Mass Communication Process Thesis Paper Advertising (Chapter 11) Advertising
is a necessary market force that is responsible for the success of most, and
involved in all, forms of Multimedia. It is also responsible for some of our
most powerful and long-living icons that dominate the American landscape.
Advertising, like it or not, is everywhere. It is on buses, billboards and
hot-air balloons. It invades our living rooms, our classrooms and almost every
aspect of human life. The average American is exposed to 115 advertisements
during their morning commute. With this much exposure to the consumer market,
one wonders weather or not this is good or bad for the population at large. Not
surprisingly, professionals have disputed advertising’s effect across the globe.
In this paper I do not want to look at the effects of advertising as much as the
techniques in which the advertisers choose to convey their message. I intend to
argue and support that the several techniques used by advertisers are
underhanded and, in some cases, downright unethical. Advertisers use several
different techniques for selling products. One can analyze these as persuasive
techniques. This first point summarizes the oldest and most conventional
persuasive techniques Most are considered perfectly ethical at first glance, but
when you examine them further, things are not always as they appear. Two of
these techniques include the plain-folks pitch, and snob appeal. These two
techniques are used quite often. Both hope to attract your attention by getting
you to establish a need for the products. In the Plain-folks pitch, advertisers
try to make things appear much simpler than they are. An example of a typical
Plain-folks pitch is Toyota’s current pitch, “Everyday”; as in everyday people
drive Toyota cars. The Snob approach, on the other hand tries to make you
believe that upon the purchase of their product you will be accepted into the
elitist society in which you always aspired to be a part of. These
advertisements are used when advertising most luxury items. Another approach is
the Bandwagon effect. This approach preys on the “keeping up with the Jones”
fear that most people possess. It also relates to the feeling that if it is good
enough for the majority of my peers, it must be good enough for me. Finally, and
perhaps the most unethical technique is the hidden fear approach. This technique
preys on people’s fear to sell a product. It is most abused by the low
involvement products.
Deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo and other products that are easily substituted
for by their competitors are extremely guilty for this type of advertising. A
Deodorant commercial even went far enough to say if you did not use their
product, you would be banished by society and forced to live the remainder of
your life as a hermit. These hidden approaches are considered to be unethical by
most experts in the field. These techniques incite irrational fears in people.
The hidden fear approach still it remains as one of the most successful
advertising techniques used. Another way in which one can examine advertising
techniques is through the Association Principle. The Association Principle is
summarized by Campbell as the association of a product with some cultural value
or image that has a positive connotation but may have very little connection to
the actual product. (Campbell 361) This is also a reason that people are
distrustful toward advertisers. Using this principal in advertising is just
another way in which people are tricked into believing that a product is
something that it is not.Cigarettes, when sold in Newport advertisements, are
associated with people who have bright white smiles, who are thin, and who are
having the most amazing time. When in reality, smokers have a forty percent
better chance of being depressed, ninety-five percent of smokers are over
weight, and everybody knows that a smoking turns teeth yellow. This is just a
small example of the association principle, but you can clearly see how it
works. In another example demonstrated in Campbell, The Gallo Wine Company
advertised an entire line of wines featuring two older entrepreneurs as the
owners of the Bartley & Jaymes Company. This company was a total fabrication
that the Gallo Company felt would relate to more of America’s younger generation
of wine drinkers.(Campbell 361)
