Nerdy 5: October 2015

Everybody including me have this perception and thoughts about the field of advertisement that advertising their products and brand are the only way for the companies to promote and get recognize by the public. We often see or hear an advertisement on radio, television, Internet and poster at shopping centre, the advertisement that we saw everywhere is everything with a name on it such as famous brand for shoes and snacks. People will get to know their products through these creative ads. We also see the field of advertisement as the source of information and entertainment. We gain a lot of knowledge through some advertisement and we would not be outdated with the help of ads. Advertisement inform us what is going viral and what is the latest product or technology we can get in the market. In my opinion, advertisement is entertainment in our life. It plays an important role in entertain us. Our life would be boring without the creative ads we seen every day and we would not have so many conversation with other people and families that are sharing the same interest.

Advertising has evolved in the past 20 and 30 years. At the past 20 years, it was incredibly expensive to advertise and advertising were based on time tested principle. It is hard to caught attention from an audience because there are not much media back in those days. Unlike in old times, customer and audience can only view some ads in the newspaper during that period of time but what has become different today is that the impact of technology such as tablets and mobile. Customer can see any advertisement on Internet and they have choices to decide what information can be send.

There is a scene showed in the documentary. It stated that advertisement are reflecting people’s lives and doing it in a way that touches an audience. This statement has make impression on me. What we act in our lives, we actually get to view it in an ads. We can relate to an ads talking about family, friends or even our pets because we experienced it. There are many advertisement was created in a touching for the society to understand the meaning and values in an ads, this is the main purpose of advertising. There is an interview with Mary Wells, she said: “If you want to move somebody to do something, you have to connect with them, and you can’t just slap them in the face.” This showed that you should not expect your audience and consumer to purchase or order your product and have confidence in your brands without doing anything. You need to identify what is the link between the ads and the consumer. Will the audience be certain of your item after what you have done in the ads? These need to be ensure if you want the public to take steps.

It definitely further enlightened my future prospects of the field of advertising after watching this documentary. I discover how some of the famous advertising campaign for brands were conceptualize. I get to understand more about this field that advertising is a sense of communication link between the product and the consumer and using media including posters, newspaper, radio and television to inform the consumer the latest information. In addition, advertising has now become part of our life and who knows this field will become successful in the future. Advertisement influence our decision every single day.

I would take this field as a choice for me to pursue my career in the future because I found it would be an interesting field after watching this documentary. Although it is a long hour working job and a high pressure environment but it is acceptable if you are pursuing the right career. Another reason why I would like to work in this field is that you have to be creative to work in advertising and it is necessary for us to meet and communicate with many people.

Many things in our life will be affected if advertising did not exist. One of the example is that consumer will facing a problem of deciding to purchase a product or not. Advertising has a huge impact to a people as they make someone who has never felt the need to buy brand name shoes or clothes change their mine. I could not imagine what will happen in a society without advertising. It would be so dull. There will be no ads such as promoting restaurant’s main dish, poster about clothes for sale and the newspaper would feature article on every page. There will be no ads at the bottom of a page. Unlike the usual day, when we are walking down a street looking at hundreds of advertisement on the side wall, we will naturally start a conversation with family and friends. If a society without advertising, no entertainment could be found and there will be only people walking around a dull street.

Sara

Big companies spend million dollars on advertising as well as small companies every year. It is important for a company to have their own advertisements in order to gain customers or followers. Advertising is one of the marketing strategies a company could think of because it is widely used. There is so many ways to advertise ones products or services. Newspapers, magazines, billboards and television commercials are some of the ways companies choose to promote their products and services either existing or new.

Based on the documentary I watched, I am amazed on how advertisements were made back then. Creativity is very important to achieve a successful advertising. With creativity, it will gain excitement and interest in an individual to continue watching or reading the ads. As mentioned in the documentary, advertisements that ones produce need to be something unique and crazy. It is to attract people to buy your products or use your services. Tommy Hilfiger was not a very well known brand compare to Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein but with the proper way on producing the advertisements, with the help of professionals, the brand is now recognized all over the world.

