Blog Number 7

The future of advertising is ever nearer, and everyday that passes brings us another day closer to new steps of advertisement. I believe that advertisements will become more demanding, albeit a bit shorter. Over time, ads have gone from the detailed depictions of a product, combined with an image, to short one second ads meant to subliminally attract your attention. The realm of advertising is quickly realizing that the tactics of the 90s, even those of the early 2000s are no longer usable. Advertisements, in the future, will engage the audience at a more subconscious level, engrossing the audience without them even realizing it. We have already taken steps in that direction with the extremely brief one second ads. The advertising media has realized that the great amount of advertisements forced in our paths on a daily basis has led us to become immune to ads, and therefore, they no longer hold our interest. The media developed one second ads to capture our attention, and in the future, we may only see flashes and glimpses of ads, leaving the audience to create their own ads in their imaginations. In the next ten years, I believe ambient ads will become more popular, marketing goods at unexpected places, and sometimes engaging the viewer without them even noticing. These advertisers will have to face the challenges of making sure their unconventional ads reach their target audience, for certain ambient ads may reach broader or narrower audiences than was intended. As I also mentioned, the ads may not even make sense to their audience. In such instances, the advertisers must take an approach of trial and error, and if they are wise, they would do this process before they actually place the ads out for the mass. They must fine tune their ads to ensure that their target audience is reached, and they will also need to make sure that their audience understands and can relate with the ad, whether the product is directly mentioned (as it is done so rarely in modern ads) or not. Advertisers must also make sure, if they begin to utilize extremely brief ads, that the message and product are clear, for with the extremely reduced time, the audience should still be reached.

I believe that the point and fact of product placement, a covert means to advertise products, with testimonials and endorsement, is ruined if the government forces TV shows to reveal the fact that there is product placement. I believe that advertisers who use product placement are utilizing a more covert and indirect means to advertise their products, and if they are forced to reveal their actions, the subtlety required for product placement will be destroyed. Though requiring TV shows to have disclaimers about the product being advertisement does actually act as more advertising, viewers and audiences will become frustrated with the fact that they are being advertised to and marketers will lose a valuable venue for marketing.

That is SOOO cool!!

I would train the cool hunter to look for brand names and mooks. It seems to me that brand names seem to dominate the clothing trends in the school, as people tend to wear items that may be simple and plain enough except for the tell-tale label. That label sets that garment apart as one that must cost at least triple what a similar shirt without the label would cost. Many of the males in this school exemplify the attitudes depicted by a mook: they are crude, brash and just plain gross. You can see them mixing gross concoctions from the remains of others’ lunches, daring each other to drink them. These sorts of revolting habits or games are what a mook enjoys, and many of the boys at this school seem fascinated with such concepts. Many are also lewd and sexually suggestive. The teens at this school follow the trends of brand names and logos, and many even get knock-offs of those popular or trendy objects. Cool hunters do, in a sense, engage in a self-fulfilling prophecy. They give the teens they select money, information and attention, which will cause these teens to gain popularity. So, instead of a cool hunter finding the trendsetter, they are essentially creating a trend setter, someone who has gained popularity by garnering attention from media related persons. Moreover, cool hunting seems to be a bit overrated, for what may be popular or trendy in one area, may be seen as completely repulsive in another. How can one say that such-and-such a product is cool, popular and trendy based on a small sample size? And also, as the Merchants of Cool mentioned, when a thing thought of as cool is advertised and advocated, the media radar or deflection that many teens have (the dislike for things that are heavily advertised) causes what the cool hunters find as cool to turn, consequentially, un-cool. So the concept of cool hunting, of finding what can be marketed for a large profit, is not so great because the very thing that is cool becomes unpopular, as if people have gotten too much of it, an overdose, if you will.

1950s vs. 2009

http://www.frederiksamuel.com/blog/images/list2.jpg

http://adflip.com/addetails.php?adID=1905&showLargeJpg=yes

The ads both use interesting pictures to draw in the audience. The first ad from the 1950s uses an attractive image of a handsome couple to force or compel the viewer to read the small scenario. The modern ad has a picture of an unattractive woman and a small quote. Both bring in the audience. The modern ad uses language that is humorous to point out that the Listerine product creates so much confidence that obviously repelling people feel as if they are hot shots. The older ad has a lengthier message, about 200 words long, on the topic of how a woman was distancing herself from her boyfriend because of her bad breath. It goes to promote Listerine as “the most widely used antiseptic in the world”. The old ad appeals to the emotions of a female, luring in women and telling them how to get or keep their man by having good breath. The modern ad uses humor to lure in the audience, the small slogan at the bottom informing the viewer that the Listerine strips. The older ad appeals to female audiences, the people who would be doing most of the shopping at the time. The newer ad appeals to most young adults, those in their late teens or early twenties, possibly even those into their thirties. The older ad appeals to the notion of love and happiness, whereas the newer ad appeals to beauty and appearance in the sense that the Listerine strips give confidence about how one looks. The older ad has a long, detailed message, for at the time, the ad would most likely be found in a magazine, when women would peruse it at their leisure. The ad from now, on the other hand, has a brief message with a small slogan or phrase near the image of the product. This minute amount of writing, compared to the 50s ad, appeals to the nature of our times. We as a generation and time period tend to only give commercials and ads a glance before redirecting our attention elsewhere. The older ad definitely focuses on appealing to young women, whereas the newer ad has a wider range of audience. Before, the persuasive techniques could be lengthy, with small stories to draw in the audience and compelling images to initially bring in the viewer. But, the ad from 2009 has one large image with a small phrase meant to excise humor because of the wit involved in calling the large image a picture of a highly attractive woman. The technique of appealing to emotions of love and romantic happiness has now shifted to those of beauty, confidence and even humor.