240MC Advertising Lecture Five Advertising in the Digital Age? John Keenan

1. 240MC Advertising Lecture Five Advertising in the Digital Age? John Keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

2. So far… The Cultural and Semiotic Analysis of Advertising Advertising’s role in maintaining capitalism How advertisers targeting groups help to create social roles The audience’s inbuilt resistance to advertising Advertising and the representation of disabled people

3. Advertising is dead…. ‘At some point these words ceased to have meaning. We no longer believed that one product was any brighter or cleaner than any other…by the early 1990s a new approach to marketing came to the fore’ The Persuaders, PBS 3.31

4. Consumer Culture ‘The audience is increasingly made up of a media-literate generation, its members, rather than seeking the truth, in turn self-consciously mimic the media – they adopt the persona of fictional characters as a way of expressing themselves, they discuss their personal lives as analogies with the story-lines of soap-operas, and talk in catch-phrases of celebrities and the slogans of advertising campaigns. They know when they’ve been Tango-ed’ Lury, 1997: 70 ‘it makes no sense to criticize people for being insufficiently materialistic; instead, we should submit to the magic of advertising as a playful code’ Lury, 1997: 71

5. Consumer Culture ‘Comsumption is founded on a lack – a desire for something not there...consumers...will never be satisfied. The more they consume the more they will desire to consume...One day it will all change. But until then, people living under the influence of post-modern capitalism’s consumer culture will continue to desire the unattainable – that is the satiation of all their desires’ Bocock, 1995: 69

6. Today • Advertising in a digital age • The digital age • The rise of global brands • Methods of cutting through noise

7. The digital age Source: Ofcom 2006-11 5 years

8. The digital age 1981 =

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10. E.g. cd =0011001010

11. The digital age =

12. The digital age Optic-fibre cable

13. 4G

14. Advertising is dead…. Long live advertising

15. ‘After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electrical technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both time and space as far as our planet is concerned…As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village’ McLuhan, 1964, pp11-12 cited in Sreberny-Mohamadi, 1997, p.177

16. 1. Global branding Coca-colaization (Hannerz, 1992:p.217 cited in Howes D, Cross-Cultural Consumption,1996,London: Routledge, p.3) ‘One sight, one sound, one sell’

17. Global branding Gillette Gillette

18. Global branding

19. .. ‘Differences between Brazilian and Arab sensibilities to scantily clad men and women playing on a beach require shooting different versions of the commercial so that each version will fit local cultural values’ O’Barr, 1994: p.200

20. Global branding Now a brand manager has an entirely different responsibility. Their job now is to create and maintain a whole meaning system for people through which they get identity and understanding of the world. Their job now is to be a community leader Douglas Atkin, The Persuaders, PBS

21. Global branding Helping people build a better world WOMAC Corporate social responsibility - CSR http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/cif-green/2010/nov/09/niger-delta-shell-crisis

22. Global branding Corporate memory Nike – ‘irreverance justified’

23. And the conclusion was that people whether they are joining a cult or joining a brand do so for exactly the same reasons they need to belong they want to make meaning we need to figure out what the world is all about and we need the company of others. Douglas Atkin, The Persuaders, PBS

24. Global advertising communities Roland Barthes Mythologies

26. When you listen to brand managers talk you can get quite carried away in this idea that they actually are fulfilling these needs we have for community and transcendence but in the end it is a laptop and a pair of running shoes and they might be great but they are not actually going to fulfil these needs Naomi Klein, The Persuaders, PBS

27. 2. New styles of advertising Hyperreal Simulacra = the image has no relation to any reality whatsoever

28. 2. New styles of advertising : Intertextuality Think

29. 2. New styles of advertising: irony ii) Red Rock

30. 2. New styles of advertising: bricolage ‘Postmodern images…not only escape referentiality and ideology, also escape textual discipline exerted by organising concepts such as genre, medium or period. They can be and are culled from any genre, any medium, any period’ John Fiske, Postmodernism and Television, Chapter 3 in Mass Media and Society, 2nd Edition (1996), London: Arnold, p.57

31. 2. Postmodernism: pastiche The shift is not one of significance but spectacle John Fiske, Postmodernism and Television, Chapter 3 in Mass Media and Society, 2nd Edition (1996), London: Arnold, p.58

32. Method 3 Stealth advertising

33. Method 4 PR The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR 72point.com

34. Travelodge

35. Ann Summers

36. Method 5: Move Below the Line Above the line Traditional mass media Below the line Leaflet folder brochure catalogue timetable postcard stationery diary pelmet dummy pack wire stand clock trade figure display stand crowner sticker sample coaster ashtray shelf edging sky writing sky banner airship projection calendar CD DVD carrier bag t-shirt sweatshirt cap pullover scarf umbrella tie jacket sash towel flag playing cards matchbooks paperclips badge sticker

37. Method 6: Move online http://www.emarketer.com/BrowseResearch.aspx

38. Method 7: personalised adverts ‘The time has long passed when buying and selling was an unmediated activity that took place in a market..we are now accustomed - and often jaundiced - to commercials … homogeneous messages may be on the wane. More narrowly focused messages that are better fitted to our consuming profiles are on the rise’ O Barr, 1994: p.200 Rich media interactive billboards Text Till receipt Banner ad ATM Loyalty card Facebook/MySpace Sponsored link Google stores all the information. Acxiom uses information

40. Method 8: sponsorship

41. Method 9: Buzz advertising Buzz marketing 2-step flow The Alpha Pup - P-O-X

42. Method 10: Viral Marketing

43. Method 11: Get banned

44. Method 12: Don’t advertise

45. Method 13: Go guerilla