Ways of Seeing

Advertisements have become a huge part of society in the modernized world of today. Around the world, many people can see all of the various advertisements not only on TVs and newspapers but also on billboards, buses, and walls of buildings. Advertising is an influential part of life and we can easily realize that it has useful purposes for public and private manufacturers and companies throughout the world. Advertisements can either give consumers a great amount of knowledge about the products or just convince them to buy and want the products. Advertisements also help sell the products which keep the economy growing, but people should also be aware of how much they spend because they may not actually need every product that they see that they want to purchase. In the Daisy by Marc Jacobs’s perfume advertisement, the artist uses many different techniques to emphasize the advertisement. Some of the different techniques that the artist uses are color, symbolism, and composition.

Media is everywhere, it became a part of our life. We are exposed to thousands of ad messages every day and it's hard to imagine how it would feel to live without them constantly surrounding us. Today we see ads in print publications, TV commercials, emails, on different products, massively scattered in sport venues, and it’s even spreading into public spaces. In his documentary, Morgan Spurlock delivered a fascinating satire of the process of placing products into movies and tried to delve into the nature of advertising in our society.

In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger, an English art critic, argues that images are important for the present-day by saying, “No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer literature” (10). John Berger allowed others to see the true meaning behind certain art pieces in “Ways of Seeing”. Images and art show what people experienced in the past allowing others to see for themselves rather than be told how an event occurred. There are two images that represent the above claim, Arnold Eagle and David Robbins’ photo of a little boy in New York City, and Dorothea Lange’s image of a migratory family from Texas; both were taken during the Great Depression.

In today’s society there are a plethora of ideas about advertisement. What would it take to meet societies want’s with the increase in advertising of new technology? In regards to four articles: “What’s Changed” by , Jane Hammerslough, “Urban Warfare” by, Kate MacArthur & Hilary Chura, “The Age of Reason” by, Kenneth Hein, “The Buzz on Buzz” by, Renee Dye. These four authors describe the many different angles that can be approached by advertisement. They have also shown some great aspects of the new uprising development of advertising technology in modern American society.

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.

He and Lutz’s arguments coincide on the grounds that advertising is primarily about selling a product, and that there is unique language involved in doing so. O’Neill suggests that “Advertising is nothing more than the delivery system for salesmanship” and asserts that it is the consumer, not the advertisers, with the power to buy or not buy a good or service. He later delves into the many techniques used by advertising agencies, from their unique advertising speak to the powerful imagery used to capture the attention of their demographic.

I know that, sometimes, instead of verbally telling my friend I hope she feels better (due to whatever reason) I text her a photo of a cat in a sweater. This image directly influences her mood in a way that my words may not have. I’m fascinated with the idea of the “non-linear, inconsistent, and unpredictable” ways images are distributed “within and across multiple networks.” The only control a human has over an image is its creation (if it is a graphic) and the very first place it is posted. This does not account for how individual humans will encounter the image, just its production and composition. Furthermore, the person creating the image will lose control over who views the image (the intended and unintended audiences). This is what leads to the transformation and possible satirization or an inversion of intent (protest versus call-to-action). This form of distribution and interpretation reminds me of how literature is void of authorial intent once it enters the public domain, depending on who encounters the text. Gries states this phenomena well when she writes that rhetoric “generates a multiplicity of consequences.” I think for this reason, it is incredibly hard to pinpoint the basic implications and methodology of visual rhetoric, as supported by the fact that Gries book, while engaging and interesting, is over 600 pages

Hard-selling advertising was popular during the 1930’s, however three creative philosophies also emerged. J. Stirling Getchell developed and refined a distinctive photojournalistic style in advertising (Sivulka, 2012). Raymond Rubicam would use research to determine the proper layout designs, and ways to improve advertising. Bernice Fitz-Gibbon would use simple folksy style advertising to relate to the consumer (Sivulka, 2012).

