Advertisement as a Cultural Product Values, Practises and Cultural Symbols Reproduced in the Japanese Commercials

Television advertisements have been a part of pop culture for years, these quick minute long clips gain the popularity of its viewers through humor, shock, or simply good salesmanship. The ShamWow infomercial has become one the most well known television ads in America. Its popularity came from its snappy dialogue, believable offer, and enthusiastic spokesman. But what made this infomercial so successful? Today I will be analyzing how the ineffective use of the appeals of ethos and kairos, and the highly effective appeal of logos and pathos effect the audience in the ShamWow commercial.

The main aspect of advertising is to ‘get more bang for the buck’, to make it aesthetically pleasing to the eye and gain the viewer’s attention. Throughout the years, advertising has varied in many ways from catchy slogans to iconic logos. Some may say there is nothing wrong with a little healthy competition, but what if one area is gaining the benefits slightly different than the others because of their boldness? American and European advertising are very different culturally as well as aesthetically. There has always been a cultural difference in the style of

For the longest time now, advertising has played a huge role in how we identify ourselves in the United States with the American culture, and how others identify themselves with all the cultures of the rest of the world as well. It guides us in making everyday decisions, such as what items we definitely need to invest our money on, how to dress in-vogue, and what mindset we should have to prosper the most. Although advertising does help make life easier for most, at the same time it has negative affects on the people of society as well. Advertisement discreetly manipulates the beliefs, morals, and values of our culture, and it does so in a way that most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happened. In order to reach our main goal of

In Jib Fowles article, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals”, he shows us fifteen ways commercials try to appeal to people around our country. The need for sex, need for affiliation, the need to nurture, need to aggress, need to achieve, need to dominate, need for prominence, need for attention, need for autonomy, need to escape, need for aesthetic sensations, need to satisfy curiosity, and physiological needs. These needs are all how companies appeal to our needs to interest us into buying their product. These appeals can be seen in almost every

Do you ever watch the Super Bowl for its commercials? Have you ever bought a more expensive product because you had seen its advertisement? If the answer is yes, then you might have been a victim of today’s marketers. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Killing us Softly” stated in one of her lectures, “The influence of advertising is quick, cumulative and for the most part, subconscious, ads sell more products.” “Advertising has become much more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated.” According to Jean Kilbourne, “babies at six months can recognize corporate logos, and that is the age at which marketers are now starting to target our children.” Jean Kilbourne is a woman who grew up in the 1950s and worked in the media field in the 1960s. This paper will explain the methods used by marketers in today’s advertising. An advertisement contains one or more elements of aesthetics, humor, and sexual nature.

In today’s mass media, it is quiet common for advertisers to assimilate class into their commercials. These advertisements portray a certain level of elegance because of the sophisticated choice to use classical background music and thick European accents. On the contrary, other advertisers take the common-folk approach by structure these commercials around the western concept. Both of these advertising tactics supports an American paradox. As argued in Jack Solomon’s “Master of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising”, the contradiction lies in the desire to strive above the crowd and the quest for social equality.

Kilbourne demonstrates three major main criticisms of advertising. First, advertising objectifies people and objects for the purpose of sales. This critique promotes products as more important than people and exploits human deeds and desires. Kilbourne offers ample evidence to support her first criticism of advertising. For example, Kilbourne examines advertisement such as the Thule car-rack - which humorously places more value on sports equipment been a child's life - is evidence of the trend that advertising is “objectif[ing] people…trivializ[ing and exploiting] our most heartfelt moments and relationships. Every emotion [,person, animal, and natural phenomenon] is used to sell us something” (Kilbourne, 2006, 369). Second - according to Kilbourne - advertising promotes and perpetuates the unnatural passion for products rather than personal relationship. “Advertising corrupts relationships and then offers us products, both as solace and as substitutes for the intimate human connection we all long for and need” (Kilbourne, 2006, 370). Within this concept, advertising also commits ‘cultural rape’ by manipulating sacred symbols for their utilization as emotional leverage in advertising. Third, advertisements damage the personality and structure of culture. For example the Giwch’in tribe’s traditional culture was almost erased by the introduction of advertising through television. “As multinational chains replace local character, we end up in a world in which everyone is Gapped and Starbucked…[Thus] rampant commercialism undermines our physical and psychological health, our environments and our civic life, and creates a toxic society” (Kilbourne, 2006, 371), which robs individuals of cultural and personal diversity. Based on the evidence presented by Kilbourne, I strongly agree with all three of these

