CI5472 Teaching Film, Television, and Media

Module 6: Studying Advertising

A Broader Definition
of Advertising Instruction

In studying advertising, students are focusing on more than simply studying television or magazine ads. They are also studying all aspects of marketing, merchandizing, promotion, sponsorship, and branding associated with being members of a consumer culture in which all aspects of experience are commoditized. Moreover, they are examining larger issues of consumption associated with environmental impact as well as construction of values and identities in a consumer society — the subject of Sut Jhally’s Advertising and the End of the World.

Jhally argues that we need to understanding the role advertising plays in creating the needs for consumer goods in a capitalistic, consumer culture. The problem with this reliance on consumption is that creating and using consumer goods continues to not only use up the natural resources of oil, water, wood, iron ore, natural gas, coal, minerals, and the land, but to also create pollution through their use. For example, advertising creates the need to own a car to the point that everyone believes that they need to have car. The more cars that are built and sold, the more resources are used to build the cars, and the more cars are crowding highways and polluting the air, particularly those which are not energy-efficient. Given the growing number of countries who are becoming more consumption economies, and as the population of the countries grows, natural resources will be depleted or will become more scarce, as well as enhancing global warming and ecological devastation.

Media Awareness Network: Wasting Away: Natural Resources and the Environment

Media Awareness Network: The Resource Racket: A Global Perspective on Resources and Consumption

Webquest: Renewable Energy Resources

Center for Science in the Public Interest. (1996). Living in a Material World -- Lessons on Commercialism, Consumption and Environment. Curriculum materials on consumerism and advertising. Lincoln, NE: Center for Media Literacy.

Advertising in a consumer culture. Understanding advertising therefore requires an understanding of the larger consumer culture. In that culture, consumption is more than simply a matter of purchasing goods. In the past, the economy was built on simply exchange of goods in which the focus was on production and distribution of goods between individuals based on basic needs for food, housing, and health. Advertising during the 19th and early 20th century focused primary on providing information as to how a product served these basic needs:

An ad for Arm & Hammer Baking Soda™ simply described the functional uses for baking soda. After World War II, with the rise of a consumer economy, in which products or goods are consumed for more than just meeting basic needs, the focus shifted to consumption as active work involved in defining one’s identity and social relationships, consumption that influences global economies and markets (Miller, 1997). Thus, during the past century, advertising moved from simply providing information about a product to associating uses of that product with social status and identity, as well as the promotion of brand images.

Stuart Ewen (1999; 2001) argues that contemporary consumer culture emphasizes the importance of one’s social image—how one appears to others—as related to a perceived lifestyle. Advertisers market these images through associating the use of certain products with establishing a certain image—as hip, cool, sophisticated, or classy. These images of coolness are associated with models’ impersonal, withdrawn “look” of not being emotionally expressive. Wearing the “right” kind of clothes or owning certain “in” products serves to mark oneself as having allegiances to certain social status groups.

Consider the work you do in presenting yourself through the objects you include in your home for display to others, your clothes, media choices, car(s), or hobbies, as well as ways of differentiating your own choices from those of others in the home (Miller, 1997). To guide and socialize you in making these choices, businesses now spend billions of dollars to equate certain lifestyles or identities with certain brand images or signs — of, for example, being upper-middle-class with owning a Cadillac™ or wearing Christian Dior™ clothes. The meaning of being a certain kind of person is therefore equated with a meaning system of signs and images constructed by the advertising industry.

Given this early socialization into consumerism, it is important that students learn to not only criticize the messages being conveyed by ads, but also understand the larger marketing agendas behind advertising in the culture. As Jhally points out in Advertising and the End of the World, it is only when people recognize the larger problem of living in a world dependent on consumption that they will begin to change their attitudes towards the negative impact of consumption on the environment, which, he argues, will reach a crisis point in 2070 when raw materials and water have been depleted and climate change will render much of the planet unlivable. While it may be considered as “too late” to change adolescents’ perceptions of ads, it is during adolescents that they begin to acquire the capacity for critical thinking and analysis of larger institutional forces. It is therefore important to foster a critical stance during that time period, particularly one that examines advertising in the context of larger cultural values.

