of the postmodernism reflected in cultural norms rejection, the ad depicts the concept of ‘idealized images’ developed through social norms such as those evolving over time and those that show how company advertising deals with similarity and difference issues within the ultimate representations. The advertisement does not involve images of persons with disabilities and does it represent religious or ethnic groups despite targeting numerous markets. The idea of having idealized images allows for the presentation of Johnnie Walker as the user of stereotyped works and the ordering processes that reduces individual’s scope of few, essential simple, characteristics. The representation theory is outlined based on the necessary reflections of postmodernist approaches as suggested by the advertisement away from the use of various postmodern elements (Manning, 2012, p 212). There are elements in the advertisement that cause people to receive similar messages based on the advertising campaign. It makes it impossible to conclude that other people are drinking Johnnie Walker. The trick used by the advertising team is to be different from other advertisements. The element of advertisements decoding depends on the advertising literacy levels of the audiences and the discourses in which members are involved in. This is because the audience finds it hard to make sense of various ads unless there is a possibility of experiencing a variety of discourses. Moreover, advertising presents various processes of communication that such audiences are neither passive nor homogeneous (OGuinn, Allen & Semenik, 2008, p 326). There is a push to have active participation in of the process of decoding. The audiences are not always able to interpret the meaning of the advertisement based preferred meanings expressed by the advertiser (Shah, 2009, p 153). Preferred meanings include success that is not materialistic terms for elements such as wealth and professional status. The overriding scope is to become a better man possessing an unquenchable solicitation for self-improvement. Preferred meaning is one of the possible interpretations of advertising message where alternatives have aberrant meanings deviating from preferred meanings at different degrees. The audience read into an advertisement’s additional meanings past the elements intended to quick sight. The impact is that the audiences develop different approaches to thinking about the way some things meddle together. For example, aberrant meanings of the advertisement include an influence on political discourses and define success based on loyalty within the political systems. The other illustration is success interpretation of as high professional status and material wealth (Lamb, Hair & McDaniel, 2011, p 28). The campaign is a reflection of the hypothesis regarding postmodern societies where contradictions and focus towards entertainment value is based on postmodernism esthetics for the outgrowth of contradictions as generated within social spectacles. In conclusion, the advert employs a number of stereotypes for standardized and idealized images that are created to depict professional success, and good-looking well-dressed characters conveying ‘sex-role stereotypes’ against sex-appropriate appearance, behaviors, skills, interests, and self-perceptions. Men are displayed as major achievers for aspects of sports and strong abilities in management and overcoming obstacles. The absence of women and subsequent groups such as ethnic, social, and religious from the advert leads to symbolic annihilation. The interpretation is that women and subsequent groups cannot be represented and that their contribution to the product is not substantive. The target audience of Johnnie Walker is mainly men and not the women. Further, subsequent forms of representation can be applied among males with their absence counting as no reference for disabled persons or clearly defined ethnicities. Johnnie Walker is characterized by socially idealized imagery that fails to capture a representative diversity among the target audience. However, there is a likelihood of achieving purpose for advertising Johnnie Walker based on an ‘ideal’ aspiration. References Lamb, C., Hair, J., McDaniel, C., 2011. Essentials of Marketing. New York: Cengage Learning. Manning, J., 2012. The Modern Advertisement: Its Resources and Curiosities. New York: Nabu Press. Mohan, M., 2009. Advertising Management: Concept and Cases. New York: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. OGuinn, T., Allen, C., Semenik, R., 2008. Advertising & Integrated Brand Promotion. New York: Cengage Learning. Onkvisit, S., Shaw, J., 2008. International Marketing: Strategy and Theory. New York: Routledge. Pricken, M., 2008. Creative advertising: ideas and techniques from the worlds best campaigns. New York: Thames & Hudson. Shah, K., 2009. Advertising N Promotion. New York: Tata McGraw-Hill Education Shimp, T., 2010. Advertising, Promotion, and Other Aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications. New York: Cengage Learning Read More