Understanding Advertising's Role in Capitalism: Targeting Fluid Identities

1. M98MC Week Three Fluid identities and Advertising John Keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

2. So far... Advertising’s role in maintaining capitalism. Five stages of advertising: utility, branding, symbol, personalisation, lifestyle. Methods, USP, semiotics The rise of consumer culture. 19th Century, 1950s, 1980s http://m98mc.wordpress.com

3. Reading check-upWeek One • Understains • Words in Ads • Freedom • Captains of Consciousness • Decoding Advertisements Watch Century of the Self and Ways of Seeing

4. Reading Check-upWeek 2 • Lury • Twitchell • Lee • Bocock • Goldthorpe • Papson • Baudrillard

5. Reading videos - volunteer

6. The postmodern condition What do you know?

7. Postmodernism 1 – sign not goods consumption ‘the game of sign consumption is an integral part of the ‘society of the spectacle’ Lury, 1997: 69 Baudrillard ‘all needs are socially created’ Lury, 1997: 68 ‘the logic of production is no longer paramount; instead the logic of signification is all-important’ Lury, 1997: 69

8. Postmodern Consumption 2 - knowing ‘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

9. Postmodern Consumption 3 – fluid signified ‘Objects are no longer related to in terms of their practical utility, but instead have become empty signifiers of an increasing number of constantly changing meanings. There is an overproduction of signs and a loss of referents’ Lury, 1997: 71

10. Postmodern Consumption 4 – the consumed individual ‘Rather than people using objects to express differences between themselves... people have become merely the vehicles for expressing the differences between objects’ Lury, 1997: 71

11. Postmodern Consumption 5 - hyperreality ‘the final triumph of capitalism...meaning is a sham...reality flickers like a television screen’ Lury, 1997: 71

12. This week… Targeting Fluid Identities Targeting by demographics, psychographics, lifestyle, lifestage. The nature of discourse in the 21st Century

13. Are you an individual?

14. I love China

15. What is the most important thing in the world Ruoxi Chen?

17. Market Research

18. Conceptions of Audience 1. Utility Unknown mass 2. Branding/Product Symbol Manipulated mass 3.Personalisation Socially created 4. Lifestyle Media and socially created

19. Branding/Product Symbol 1890s-1960s crisis wants turned into needs Branding Meaning Constantly moving happiness machines

20. No longer a mass 1960s The audience as active and in control uses and gratifications (Blumler et al, Lull) encoding-decoding model (Hall, Morley) We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media James Halloran (1970) cited in O’Sullivan et al, 1998, p.129

21. How knowledge of audience power grew No longer a mass Awareness of sophistication of communication - shared codes need shared experience. code encoder decoder

22. article

24. Lasswell Drugs are cool Music Posters Teenagers The government Drugs are bad

25. Communication must be targeted

27. Personalisation Stage 1960s-present People are targeted Q. How can millions be targeted? A. Discourse Because we act/think/dress/walk/talk as types

28. Discourse - how we can be targeted class age group ethnicity gender In society, perpetuated, exaggerated and fixed by the media

29. Discourse - how we can be targeted Michel Foucault The positions to which we are summoned

30. Discourse - how we can be targeted Louis Althusser interpellation

31. Where is discourse contained? Dress Talk Think Walk Objects Activity

32. What is the male discourse? Dress Talk Think Walk Objects Activity

33. Targeting Men

34. Male + Northern England

35. 1. Codes 2. Style 3. Target

36. Discourse - how we can be targeted Products are part of the discourse ‘We are both product and consumer; we consume, buy the product, yet we are the product. Thus our lives become our own creations, through buying; an identikit of different images of ourselves, created by different products…Advertisements are selling us ourselves’ Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements

37. Demographic categories Demographics Age Gender Ethnicity Class What to say, drink, eat where to go, how to think, what to wear

38. Ethnicity

39. What lies behind the way we structure the world is, ‘not directly available to the senses … non observable … unconscious’ Strinati D 1995 An introduction to theories of popular culture London: Routledge p96

41. In pairs • What demographic discourses do you belong to? • What are the features of that demographic group? • To what extent do you ‘belong’ in this group? • Gender – class – age – ethnicity - nationality

42. However... • Most adverts reflect discourses through • Products targeted at them • Signifiers

43. What products are targeted at women Foucault - The subject is produced performatively Althusser - hail

44. signifiers Semiotics denotation-connotation signifier-signified

45. signifiers pink red - love soft

46. signifiers blue freedom powerful

47. signifiers natural white pure innocent

48. signifiers natural Green

49. signifiers