Not like the advertisements nowadays, people don’t really bother about it, as it does not match their interest. For instance, ads that are put up on YouTube before every video actually annoys the viewer that they always skip them. Advertisements are produced in the wrong way too. As stated in the interview, advertisers only produce the advertisements according to what their client wants while they can actually do more. Everything is because the good amount of money that the clients are willing to pay. Some of the advertisements are irrelevant and does not relate to the products or services.

In my opinion, teamwork is really important in any field that you are choosing, as well as in advertising. Everyone have their own perceptions on how they view and understand things. It is good to have a number of people working together and share ideas on how to produce an advertisement in different ways. In addition, it is not easy to come out with an excellent idea if you work alone. Just like Jim Durfee stated, they put the art director and the copywriter in the same room, no one have ever did that and they work together and start a new piece of work from a blank sheet of paper. This shows how strong a team is. Catchy and fun ads will capture an individual’s attention. Like song lyrics, an ad also can stick in individual’s mind for quite awhile.

It’s true that advertisements cost a lot of money but it is one of the best channels a company can have to market their products and services. Television commercial benefits a company as everyone watches television. According to a research, average household watches 8 hours of television per day. Imagine how many people will get to watch the thousand dollars ads that a company put up. From the documentary, it is stated that 44% of all satellites launched are for commercial communication. Advertisement companies earn a lot too because there are so many companies that wants to advertise. During Super Bowl, a 30 seconds ad costs 2.7 million dollars. Furthermore, ads on American Idol costs 750, 000 dollars for just 30 seconds too. Each year, politicians advertise themselves to gain voters. In 2008, political advertising reached over 2.6 billion dollars.

What attracted my attention from this documentary is how they get the slogan for Nike that is “Just Do It” that they are still using until today. It is because I liked the brand Nike very much. Simple words like that gave a huge impact on people’s life. Just like Liz Dolan said, “people were applying it (the slogan) to just everything they have been putting off or procrastinating about or avoiding dealing with”.

Even though this documentary enlightened me about the advertising field, I don’t think I want to pursue my career in advertising. It is fun and easy to earn money but I don’t see myself as creative as the professional advertisers are. However, I would like to learn more about advertising as I can help my family business to advertise their products and services by giving some rough ideas on producing good quality ads one day.

Well, without advertising, the society will be lost and have no knowledge about what’s new in the market. People will not be aware on what is happening around them too. Also, advertisements give so much impact on ones company. Without it, many companies might face problem such as bankruptcy and lose customers. Moreover, you need to go through hard times and not to give up in order to achieve your goals. Overall, advertising is a good profession of producing advertisements for a company.

Daphne

Art & Copy is a powerful documentary film about advertising and inspiration that directed by Doug Pray. It is about the advertising industry in the U.S. The film reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creations of our time, people who've profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. At the same time, the film also follows the careers of advertisers, including Hal Riney, George Lois, Mary Wells Lawrence, Dan Wieden, and Lee Clow. The documentary covers advertising campaigns such as "Just Do It", "I Love New York", "Where's the Beef?", "I Want My MTV", "Got Milk?", and "Think Different" and many other brilliant campaigns including everything from cars to presidents. They managed to grab the attention of millions and truly move them. Visually interwoven with their stories, TV satellites are launched, billboards are erected, and the social and cultural impact of their advertisements is brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.

Nowadays, advertisement is the tool which many companies and enterprises use to inform prospective customers about their products and services. Tough advertisement agencies often present only the best side of product. I think that advertisement is trying to tell us about new items that may be good for our lives. At the same time, advertisements are too common that we can see them at anytime and anywhere. So, it is quite difficult to create a good and impressive advertisement because of the high demand of clients at this moment. Many people complain about advertisements as an obnoxious way for companies to invade our everyday lives and cram their products down our throats, but that’s not all that advertisements are good for. The advertisements on this list are excellent examples of effective advertising strategies for social issue campaigns that let their voices be heard.