During the 1920’s, advertisement has changed in many aspects of American culture. Although the concept of advertising has existed in the United States since the establishment of the thirteen colonies, the American advertisement became what it is today as in a result of the 1920’s. During that time, most of propaganda techniques, that were used in modern times, were officially established and perfected. However, advertisers find great accomplishments with the different techniques such as psychology of advertisement, brand consciousness, therapeutic ethic, and even the use of women image use on consumers that will master mind the advertisement culture.

Advertisements have become more common and can be found in almost all locations in the society; however they vary depending on the content and the medium they use to convey the information. It can be noted that television has become one of the most influential and powerful medium since it gives both visual and hearing attributes. Television is preferred by many organizations among them being Power ads since it gives a leading hand in competition since it basically influences the consumers not because of the unique product qualities but the mode at which the advertisement is made. Advertisement being one of the marketing strategies has to be designed in a way

Over the last few decades, American culture has been forever changed by the huge amount of advertisement the people are subjected to. Advertising has become such an integral part of society, many people will choose whether or not they want to buy a product based only on their familiarity with it rather than the product’s price or effectiveness. Do to that fact, companies must provide the very best and most convincing advertisements as possible. Those companies have, in fact, done

The theory of semiotics, as proposed by Roland Barthes, has been used to analyze advertisements and the effectiveness of advertisements on viewers. In the articles that I researched that used semiotics to analyze particular advertisements, I found four common and related themes. First, the articles mentioned that the viewer determines the meaning of the advertisement or the viewer interprets the advertisement. Second, this meaning that the viewer assigns to the advertisement is largely determined by context, both social and cultural. Third, advertisers use culture and predominant cultural beliefs in their advertisements in efforts to reach their audience more effectively. Finally, these advertisements actually end up supporting the

Budweiser - The Self Proclaimed, “King of Beers” has been produced by Anheuser-Busch Company Inc., since its introduction in 1876. Anheuser Busch is the largest brewer in the world and produces more than 100 million barrels of beer per year. Budweiser is synonymous with American culture and is known for its significant efforts in promotion. Anheuser -Busch has always put a major focus on marketing and according to Business Insider, “Budweiser was a triumph of marketing over quality, by the 1980’s had become synonymous with American Culture, and is a good part of American Tradition, like going to a baseball game or a college football game” (Business 1). Budweiser has attempted appealing to various audiences with their advertisements. From ratty, to refined, to sporty, to hipster Budweiser has adapted many of its advertisements to its target market of males between 21 and 34 years old, which is the largest population of beer drinkers. They regularly change their look and image through advertising and their commercials to adapt to the current culture. Differences in advertising can clearly be seen in the way Anheuser-Busch has used the changing roles of women from the 1950’s to present, cultural changes in society, and the redirection of their target audience to demonstrate their adaptability to the changing times, but fails to respect women. Anheuser-Busch’s recurring success and continual growth of the their brand is directly related to their ability to adapt to these

The aim of this literary review is to look over the knowledge and ideas that have been established on the topic of what makes advertising effective, and to discuss their strengths and weaknesses, using a critical approach of it.

A successful advertisement can encourage consumer’s desire to purchase. It is an important way to create meaning by the use of signs in an advertisement. ‘We make meanings through our creation and interpretation of signs’, declares Daniel Chandler (2007:19). According to Saussure (1972), Semiotics involves everything that can be taken as a sign. This essay aims to use Saussure’s theory of signs and Barthes’s study on mythologies to analyse an advert about Suntory oolong tea. This advert is a video commercial produced by Japanese beverage giant Suntory. This ad was filmed in China and published in 2010. The theme of this advert is ‘Suntory Oolong tea make the food better’.

The main research problem deals with the use of creative concepts in advertisements which is a mass media issue and therefore contributes to the existing knowledge in communication studies. The issue is also of interest to the researcher as a media studies student. The main issue is researchable because it can be resolved by the collection of evidence. The research is feasible as the magazines relating to the problem area of the research are within the means of