The Benefits of Critically Examining the Advertising Message - Assignment Example

To what extent does advertising romanticize cultural consumption Many people consider that there is too much advertising, which makes us more materialistic, keeps stereotypes, plays on our prejudices of not becoming socially acceptable, tells lie, uses children, aw well as corrupts the whole society. Though most of these ideas are not altogether true, there is a little truth to each of them. As a society we are embedded in a culture of consumption. Neil Postman (cited in Kenway & Fitzclarence, 1999, p. 300) notes that by the age of forty the average American will have seen well over one million commercials and have "close to another million to go before his first social security check". "In order to comprehend the impact of all this advertising, on society we must learn how to see through advertisements, for they are not just messages about goods and services but social and cultural texts about ourselves". Root (1997) has pointed out: As long as you are unable to decode the significance of ordinary things, and as long as you take the signs of your culture at face can free yourself from that sign and perhaps find a new way of looking at the world. You will control the signs of your culture rather than having them control you. (p. 18) In order to understand how to read advertisements critically we must begin to incorporate "popular culture as a serious object of politics and analysis" (Morley, 1992, p. 48). While all culture is worthy of investigation, popular culture is often devalorized as "sub-literature or paraliterature" (Eckhouse, 1999, p. 120). However, in critically reading even something as seemingly mundane as an advertisement we can begin to see "the political, social and cultural forms of subordination that create inequities among different groups as they live out their lives" (Giroux cited in Frith & McLuhan, 1997, p. 7). This type of critical pedagogy enables us to view aspects of popular culture within broader social, cultural, and political considerations. In the case of advertising, which has historically been linked to marketing and sales, it allows us to discover the broader social and cultural implications of these seemingly simple messages. The benefits of critically examining the whole advertising message, not just the surface or sales message, is that it helps to sharpen one's critical sensibilities. As Clark et al. (1994) points out this can "counteract the noncritical response so often conditioned by the mass media" (p. 31). The conventional way that marketers define advertising is to describe it as messages that "impart information about products which consumers use to make brand choices" (Beverley, 1999, p. 95). The limitation of this definition is that it falls short of giving us the whole picture. Advertising does much more than impart product information, it tells us what products signify and mean. It does this by marrying aspects of the product to aspects of the culture. Embedded in advertising's messages about goods and services are the cultural roles and cultural values that define our everyday life (Stern, 2001, p. 83). The products we consume express who we are, they are cultural signifiers. The kind of watch we wear, the brand of sporty shoes, or the kind of car we have give others a lot of information about us. Advertising not only tells us about the products we consume it also tells us what those products signify in our culture: People 'read' advertising as a cultural text, and advertisers who understand this meaning-based model can create more powerful and intriguing campaigns (Beverley, 1999, p. 99). One way to begin to understand "how" an advertisement means (Stern, 2001, p. 87) is to learn how to deconstruct them. Deconstruction, a critical theory of European origin proposes the real significance of texts not in their explicit meaning, nor even in their implied meaning but in their unintentional meanings, or as one author states, "in the slips, evasions and false analogies that betray the text's ideology" (McConnell cited in Power & Scott 2004, p. 52). In essence, deconstruction is a way of reading against the text, or as John Fiske (cited in Cronin, 2000, p. 119) would say, taking an "oppositional" reading. The aim of deconstruction is to expose the social and political power structures in society that combine to produce the text. By analyzing both the foreground and background of the advertisement-as-text it is possible to reveal the secondary social or cultural messages in which the primary sales message is embedded. Root (1997) explains this holistic view of advertisements in this way: Now if the product is the mental representation conjured up by the advertisement and supported by the story and the pictures, then the background, which includes users in their various settings, color, accessories, layout and so on is the signifier. In other words, the advertised product is the signified to which the background acts as a signifier; together they both form a sign. Thus, both are essential and as they are a unity there is no sense in asking which is more important or necessary than the other. (p. 37) This means that, in fact, the background of the advertisement is as important as the foreground because it creates the context without which there can be no meaning. Analyzing the cultural content of an advertisement involves interpreting both verbal and visual aspects of the advertising text to determine not only the primary sales message but also additional secondary social or cultural messages. Advertisements reflect society, in a sometimes slightly distorted way (Morley, 1992, p. 44), and by undressing or demystifying ads we can begin to see the role advertising plays in the creation of culture. The most useful technique for critically deconstructin both the surface and the deeper social and cultural meaning of advertisements is a form of textual analysis (Kenway & Fitzclarence, 1999, p. 303). This type of analysis is based on literary and artistic methods of critique. To begin, the textual analyst must devise a system of classification for understanding the meaning in a given text. Since print advertising is easiest to analyze in a book, we will start with some magazine advertisements. There are at least three ways in which any text, including an advertising text, can be approached (Frith & McLuhan, 1997, p. 73). First, one can read within the text "identifying the cultural codes that structure an author's work" (Giroux cited in Frith & McLuhan, 1997, p. 77). The second stage is retelling the story, which involves elaboration of the story in the text. The final stage is to "explode" the text, or what Stuart Hall (cited in Clark et al, 1994, p. 61) calls reading against the text. In this last stage, Eckhouse (1999) encourages readers to free themselves from the text by "finding a position outside the assumptions upon which the text is based" (p. 92). These three stages of reading an ad can be described as learning how to read the surface meaning, the advertiser's intended meaning, and finally, the ideological meaning. 