Advertising in the Techno-Sphere - Literature review Example

Advertising in the techno-sphere Through magazines, the firms have the ability to target specific markets (Kaser 185).For example, while Sports Illustrated is popular with male sports enthusiasts, Family Circle is popular with women who are trying to juggle the responsibilities of home and work. Magazines have a long life span, and customers can view ads in a magazine more than once. Therefore, the organizations that advertize through the magazines have understood their magazine audiences. For example, the way in which an ad for a product appears in a sports magazine is different from the way the way the ad for the same product appears in a family magazine. However, the minds of consumers can consume everything that is offered by the advertisers, even trash. Peoples’ minds have become like large trash containers; they can put anything into them (Taylor 7). Once the trash gets in, it becomes hard to clean. Similarly, once the ideas and beliefs about a product get in into a consumer’s mind, it is difficult to clean them. Advertising has been a big business and Ralph Lauren has not been left behind. Taylor asserts that the marketing world is well equipped to address the psyche behind human nature (50). That explains the reason advertisers employ the best sociologists and psychologists and provide them with well-equipped research laboratories with equipments that can measure unconscious thoughts. Fashion designers have a tendency of manipulating the magazine audiences. Optical illusions appear in the magazines as well as other popular print media. Green lists the advantages of placing the ad in a magazine as long shelf life; high production value; high audience engagement; non-intrusive; potential for placement in highly relevant editorial environment; less distraction likely from other activities; and the ability to target niche audiences (3). For the fashion designers, advertisements are important sales tools, and they have the ability to create lasting impressions. Magazine advertisements have been popular with clothes designers and manufacturers. However, the impressions created in the minds of customers rely on the consistent message over time to maintain a brand’s image. For the apparels designers and manufacturers, images have to change from time to time in order to remain relevant to the audiences. Fashion has a tendency of changing rapidly and from time to time. For example, Ralph Lauren’s magazine ads have changed from the country club lifestyle images to urban/hip images to the current thoroughbred lifestyle images. This has made Ralph Lauren to be in the right place at the right time and with the right stuff (New York Magazine 46). However, the theme remains the same. The aim of this paper is to conduct an evaluation of Ralph Lauren’s advertising from 1980s to 2015, with special emphasis on magazine advertisements. The paper will use three magazine ads – one from 1980s magazines, another from 2000s magazines, and another from 2010s magazines. These pictures demonstrate the transformation in Ralph Lauren’s advertising over the last thirty-five years. Ralph Lauren audiences mostly comprise of the wealth hence it aligns its ads with the lifestyles of the wealthy such as Golf, Tennis and Polo (www.fctechgroup.com). This line of thinking has enabled Ralph Lauren to build up a wealth of heritage, associations, and brand references that keep its brand lines highly sought after. In the last two decades of the 20th century, Ralph Lauren ads were more urbanized and models more racially diverse and younger. In their study, Reichert and Lambiase concluded that Ralph Lauren’s magazine ads until 1991were exclusively country club (189). Ralph Lauren mainly designed clothes with ‘polo-emphasis’. The ad on page 65 of New York Magazine dated 22nd August 1988 features a woman and a man. A woman is wearing a suit by Ralph Lauren priced at $1,920 at Bloomingdale. The man is wearing a Polo Ralph Lauren cotton shirt, a wool-tweed jacket and a Polo Ralph Lauren hat all by Ralph Lauren. The clothes they are wearing or their posture are not sexual suggestive. However, they have high price theme in alignment with all Ralph Lauren’s products. After 1991, the magazine ads have mainly featured urban/hip lifestyle images. This trend continued for the rest of the 1990s with an average of 65 percent of all ads. Racial minorities also made their way into the magazines during that period with Blacks in Polo appearing in magazine ads. Young adult category of under-26 years were introduced in 1997. The content in the magazine ads for Ralph Lauren became more sexually provocative in the period 1980-2000 (Reichert and Lambiase 189). The 2000 magazine ad features Gisele Bundchen wearing a jeans short, sited on a bar’s stool with a man behind her. The jean’s short reveals Gisele’s thighs thus showing its sexual provocative nature. Ralph Lauren seemed to be changing his advertising strategy in order to maintain his competitive advantage. Polo advertising has been dominating Ralph Lauren magazine ads since the Company was founded. Traditionally, Polo advertising displayed what Thomas and Trieber defined as affluence in advertising: images that associate wealth, elite style, and tastes with executive status, power, and conservatism (109). According to the study by Reichert and Lambiase, Polo early advertising reflected that look. Polo adverts have been reinforcing the high-class theme in Ralph Lauren’s products. Apparel’s companies have shifted their marketing strategies from brand identity and differentiation alone, and they are now responding to shifting lifestyles and culture changes. Styles and preferences in the fashions industry not only change each year, but can change each season (Reichert and Lambiase 195). Reichert and Lambiase explore the attempts by Ralph Lauren to do both (195). Sexual provocative ads are dominating the current magazine ads. Ralph Lauren is using beautiful models to endorse his products. The magazine ads display very attractive models. By using such attractive models within the magazines and other print media, the company knows that its audience