Saturday, 11 December 2010

Lecture 4 - Advertising and the New Media

AIMS
To engage in current (academic & industry) debates, regarding the impact of new media on traditional advertising structures and practices
 To compare this impact to that of the late 19c, with the technological progress of colour printing, at the beginning of the (UK) advertising industry.

Key objectives to take away
Understand some key points in the history of advertising.
Understand the context (historical, political, economic and cultural) in which advertising emerged.
Understand some aspects of advertising strategy.
Speculate the implications of New Media on creativity & the role of the creative; you.
              What is new media?
‘…media that work not through persuasion or impressions but through engagement and involvement. If we stick with the old [Mass Media] model, we squander all the possibilities of the new media ecosystem ‘
(Sutherland, 2009)
Rory Sutherland, president of the IPA and Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy UK
What is old media?


Back to the beginning...late 19c
To compare the impact of NM to the technological progress of colour printing, at the beginning of the (UK) advertising industry
RADIO 


¡Advertising, the most fun with your clothes on
¡Robin Wight
  WCRS ( Ad agency). 118 118 & The future’s bright, the future’s orange.
¡William Hesketh Lever, (1851-1925) Lever Bros - The beginning...
¡Bill Bernbach (1911-1982) (DDB) first to combine copywriters and art directors - 'teams influence brought to Britain in 50's'

In the beginning there was soap.....

Sunlight vision on the Wirral
Sunlight, Lux to Lynx...
-Soap, Lever Brothers
-Founders James Darcy & William Hesketh Lever
-Today Unilever, 900 brands Ben & Jerry’s, Bertoli, Bird’s Eye, Brooke Bond, Comfort , Lux, Persil, Sunsilk, Sunlight, Surf...7 top marketing brand names
 
George Cruikshank etching 'All the world going to see the great exhibition of 1851

Crystal Palace

CONTEXT
The British Empire
The beginning of pre-packaging
¡1860s cereal ‘figured out how to print, fold & fill cardboard boxes mechanically.
¡John & William Kellogg
¡Henry J Heinz
¡Asa Candler 1890s bottle coca-cola
  ¡Soap was sold in long bars to grocers, who  stamped (with stamp of  maker) and sliced up. Like lush



'The First'
   ¡‘I was the first to advertise extensively [and pre-package] a tablet of soap...the result was I lifted Sunlight soap to a class by itself’ (Lever in Lewis, 2008 p62)

¡Added ‘value’ thro packaging

 Advertising & colour printing

Newspapers
-Advertising boom aided by abolishment of taxes on newspapers 1855 & paper in 1861
-Press (newspapers) owes much to advertising
-Press indispensable for advertising

Posters - A new quality

-Technological progress reproduction & colour printing, pictorial ads in magazines 1880s
-Poster 1890s
-Technology enabled contemporary paintings to be reproduced

Contemporary art & advertising

Lever started to buy contemporary paintings to use in advertising (he owned copyright) 
-Ubiquitous brand,part of the average consumers ‘mental furniture’
   (So Clean book Lewis, p57)
-The corners of somebody's mind is the most expensive real estate (John Hegarty, 2009)

William Hesketh Lever 1851 wanted Britain to be the richest, the leader in the world

The New Frock 1889 William Powell Frith
¡The soap men’s extensive use of contemporary paintings in their advertising is a case in point. (Lewis, 2008, p65)
¡Image used in Sunlight soap ad with a caption ‘So Clean’

Product Placement & brand loyalty


The Wedding Morning 1892 /John Henry Frederick Bacon


Lever bought then had reproduced putting sunlight soap on Mantlepiece.
Brand loyalty conoted through generational angle. Also signifiers of white used. Power of suggestion.
The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka Tate Modern 13 October 2009  –  5 April 2010
Unilever still sponsers contemporary artists today


Colourful, innovative advertising was crucial to Lever’s success (He came one of richest men in the world.)
(Port Sunlight Museum, 2009)

Medicine, Chocolate and Soap



International campaign
Lever’s achievement ‘to convince people all over the world that they did not just want this product, they needed it'
(Port Sunlight Museum, 2009)




   Creating Customers
  •   The Psychology of advertising
  • Victorians conquered the world and problem of corporeal aromas
  • Sanitary achievements drains, sewage & soap.
  • Advertisers made it their business to persuade each consumer of his or her hygiene problems.
  • The Lynx effect
  • “The message was clear, if one wished to gain or retain a partner, a job, a reputation and self esteem, one needed to attend to personal hygiene…sales skyrocketed” (Lewis, 2008, p81)
  • High-feeling strategy
  •  Advertisers, more than any other group of people, made hay with new understandings of human psychology in the twentieth century (Lewis, 2008, p81)
  • The Psychology of Advertising (1908) US, Walter Dill Scott
  • Edward Berneys, nephew of Freud Propaganda (1928)
  • Discrepancy theory – widespread
  •  Discrepancy between self & ideal image (of self) 
  • Publics leisure practices, bathing habits etc. were inferior to those depicted.
  • Lever Bros Lux ads by mid 20s said to preserve ‘soft, youthful lovely feminine hands’ + celebrity endorsement
  • nine out of ten screen stars care for their skin with Lux soap.
  • America: soap operas (radio, 1930s) Procter and Gamble led the way, sponsoring O’Neils with ivory soap.
Art & advertising
  •  P & G promotions: held sculpture event at gallery for children.
  • Berneys wrote about it as a fine example, harnessing  psychological motives, aesthetic, competitive, exhibitionist, and maternal
  • Strategy informed by sound psychology and enlightened self-interest (Lewis, 2008, p84)