1. The first, so called surface meaning, is based on the general impression that a reader might receive while y the advertisement studying quickly. Researches demonstrated that most magazine readers need approximately 3.2 seconds on any ad. 2. The second, so called advertiser's intended meaning, is a kind of sales message that the advertiser is making attempts to set forth. It's a kind of strategy behind the ad, a "preferred" or expected meaning that a consumer might obtain from the advertisement. This message may be either about goods or services, or about lifestyles. Advertisers use the opportunity to connect products with distinct types of lifestyles (like beer or cigarette advertisement). 3. The last, so called cultural or ideological meaning, is based on the cultural background of the reader. We all perceive ads referencing them to our own culture and to the standard shared systems of believes typical for many people. For instance, for Americans ideological in nature are beliefs in the power of free speech and democracy. They are not universal beliefs though they mostly held in this culture (Beverley, 1999, p. 112). In addition to the more obvious cultural beliefs, there are also more subtle ideological values expressed in ads. Stereotyping, for example, is based on cultural beliefs. As Cronin (2000, p. 102) has noted, before the civil rights movement of the 1960s, blacks were only featured in advertisements in subservient roles such as porters, cooks, and bellhops. Stereotyping can appear to be "common sense" until these representations are questioned by a large enough group of people. Most sales messages are built upon shared cultural or ideological beliefs, and advertising copywriters and art directors rely upon these shared belief systems when they create ads (Morley, 1992, p. 150). In order to really begin to see how advertising works to support and reinforce certain ideological beliefs it is important to deconstruct the deeper meanings of ads and learn how to take apart the cultural or ideological messages (Power & Scott, 2004, p. 46). Thus, in learning how others deconstruct advertising messages we can begin to realize that advertising only "makes sense" when it resonates with certain deeply held belief systems. To deconstruct an ad we must take it apart layer by layer, like peeling an onion. As we move from the surface message to deeper social messages we will see how this system of meaning works. As an example, let's take a look at this seemingly simple ad for Clorox Bleach depicted in Fig.1 (the image is taken from the Frith & McLuhan, 1997, p. 88). Remember as you read this analysis that it is not the only possible interpretation of this ad. Different people read texts in different ways, however, the purpose of this reading. is to show how advertisements construct meaning by referring to cultural myths and ideologies. The Surface Meaning. We might describe the surface level of meaning in this ad by listing all the objects and people in the ad. For example, the picture contains seven boys who are sitting together on what may be a king-size bed with their feet up and their shoes off. There are five white boys, one black, and one Asian. One boy near the center has a big smile on his face, he also is the only one who has somewhat discolored socks. All the other boys have whiter than white" clean socks. There is also a bottle of Clorox Bleach in the lower left-hand corner of the ad and a headline runs below the boys' feet that reads: "Guess who forgot the Clorox." The subhead says: "If you want your family to wear their whitest whites... Don't forget the Clorox Bleach." The Advertiser's Intended Meaning (the sales message). In this case, the advertiser is trying to point out that if "you" (the ad ran in Woman's Day, so we can assume that the "you" being referred to is a female reader) want your kids to look clean and well cared for, you should wash their white clothes with Clorox Bleach. The Cultural or Ideological Meaning. The underlying assumption in this ad is that laundry is woman's work. That is why this ad ran in Woman's Day and not in Gentlemen's Quarterly. Even though the majority of women in the United States now work full time, they are still regarded by advertisers as the people who do the laundry in most American households. In addition, the ad's headline is playing on a woman's feelings of guilt at being a less-thanperfect housewife and mother. The proposition in this ad is that all the other mothers someway managed to get their boys' socks light and clean, but you, the female reader, know that your kid often goes out, maybe even goes to overnight parties, with discolored socks (perhaps, the picture of boys on a bed in this ad is supposed to represent a group of boys at a sleepover party). The ad is saying, shame on you, mom. We might also note the fact that white is the privileged color in this ad. The boys are sitting on a white king-size bed, leaning on snowy white pillows, one boy is eating white popcorn. Most of the boys are white and most of the socks are white. White is endowed in this culture with good connotations. It means cleanliness and health, while dark colors connote death and evil. This is actually a cultural belief rather than a universally held truth. For example, in China white connotes death! While white is definitely the dominant color in this ad, the boy with discolored socks doesn't seem too concerned. In fact, the group of boys seem to be happy together and unaware of racial or color differences. But the copy is aimed at the mom. It is the mothers, the older generation, who are more deeply embedded in the cultural belief system, it is they who might see darker colors (including darker colored socks) as a negative. Thus, analyzing any kind of ad using similar techniques we perceive the influence of advertising on cultural consumption. Reference Beverley, J. (1999). Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Clark, E. M., Brock, T. C., & Stewart, D. W. (Eds.). (1994). Attention, Attitude, and Affect in Response to Advertising. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cronin, A. M. (2000). Advertising and Consumer Citizenship: Gender, Images, and Rights. New York: Routledge. Eckhouse, B. (1999). Competitive Communication: A Rhetoric for Modern Business. New York: Oxford University Press. Frith, K. T., & McLuhan, M. (1997). Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising. New York: Peter Lang. Kenway, J., & Fitzclarence, L. (1999). Designing Generations: Hybridising Entertainment, Advertising and Education. Australian Journal of Education, 43(3), 300. Morley, D. (1992). Television, Audiences, and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge. Power, D. & Scott, A. J. (Eds.). (2004). Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture. New York: Routledge. Root, R. L. (1997). The Rhetorics of Popular Culture: Advertising, Advocacy, and Entertainment. New York: Greenwood Press. Stern, B. B. (2001). The Why of Consumption: Contemporary Perspectives on Consumer Motives, Goals, and Desires. Journal of Advertising Research, 41(4), 83. Read More