is likely to link its products to the positive connotations that these models have such beauty. There is also the likelihood of an element “buy this product be like this model”. All the three featured ads show Ralph Lauren’s element of uniqueness. Towards the end of 2000s, Ralph Lauren Polo’s brand concept changed because the market was changing. The current Ralph Lauren ads have been trying to appeal to the Y generation. Today’s generation is becoming more fashion-conscious, and they find sexually provocative images very appealing. Ralph Lauren had to change in order to compete with other brands such as Calvin Klein, Levi’s, and Banana Republic, who rely heavily on sensual ad appeals. Sex appears in advertising more today than ever before. The major competitor of Ralph Lauren has been Calvin Klein. CK has built its brand with attention-getting nudity and sexual imagery for the past 35 years. Other companies such as Ralph Lauren have been forced to shift their marketing strategies to a more Calvin Klein-type advertising approach. Ralph Lauren has moved a step towards the assumption that “slim is sexy”. In 2009, Miss. Filippa Hamilton said that he was fired by Ralph Lauren for being “too fat” (www.nymag.com). In the same year, Miss. Hamilton’s picture was photo-shopped by Ralph Lauren to display a much slender Miss Hamilton. However, this photo drew a lot of criticism from many different quarters. To Ralph Lauren, sexuality seems to be more than dress and interaction. Ralph has broadened his scope of sex in the magazine advertisement. Ralph Lauren has also integrated race into its advertisement. Merchandisers always claim to know what their audiences want, and by some standards, they are brutal in the steps they take to ensure that their audiences get it (Taylor 19). Bullock presents her readers with ignorant “people”, who can only be served best when manipulated (57). People were programmed long ago that polo is a game for the rich and wealthy people. Ralph Lauren followed what Key calls the advertising media that educates the poor into the acquisitive value systems of the rich (Taylor 51). In his quest to reveal the sexy side of ‘slimness,’ Ralph Lauren retouched Miss. Hamilton’s photo to make her look slender. The connotation is that slender women are more sexual. The photo was shocking to many people, and that is why it drew criticism. Ralph Lauren may deny the possibility that he intended to use such symbolism by retouching Miss. Hamilton’s picture. However, if people who were offended by that photo chose to ignore such photo manipulation, they would have given Ralph Lauren as well as other designers and manufacturers tacit consent to use it. Clothes designers and manufacturers use such manipulation every day. In a 1995’s Magazine Print Ad of Bridget Hall, on the stand which Hall is resting her right hand is a sculpture of a man’s head which seems to be gazing directly to Hall’s breasts. This head sculpture enhances the subconscious theme of the ad. A satyr is the sculpture symbol of man’s baser instincts, his primitive lustful dark side. By resting her hand on the base on which the head is placed, Hall is associated with instinctive eroticism. Since time immemorial, many individuals have discounted the use of sexual subliminal in advertising, putting them all down to the dirty mind of some viewers. Clothes designers and manufacturers have gone very far to manipulate the thoughts and desires of the consumers. Calvin Klein has used subliminal embeds in advertising since the company was founded. Calvin Klein has used these embeds unsparingly. However, other designers such as Ralph Lauren started to join in the 1990s. Ralph Lauren has been trying to misuse the psychological persuasion techniques to sell their products. In selling their products, they have also tried to communicate their ideas and beliefs. Since 1990s, Like Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren has been reinforcing these ideas and beliefs to the point that they are incorporated in various ways at differing levels of consciousness. As a result of continuous exposure to Ralph Lauren themes, beliefs about their products have emerged within the culture. The notions or constructs that are created by these beliefs do not reflect who an individual is, nor are they true to an individual’s highest potential. In many ways, the consumers have become the product of the product they have consumed. Ralph Lauren has been using polo, golf, and country club images to depict that their products are made for the high-class. Ralph Lauren continuous use of ‘high-class’ theme and associating it with sports activities, has created a belief about their products within the society. These beliefs have been reinforced since Ralph Lauren founded his company in 1970. As Taylor concluded it, “we are all the product of millions of years of survival evolution (6). Advertisers have understood how the mind of a human being works, and they have manipulated it for many years towards their advantage. They have transformed the mind from being itself to being a product that consumers other products that they produce. Works Cited Bullock, August. The Secret Sales Pitch. San Jose: Norwich Publishers, 2004. Print. FC Tech Group. A Glimpse Into the Thoroughbread Lifestyle of Ralph Lauren, 2010. Web. Accessed [March 19, 2015] http://fctechgroup.com/2010/06/22/a-glimpse-into-the-thoroughbread-lifestyle-of-ralph-lauren/ Green, Andrew. Understanding Magazine Audiences. Warc Best Practice. September 2011. Print. Key, W. Subliminal Ad-Ventures in Erotic Art. Brandon: Brandon Books. 1992. Kaser, Ben. Advertising and Sales Promotion. Mason: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print. New York Magazine. New York Media LLC, 22 Aug 1988. Print. New York Magazine. New York Media, 20 Sep 1993. Print. Reichert, Tom and Lambiase, Jacqueline. Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print. Taylor, Eldon. Mind Programming. New York: Hay House Inc, 2009. Print. The Cut. Was Ralph Lauren’s Magically Emaciated Model Fired for Being Too Fat?. Web. Accessed [March 19, 2015] http://nymag.com/thecut/2009/10/was_ralph_laurens_magically_em.html Read More