Photography and Consumer Culture: Coca Cola - Essay Example

? Photography and consumer culture A critical study Everyone has seen coca cola’s Happiness factory ad; it has been a winning approach in spreading brand love in the younger audience of coca cola. It was meant to create and increase positive brand perception among the target market, to differentiate the coco cola style of living from the rest, to create a distinction between the people who drink coca cola and the people who don’t, and it achieved its objectives successfully by getting 7.5 out of 10 on severely high positive brand perceptions. So, what made the ad so successful? What was the reason behind its immense popularity? The reason for the immense success was that the ad targeted the essence of the consumer culture. Now, what is consumer culture? Consumer culture is the culture of the market: a pattern of beliefs, values, and customs shared by a group of people in a limited or restricted geographic area, in a tribe, and/or over a shared value system etc. (Lury 2011, p.112-119). Consumer culture propagators believe that the buying and selling of goods and services is a cultural activity, affected by the cultural perceptions of people and not just the economical and political factors (London & stone 2012, p.298-306). By saying so, we mean that what effects one individual affects the whole cultural community. In other words, we can say that consumer culture is strongly influenced by consumerism; this concept promotes that the desire for goods generates and fosters the bases of a social and economical culture. This theory of consumer culture believes that social cultures are based on the demand of goods and services in a particular community. This joint demand of commodities brings together the people of a geographic area and ties them in a community. Consumer culture is tightly bound with advertising and globalization since the limitation of geographical boundaries has been rendered useless by the integration of world markets. To understand it better we must look at the features of consumer culture: 1. The founding idea of the concept is that people’s identities are defined by the commodities that they own and the services they can afford to purchase. 2. It bases on the premise that the attainment of happiness is dependent on the accumulation of things and objects. 3. Leisure time is also an important factor in consumer culture; the free time in which people go and shop the products/commodities which define their status. People are tied together in a culture through the products they own and the services they utilize. This concept is particularly useful in marketing and advertising where creating an ad for every individual in the target market will be impossible and very expensive, consumer culture concepts lets marketers create an ad that grabs the attention of a large market share (London & stone 2012, p.298-306). A point to be considered here is that although an individual may belong to a culture but he/she also has some individual opinions, thoughts, and way of perceiving things and objects. So what should an ad comprise of to generate the desired results in all consumers, or at least in a major segment of the target market? Taking a look at our ad, the happiness factory ad shows explicit and colorful images to support and strengthen its underlying message so as to attract the attention of its target audience immediately. The ad is different in its creativity and approach; it is not saying anything, there are no words used, but still the message is loud and clear and evokes the desired results. It explicitly indicates a way of living, a particular and differentiated life style that is only for those people who drink coca cola. What coca cola is trying to do is create a culture, a brand tribe of coca cola across the world, in all areas where coco cola is operating. It wants to create the impression that people who drink coca cola are united by a unique experience that others are far too unlucky to get or understand. (Wolman 2006, p.48-57) They want to convey the idea that coco cola delivers to its customers, superior quality product, and a bundle of value added services that are unique to coca cola and unreachable and by any other brand. This message, if correctly delivered, generates brand loyalty. People who once enter the culture do not want to leave and become repeat buyers; and is that not the ultimate goal of companies? We have discussed that advertising is an effective form to exploit the benefits of consumer culture. There is no doubt that we live in an era of advertising, where the brand image is more important than the actual product. A product is as strong as the image it has; the more people know about it the more aware they are about the brand, and the more chance that its sales and profits will increase. Advertising is a form of communication that is used to encourage or persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering. Since companies have gone global, advertising has also been diversified to include consumer culture aspects of the global consumer community. Globalization has paved the way for businesses to reap revenues from foreign markets, so, what is the force that makes this possible? How can