Critics of Admass Culture
  
  • Boom in consumption
  • Highly criticised in interwar years ‘countless critics on the left – appalled by products of capitalism and mechanisation
  • ‘People degenerated into drones: docile bodies or blind mouths etc…unable to think beyond free market capitalism’ (Lewis, 2008, p84)

Advocates  of Admass
  • Economic liberals, celebrated unfettered agency of the consuming individual
  • Good trade relations between countries reduces conflict.
  • Capitalism, commerce and consumption improves well being of more people.
  • Hegarty & Leverhulme 
'Advertising creates more jobs '

Role of advertising

‘Fundamentals of honest business, will continue to advance humanity to brotherhood…honesty in advertising …is a cardinal principle in your country and in mine…the advertiser…is building for those who follow after him. It should be the same with nations’ Leverhulme speech NY (1923)


Back to the Future…
New media model
¡Shift (Spurgeon, 2008)
¡Mass to My media
¡More personalised
¡More targeted (mobile)
¡Also involves audience:
¡(a) voluntarily passing around ads (virals)
¡(b) creating – spoofs or filming events
Viral advertising
           ¡One distinction between old & new mediaNew communications model
¡Voluntary viewings (video viewings online)
¡Forced viewings (TV or Print)
¡Definition of Viral
¡‘unpaid peer-to-peer communication of [provocative] content originating from an identified sponsor using the Internet to persuade or influence an audience  to pass along the content to others’. Southgate, et al, 2010, p350.
¡Old: transmission  
¡Transmit ideas to an audience
¡New: cybernetic
¡Engage with an audience
¡Via computer (mediated communication) CMC.
Trevor Beattie Ideas
  
Viewer generated content
  • Viewer-generated advertising worth US$10 million to Mentos ‘more than half its annual advertising budget’ (Spurgeon, 2008, p1)
  • New media threatens the top-down communication model
  • Audiences are actively managing media culture

Creating a dialog



10 reasons why this is the best time to be in advertising


Audience judges creativity


 ¡November 2010
¡Departure from conventional advertising awards
¡YouTube Ad of the Year chosen by viewers
¡Panel of judges shortlist the most creative and innovative ads
The Third Screen   
  • An audience with Sir John Hegarty, 25.3.10
  • No. 1 Agencies can innovate
  • NYC tourism campaign
  • The idea: character of NYC : street culture, in particular street musicians.
  • linked to the promotion  'Dig Out Your Soul'.
  • New album tracks were released to played by NYC street musicians video recorded > YouTube.
  • Agency (BBH) was able to collaborate directly with NYC street musicians. 


  • Biggest idea since the wheel > the internet
  • Enables lots of small ideas to circulate
  • ‘that combination of a trillion little ideas is in itself the biggest idea there is...I think we are at the most interesting point of communications history ever...
  • Digital media > convergence of media opens up opportunities for creatives.
  • E.g Moon


'new media based  on...(ICTs) such as the internet and cell phones, invite us to

 think in exciting new ways about advertising, as an industry

and...communication process'(Spurgeon, 2008)


Mobile phones will soon become the greatest tool for persuasion, more so than any other medium for advertising. (Fogg, 2003)
Fastest growing markets in the creative industries (Mobile Learning Conference 2009 1st Dec, 2009, London)

The Kairos factor  
¡Fogg (2003) primarily due to their kairos factor:
¡The principle of presenting the desired message at the opportune moment.
¡Location
¡Routine
¡Goals
¡Tasks
¡Okazaki article (2009)
The Promise of Mobile
 
In 10 years, virtually the entire media ecosystem has changed...and nowhere is
 the drive happening any faster...with  the third screen (Precourt, 2009, p1)

Mobile  advertising will become the fastest growing promotional channel

The world’s most ubiquitous computer

JAR (2009) special mobile package

What is the impact of new media ?

On the advertising agency
Industry debate.
“Structuring the company to be social from the inside is necessary if it is to take
full advantage of the new approaches. Patrick (2009) http://blog.mashupevent.com/
The Role of Social Search in the Marketing Mix Seminar IPA  25/02/09
Mashup event:




New model of creativity
            Larger teams
¡Collaborative creativity (Sawyer, 2008)
¡ebrainstorming
¡Collaborative online Creativity: eStudio
¡Omnium project
 ¡Hegarty & Beattie (2010)
¡Shift
¡Case Study



'I deeply respect the legendary Bill Bernbach’s idea of pairing art directors and copywriters...
but it’s flawed for modern times...
Today a campaign could include anything from an interactive game, to a social media platform, to an online show, to an interactive television commercial on Twitter.
It’s our job as agencies to be open to new combinations, new methods...'



No comments:

Post a Comment