Advertising and Culture:Selling Difference, Selling Sameness

“dark spot corrector”

COSMOPOLITANMAY 2010

“Natural never looked so beautiful”

COSMOPOLITANMAY 2010

“Break Free”

ESQUIREAPRIL 2010

“BARBADOS CHERRY infused with TORCHED PLANT ALOE”

ESQUIREAPRIL 2010

“Turning eyeglasses into

My Glasses”

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAPRIL 2010

The New Sienna

The Ritual Theory of Communication

What do we mean by “ritual?”

“Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced,

maintained, repaired, and transformed.”

-James Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and

Society, first published in 1989

Two Models of Communication

Image: http://www.colorado.edu/communication/meta-discourses/Theory/models.html

What does this mean for advertising?

As participants in a culture, advertisers rely on the cultural

meanings of symbols.

This means ads reflect AND create culture.

But, while advertisers have goals they want to accomplish with their

ads, they never fully control the meaning that other participants

create or recreate.

“The basis of advertising is not what products are being sold, but what

dreams are being sold.”

-Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts

What dreams are being sold?

ESQUIREAPRIL 2010

What dreams are being sold?

ESQUIREAPRIL 2010

The Rise of Advertising

THE MASON COUNTY RECORDLudington, MichiganSEPT 16, 1874

Rob Schorman, "Claude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers and the Birth of Modern Advertising," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era April 2008 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jga/7.2/schorman.html> (19 Apr. 2010).

THE MASON COUNTY RECORDLudington, MichiganSEPT 17, 1873

Rob Schorman, "Claude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers and the Birth of Modern Advertising," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era April 2008 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jga/7.2/schorman.html> (19 Apr. 2010).

LADIES’ HOME JOURNALNOV 1893

Rob Schorman, "Claude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers and the Birth of Modern Advertising," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era April 2008 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jga/7.2/schorman.html> (19 Apr. 2010).

GALESBURG EVENING MAILDEC 9, 1895

Rob Schorman, "Claude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers and the Birth of Modern Advertising," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era April 2008 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jga/7.2/schorman.html> (19 Apr. 2010).

1895 1966

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF ADVERTISING (1 of 2)

Printing press (1452) allowed new ad media– Posters, handbills, eventually newspaper ads

Late 1800s – Impacts of Industrialization– Railroad across US, US population doubled, New

communication media, Increased production, More disposable income

– Mass production required mass consumption, a mass market and mass communication

Magazines enabled truly national advertising

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF ADVERTISING (2 of 2)

• 1840s – First Ad agency appears• 1920s – Radio advertising; sponsors supplied

programs• Depression curtailed growth in advertising• Economic boom after WWII• 1957 – suspicion of advertising; The Hidden

Persuaders• 1960s – rise of the creative side

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The history or advertising parallels the history of journalism.

As soon as Gutenberg created moveable type, advertisements were printed.

The first advertising agency was in Philadelphia.

N.W. Ayer & Son, 1869

Journalism commodified information and developed a business model based on ads.

The Penny Press era.

“The object of this paper is to lay before the public, at a price within

the means of everyone, all the news of the day, and at the same time

afford an advantageous medium for advertising.”

-Benjamin Day, in the first issue of the first penny newspaper, the New York Sun, 1833

Programming and newsprint cost money.

The bulk of money generated by journalism comes from ads - 80 percent of newspapers, and more than 90 percent of mags and TV.

We are in the era of demassification.

What does this mean for advertising?

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ADVERTISINGIN THE DIGITAL AGE

• Birth of online advertising– 1994, HotWired web site, banner ads

Product placement is becoming huge.

Compare advertising and journalism. What do they have in common?

How are they different?

PR vs. Advertising ?

• PR is a management tool for leaders to establish beneficial relationships with other leaders and groups.

• PR is selling image. Advertising is selling product.• PR influences media to get their message across.

Advertising controls the message (and pays for it).

PR people have relationships with journalists.

Advertisers have relationships with the business-side of journalism.

Black Friday: A Media Event

What happened on Black Friday ‘08?

Does advertising create consumerism?

New York Times, 11/30/08:Media and Retailers Both Built Black Friday

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If I have a product or idea to sell, I could pay for media space and run

an ad…

Or, I can talk to a journalist and pitch a story.

Either way, journalism and advertising both rely on storytelling

to get their point across.

Media Stereotypes

Why do advertisements use stereotypes?

“A stereotype is a simplified and standardized conception or image

invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.”

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