Lecture notes for week ten
Mon. view homework on website, Geoff not being here on Friday: No Logo, public space and the commons, check out ethics case studies
Visit with Steve Muller
Publics
Strategies and synergy
Competition
Ethics
Weds.
Advertising background: “to understand modern society study advertising”
Increase of manufacturing needs to increase the manufacturing of consumers
WWI and psychological theory –
people are not rational (a very different premise from our founding fathers – freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas based people being rational),
aim for the unconscious,
tendency to be most influenced when zoned out and not attending to ads
moving from rational to irrational messages
news/information to advertising/persuasion, propaganda,
shift from word to image, image as truth (if I read something, I am skeptical, if I see something I am persuaded, photos don’t lie)
human need for symbolic knowledge, symbols are never neutralthose who understand this use symbols tied up with power
Pavlovian psychology – subconscious response, can be trained with juxtaposition of something desirable or a human need with other stimuli
Production of discontent – you are not okay, inner sense of conflict, anxiety – opposite of therapy – never hear you are okay, just be you
Dream world – magical thinking, marketplace does not provide what most people describe as happiness (love, respect, friends)
Implications:
Consumerism: advertising seeks to monopolize cultural space, strong socializing influence, compare the greeks value of beauty vs. today’s world (for selling of products), personality as job qualification, turn ourselves into products, advertising is our role model
Premeditated waste: culture of invisible of where things come from and where they go
Using up of resources, sense of entitlement as the well off used the resources that the less well off could or need to have, 3rd world people are our competitors to our resouces and way of life
Democracy: all voices heard, technology is at the most advanced but used for advertising, freedom of government interfering in our lives, but how to manage freedom from corporate and advertising influence
What to do
Not censorship, but more free speech
Disengage from advertising system, where does it end and you begin (what thoughts are your own)
Advertising chapter 12: text notes
How different mediums and time periods influenced advertising
Newspapers – come to shops
Magazines – Civil War to 1880’s prosperity, images, brands, muckrakers, FTC
Radio – allows radio to be “free”, national audiences and expanded reach, roaring 20’s
TV – WWII public service announcements, increase of consumer products
Compare ads from the past
Text analysis vs. audience analysis (inferential feedback)
Products – audiences – methods, techniques – special effects
Correlation vs. causality – advertising 50%, can track some effects by public interest advertising – drunk driving campaigns, seat belts, recycling, HIV prevention and condoms – plus limits on some advertising such as tobacco and alcohol, Joe Camel effectiveness
EPIC and the long tail
What do initials stand for?
Futuristic – applies the ideas of convergence – everything is digital,
globalization – is everywhere,
hypercommercialism – competitive with few restraints or checks,
audience fragmentation
Relationship between media and society – protecting free speech means protecting media from government interference, save us from totalitarian governments, what of entities larger or let’s say as powerful as government, government (public interest, public trust, commons) doesn’t have place in the discourse, media is a checks and balances system, what are the checks and balances beyond the marketplace
Is the future now? The long tail, use x-y axis, future of marketing for entertainment, customer is always right,
Stuff last forever, endlessly replicated
Empower of individual, consumer values rather than citizen, collective awareness and wisdom of the crowd, leads to Web 2.0 approaches