In Chapter Seven of Practices of Looking, we start to explore in the ideas of advertising, consumer cultures and desire. Everyday, we are faced with advertisements through newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, billboards, public transportation such as buses and taxis, clothing, the internet, etc. Logos, such as signs, or anything that resemble a brand, are everywhere, they are on clothing, household items, electronics, cars, etc. Consumers are always showing off their brands and advertisements and we are used to seeing those brands and advertisements in an everyday setting. In modern media, advertisers are pressured to always change the ways they show off and get the attention to consumers, old and new. Advertisers also used present figures who were glamorous. Advertisements set up a certain relationship between the product and its meaning to sell the products and the hidden meaning we link to each of the products. Advertisements use the language of conversion. Advertisers try to create a customer relationship to the brand to try to form them as familiar, necessary, and also likeable.

Today’s quick-moving world of technology has media texts such as advertisements to make sure that people understand with just a glance. Having adverts on magazines, social media and billboards allow them to use tools such as semiology, genre and narrative because it makes their messages clear instantly. These signs allow us to carry meaning through advertisements, connotations and the signification process. These tools let brands, mainly celebrities, and the option to produce and create a myth of the product such as “Be daring. Be an inspiration” to sell it to the world. We are in a time where advertisers use ‘simplicity’ in their adverts; there are no more paragraphs. It is mainly down to the person and the few words shown in that advert.

The world Is like one big marketing ploy. Advertisements are everywhere from subtle movie appearances to billboards and everything in between. Advertisers continue to find more ways to push their products with the hopes that the next method will prove more successful than its forerunner. The articles “Illusions Are Forever” by Jay Chiat and “Champagne Taste, Beer Budget” by Delia Cleveland illustrate the result of successful advertising and how it works. Quite a few of these seldom fail to prove fruitful .The most effective forms of advertising are high-end product placement and celebrity endorsement.

In the book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, two authors, Ries and Trout, illustrate how efficient positioning a product can affect the recognition of the target market. In addition, it is an outside-in approach to the business marketing. In other words, the marketer considers a business with the prospect’s mind rather than the products. First and foremost, the authors introduce the concept of positioning---“Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect” (Ries & Trout, 1986). Moreover, the past strategies for marketing no longer match the present market, and Ries and Trout believe that communication itself is a big problem. Since our society is “over-communicated,” customers might receive overwhelming information. People’ s minds can only collect a narrow amount of information and it blocks out the rest of irrelevant information; therefore, this can explain the reason why some advertisements fail to attract the attention of consumers. The authors provide several statistic data to support their statement about the over-communicated world. Obviously, 57% of the world’s advertising is offered by the United States, America publishes more than 30,000 books per year, and the average of American family watches around 51 hours per week of television. Therefore, American customers receive too many messages from different mediums, such as television, books, and

When one looks at an image from Calvin Klein, Victoria's Secret, or Versace, the first appeal comes from beautiful models. These individuals are normally jumping, laughing and representing every idealistic way of life by manifesting the idea of a blind promise. Unfortunately, these images are not only created with the intent of being manipulative, but also to resemble the present history involving societal roles. At the moment, Ads are able to capture the political ideologies or the social influences in order to represent the position of modern times. On the other hand, the Versace brand recently released a new campaign on Fall clothes bringing to light a different topic. At a quick glance, the Versace Advertisement depicts the everyday family of four. However, through John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, the picture represents the hegemonic portrayal of male dominance, the suppressive forces of society on women, and the influence publicity has on the surveyed. Through this lens, one can understand the social relations and expectations publicity creates for individuals.

Advertising is one of the channels of social communication. The system of social communication provides not only the preservation and rebroadcast achievements of culture and cultural norms and everyday practices, but it is also a crucial part of the process of inculturation personality which is essential to the processes of social development as a whole. An important event in the evolution of modern mass culture was the so-called “visual turn” resulting from the multimedia revolution of XX-XXI centuries.This revolution led to the dominance of visual cultural forms, including outdoor advertising as a mass phenomenon culture.

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.