advertising be made potent to create an impact and attract the potential target market? We know that an advertisement is as strong as the idea it uses, but there are other supporting details which provide the finishing touches and make the ad successful. Photography is one of them (Bogart 2010, p.27-35). Photography is an art and a science of creating durable images. All the ads that we see nowadays are an amalgamation of photographic images. Advertisement and photography is vital to the sustainability of consumer culture; ads construct cultural ideas about lifestyles, self-image, self-improvement, and glamour. They inspire desires and evoke the wishes of a person to become something more than s/he currently is. It evokes the aspirations that lie hidden within a person; the desire to grow and develop, and improve and succeed. It is human nature that they always want more than they have, and are struggling continuously to move up the social ladder. Consumer cultures have developed the conscious of social classes, they have set the bar for the elite and people are forever struggling to achieve that bar. But how is this communicated? How is it conveyed to the people? All this is done through advertisement, images, and photography. These are the cues given in a movie where the hero drives a Ferrari, lives in a pent house and wears suits by Armani. They are cues shown by a portrait depicting a beautiful woman wearing a diamond ring. A lot of advertising connects a product or brand with a particular life style. People, who identify with that lifestyle, will feel attracted to these products (Slater 2010, p.201-211). When people feel like a person (celebrity, role model etc.), and an ad or commercial values that, people will feel willing to buy the product or brand; even if it isn't presented that prominently in the ad, people believe they like the product because it is like them (Bogart 2010, p.27-35). Ads influence people to form associations and affiliations with them, which result in lasting relationships with the brand. Photography gives a face to consumer culture. It induces the unconscious desires of the human heart and mind. Freud spoke about the unconscious mind; it is the repressed feelings, automatic skills, unacknowledged perceptions, thoughts, habits and automatic reactions, complexes, hidden phobias, and desires Freud believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the unconscious mind, like hidden messages from the unconscious. He interpreted such events as having both symbolic and actual significance. These feelings are suppressed from the conscious mind for various reasons, and are brought to surface by some stimulus. These unconscious desires of people are the untapped potential market for the marketer who wants to sustain the consumer culture concept. By creating an ad that appeals to unconscious desire, a product can hold the market in its palm. People make associations and affiliations to the product which gives them the inkling that they can achieve what they desire. A product that they imagine can give them the things they want, a lifestyle that they crave, and a product that shares with them the possibility of achieving excellence (Slater 2010, p.201-211). Photography is the fuel that induces these yearnings in customers. In a consumer society demand for products is constantly changing; people are just a remote click away from being attracted to another product and switching brands (Bennet 2009, p.2-5). Advertisers need to constantly upgrade, renew, and repackage their product to make them look new and inviting to the fickle customer. They are ever trying to increase the product’s life cycle and save it from dying out in comparison to new products in the market. The product needs to be able to excite the customers at all times and induce in them the desire that keeps them wanting to be a part of the lifestyle that the product offers. Photography is absolutely necessary in the sustainability and survival of manufacturers in the consumer society. Without photography the consumer culture will not endure the constant competition war that is raging. Coca cola is a well established brand and yet it constantly needs to make and share new advertisements that are different and more enticing than the previous to keep the image and message alive and fresh in the minds of consumers. The happiness factory ad stimulates in them the feelings of belonging to an exciting lifestyle and rekindles in them the desires of appearing cool and hip. The ad targets the younger population (17-19 years) as they are the ones who are inspired by the hip lifestyle and want to appear dandy and aloof in front of their peers. The happiness factory ad assures them that drinking coca cola will make them stand out like an icon amongst their reference groups. It is believed that coca cola’s advertising has strongly affected the American culture. They have used creative ways of advertising since the first ads in 1930’s using vivid graphics, pictures, still life portraits, and songs etc. They have forever kept the subject matter of the advertisement focused on the consumers they are targeting. The subject matter is the focal point on which the whole photography is based; it is the point which the artist, or