MDIA1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: University Of New South Wales, Consumerism, Heinz Tomato Ketchup
29/03/18 UNSW notes | MDIA1002 Monique Munro
1
Media & Communication Contexts
Week 5 notes
MDIA1002 Lecture
Why do we advertise?
• Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice (2004) Chap 1
- Talks about supermarket shelves
+ Product categories, how many different products in the categories = freedom,
choice but is also problematic
+ Can get tired of making so many choices in life
• Changes to advertising
- The internet, allows us to search for things
- The basic principles of advertising have remained the same
+ Raise awareness
+ Connect products and services to consumers
+ Drives consumption in market based society
a lot of the demand of GDP is created by advertising Advertisers drive people
to products Greater demand for the product More is made and sold
Economy grows
• Advertising makes the choice easier
- Eg, John West Tuna creates interesting ads which helps promote the brand
(makes a shorthand, familiarises us with the brand with advertising)
• Two types of advertising
- Provide information
- Emotively engage
+ If we just provide information, people will reason over the info and will
conclude something but if an emotive response is generated, we can get people
to do something (buy or change their behaviour)
+ Saturatio/ oise: Copetig for our attetio = Create adds that ut through
all the clutter and noise of other advertisements to reach the target market
Why does advertising exist?
• Makes news/ social/ entertainment media commercially viable
- Needs to pay for itself, advertising does this
- The fashio idustr: Creatie, iterestig ads. Dot hae a uderlig
meaning. Are just beautiful produced, creatively directed = is likable.
How the industry is set up: Runways, editors for the magazines, those who buy
the ad space from the fashion houses and write on the products, events =
symbiotic in its relationship so why do we subscribe to magazines (eg, Vogue) if
the first 50 pages are ads? Because we like them and is why we buy the products
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
29/03/18 UNSW notes | MDIA1002 Monique Munro
2
- Lifestyle mags
+ People are lookig for hats out there ad hat the a u
+ Consumerism is tied up with lifestyle pursuits and the magazines do very well
from that
An independent news media?
• Journalism is an interesting case
- Had its income decimated by the internet
- The paper used to be filled with ads = Would pay for the journalism throughout
the week
+ Journalists are trained to be independent and objective, tension with paid
content that pays for journalism, put up walls between the advertisers and the
journalists within the paper Separation caused issues for the newspaper
- Argues that a lot of good knowledge was lost because the newspapers could not
pay the journalists
- Shows you how important advertising is to our society
Independence?
• Fairfax now has Made by Fairfax
- Full of journalists, PR agency, content and advertising producers, create and
compete in the space
- How independent are these agencies and what is the impact of this on society?
Social media
• Problems with over advertising but at least we are aware with what is happening,
addressing the problem and cutting back
• Paying themselves via the collection of data received
• Privacy and terms and conditions are changing, taking our data without realising =
e dot ko ho e are eig spoke to how we used to be spoken to in the old
days
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
29/03/18 UNSW notes | MDIA1002 Monique Munro
3
Why do we advertise?
• Raising awareness
• Changing minds
• Creating an emotional attachment
• Convincing people to do something
• Facilitating exchange (selling)
• Adding value
• Cultivating customer relationships
• Building brands
• Alter thinking and behaviour
- Public service announcements
• Solving problems
- Social and commercial problems
• A great ad is powerful
Creative ads
• Drive perceptions
• Persuade
• Cognition
- Puzzling elements Get us to think Engage
• Drive conviction
• Touch emotions
• Leverage associations
• Facilitate action/ change behaviour
Advertisers often does itself no favours
- Eg, Want longer lasting sex?
+ Unoriginal
+ In your face
No end of challenges
• Saturation of advertising messages
• Proliferation of media channels
• Fragmentation of audiences
- Where are they now? Where are people?
- They want to comment and argue, make ads themselves
• Empowerment of audiences
• Financial pressures
• Unprecedented client scrutiny
• Rapid technological change
- Trying to keep up
A culture of opposition
• Wharton, C. (2015) Advertising critical approaches. New York: Routledge. 137-139
• Developing a language of advertising
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