History of advertising links:

The Advertising Century

Harper’s Weekly: 19th Century Advertising

The Ad*Access Project: 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955

National Museum of American History: advertising archives

The Eisner Museum of Advertising & Design

Archives: top 100 ad campaigns

For examples of early ads:
http://www.admuseum.org/ads/resources
Advertising & Material Culture History

Video: (2002): Sell & Spin: The History of Advertising, A & E Home Video

Video: (1998): Talk Box: Advertising: The Art of Persuasion, Center for Media Literacy

Video: (2001-2003). HBO: Buy Me That! Complete Set—The Kid's Survival Guide to TV Advertising, Center for Media Literacy (3 part video series).

Anderson, N., & Pungente, J. (2000). Between the lines: Interactive projects for multimedia production. Lincoln, NE: Center for Media Literacy. (an online learning package that engages students in production of their own ads, as well as analysis and production of film techniques).

For further reading on the history of advertising and it’s influence on American culture:

Berger, A. A. (2001). Ads, fads, and consumer culture. New York: Rowan & Littlefield.

Berger, W. (2001). Advertising today. London: Phaidon.

Fowles, J. (1996). Advertising and popular culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Fox, S. (1997). The mirror makers: A history of American advertising and its creators. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Hine, T. (2002). I want that! How we all became shoppers. Lincoln, NE: Center for Media Literacy.

Leiss, W., Kline, S., & Jhally, S. (1990). Social communication in advertising: persons, products and images of well-being. New York: Routledge.

Mierau, C. (2000). Accept no substitutes: The history of American advertising. New York: Lerner.

Nava, M., Richards, B., & Macrury, I. (Eds.). (1997). Buy this book: Studies in advertising and consumption. New York: Routledge.

Samuel, L. (2002). Brought to you by: Postwar TV advertising and the American dream. Lincoln, NE: Center for Media Literacy.

Savan, L. (1995). Sponsored life —Ads, TV, and American culture. Lincoln, NE: Center for Media Literacy.

Schmitt, B., & Simonson, A. (1997). Marketing aesthetics: The strategic management of brands, identity and image. New York: Free Press.

Twitchell, J. B. (1995). Adcult USA: The triumph of advertising in American culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Twitchell, J. B. (2001). Twenty ads that shook the world: The century's most groundbreaking advertising and how it changed us all. Pittsburgh, PA: Three Rivers Press.

Twitchell, J. B. (2003). Living it up: America's love affair with luxury. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Advertising is therefore endemic to our consumer culture. It is:

Ubiquitous: it is now found in not only media texts, but also in all contexts of life: in sports arenas, bowl games, web sites, schools, restaurant bathrooms, clothing, highways, etc. Consumption of goods has now become a global activity, influencing cultures around the world, even in poor countries. Adolescents throughout the world have become increasingly conscious of brand names and consumer pastimes.
Anonymous: in contrast to books or songs, you never know who created the ad or wrote the jingles, so there’s no sense of accountability to what someone it promoting, or no way to challenge the producer of ads.
Symbiotic: in that its meanings are symbolic of or tied to larger agendas, social organizations, or campaigns. For example, Ronald Reagan political campaign ads employed the Bruce Sprinsteen song, “Born in the USA,” while Ford ads employed “Born to be Wild.”
Intertextual: in that ads are continually making references to other texts in the consumer/media world or in the culture. For example, the Super Bowl 2002 Pepsi ad with Britney Spears made references to previous Pepsi images from the soda fountain era of 1950s.
Repetitive: ads repeat their messages endlessly; the same ads may also appear many times during an ad campaign often in the same genre form, for example, the Energizer Bunny ads employ the same parody/spoof genre form.