in our case advertiser, chooses to photograph around. The forms of photography have also gone through evolution since the first ads began to appear. They change with time, technology, and social demands of the era. The first ads were simple black and white ads and now we see 3 dimensional space ads. Consumer culture has been a driving force in changing the subject matter and form of photography; where once photography was just a recreational activity, now it is an aesthetic art which can be sold in the market to generate revenues. The changing need and demand of consumers have forced artists to think up new and innovative forms of photography (Featherstone 2007, p.360-365). The medium of photography has become enticing and rich, arguing different points and angles of the subject matter and creating excitement and anticipation for the customer. It has become diverse and novel to meet the changing needs of time; it has become multi linear and interactive so that it can involve the customers and interact with them in order to explore their suppressed desires and wants (McQuilten 2011, p.54-62). Photography persuades us to buy the product and become a part of the exclusive tribe which stands for a particular symbol: hip, cool, elegant, innovative, trendsetters etc. People will want to become part of the experience if they believe that they are what the product promises, and if their peers are doing the same. Photography persuades us subtly, not imposing the message it wants to convey but rather conveying it with such finesse that it seems like the most obvious thing for the customer to do, is buy the product. These subtle hints include the lights and colors used in the background, or the setting of the ad, the medium used, the music applied, the actors chosen, the references given, and the main theme or idea of the ad (Burger 2012, p.111-125). For instance, in the ad above, showing skinny women reinforces the message coke wants to deliver, that drinking diet coke helps you maintain weight. Choosing beautiful women gives an underlying message that young and beautiful women drink Diet Coke. The happiness factory ad comprising of fictional creatures and imaginary lands spoke to the imaginative side of the customer, sick and tired of the real world and its stress and fatigue, the customer goes to the imaginary world with the ad and buys coke just because he bonds with the ad (Featherstone 2007, p.360-365). As photography has revolutionized consumer culture sustenance, so has consumer culture affected on the form and subject matter of photography, where once photography was a means to depict one’s feeling and a source of catharsis to man, showing the positive as well as negative aspects of the society that brought to light important issues of the society which lead to improvement of the community, now photography is only being used as a medium of communication between the manufacturing giants and the potential consumer, communicating only those facts and that information, which the advertiser deems fit for the audience. Photography nowadays is only a tale of glamour, fashion, and social status through rose tinted glasses. They fail to tell the truth or inform about the reality (Burger 2012, p.111-125). People, especially the youth, paint in their mind an abstract and mangled image of class, status, and social acceptance which leads them to change their view, beliefs, and cultural morals and ethics (Wolman 2006, p.48-57). The culture of the world at large is merging into one culture and that is the consumer culture. People are forgetting and forgoing their heritage and unique cultural and social values; the likings and preferences of people have integrated into one culture. People in the United States and people in Pakistan all follow the same brands and same celebrities endorsing those brands. They all are attracted by the commodities which give them leverage among their peers and make them feel a part of their social group; photography has enabled this phenomenon. So we can say that consumer culture has made photography a global phenomenon instead of just art. In a way we are still stuck in the social need phase of Maslow’s need hierarchy, where belonging to the society is all we care about. References Bogart, M. 2010. Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art, Chicago: the University of Chicago press, p.27-35 Bennet, D. 2009. “Getting the Id to Go Shopping: Psychoanalysis, Advertising, Barbie Dolls, and the Invention of the Consumer Unconscious,” The journal of consumer culture, Volume 17 Number 1:2-5. Burger, A. 2012. Ads, Fads and Consumer Culture. 4th ed. London: Rowman and Littlefield publishers, p.111-125. Featherstone, M. 2007. Consumer Culture and post modernism, 2nd ed. London: Sage Publishers, p.360-365. London, B. and Stone, J. 2012. Photography. 10th ed. London: Prentice Hall, p.298-306. Lury, C. 2011. Consumer Culture, 2nd ed. London: Polity Press, p.112-119. McQuilten, G. 2011. Art in Consumer Culture: Mis-Design. London: Ashgate publishing Limited, p.54-62. Slater, D. 2010. Consumer Culture and Modernity. 3rd ed. London: Polity Press, p.201-211. Wolman, B. 2006. The unconscious mind: the meaning of Freudian psychology. 6th ed. London: Prentice Hall, p.48-57 Read More