A well-made advertisement is designed to grab your attention and to remain in your memory long after you've left it behind, and that is exactly what many of these social causes need. Advertisements will get people to think and worry about various social and environmental issues or even simply getting them to be aware of them is important for raising public supporting and effecting meaningful changes.

Throughout the '50s, we can learn about American advertising was an old boys' club. The revolution began when the breakaway agency Doyle Dane Bernbach "put the art director in the same room as copywriter" and came up with, among other innovations, the campaign that made the Volkswagen famous in America. Besides, the late Hal Riney San Francisco gets a lot of camera time. He describes hitting it big by commissioning Paul Williams to write a tune for Crocker Bank. The song, "We've Only Just Begun," became a hit record. What did it have to do with banking? Not much, and that's the point. What's being sold is a set of values, a mood, a perspective. Furthermore, Riney suggests that his advertisement was partly compensation for various things he lacked in his own life. This is the man who came up with Ronald Reagan's "It's morning again in America" campaign. Moreover, Blustery New Yorker George Lois, a hater of the status quo, says that ads should be subversive. Lois designed many of the impressive Esquire covers of the 1960s, and he made Tommy Hilfiger a household name.

These advertising campaigns are really good because of the concepts are really creative and straightforward. “When you always did advertising, you always look for big idea. So, you did something that stomp’’, by George Lois. I am impressed by his words because of his creativity and his strength that without giving up anything even he faces a lot of problems. No doubt, the outcome of his advertisement is very successful and impressed. “Great advertising is always starting with something true”, said Lee Clow. It is so amazing how fast time flies and people still remember some parts of the advertising campaigns. People will never forget about the greatest thing in their life.

After watching this film, I found that advertising is quite an interesting field for career. In advertising, I can have a diverse range of jobs to choose from, to suit one’s inclination, talent and personality. The choice of working in an organization that manufactures certain goods or provides certain services, to look after the advertising of these goods or services would demand a particular kind of skills and interests. I also can choose to work in an organization that creates advertising and distributes advertisements through different media. So, in such an organization, for me, I will have interested in pursuing a career in this field because there is a wide variety of jobs calling for different types of skills and creativity and give me chances to meet more people in this world.

At the same time, can you imagine our life without advertising? Modern life would totally be very different without advertising. Well, let us think about this for a moment. Life without advertising would mean: No radio, No Internet access unless you paid for it. TV would become so expensive that only the rich could watch it. You also would never know about new companies or products. You would simply be a bunch of uninformed consumers, which is bad for both the producer and us. Companies would go bankrupt because they couldn't inform people about their products, or needs. So, basically I think the end of advertisement would lead to the downfall of society because advertisements conveyed the most outspoken, comprehensive and accurate information to the world.

Jasmine

In all honesty, I have never thought that advertisements had any significance in life.

Okay, maybe those are poor choices of words so let me start again.

In all honesty, I never thought that advertisements had any significance in life besides indirectly hollering at viewers/listeners to drop whatever they are doing and rush to the nearest store carrying the advertised product and grab it off the shelf, or trying to annoy viewers/listeners by explicitly promoting them on any media platform.

You cannot really blame me, really, for having this view on advertisements. Take cinemas, for example. If a moviegoer is running late, chances are, they might miss the random clips screened. If they are like me, an early bird (most times anyway), they will be treated to a 10 to 20 minute run of advertisements ranging from electronic devices, household items, mobile telecommunication companies and most horridly frequent these days, universities. I cannot stress how much I wanted to bang my head on the nearest wall every time Terrence’s face comes up on screen to excitedly tell me about his college life. And his face is all I see for two to three years.

But that is beside the point.

The point is, after learning about the field and watching the documentary, well, advertising is not as bad as I thought.

Sure, there is still a part of me that do think that advertisements is all helmed by money-hungry moguls, but there are those who truly care about the people, wanting to make heartfelt advertisements just to connect with the little people, to jumpstart aspiring newly started careers, to promote the latest and greatest products for the people to consume. And I think that is great.

From what I could tell, advertisements have evolved through the years, from grainy monochrome prints to colossal exuberant billboards displayed on highways to artistic and touching short videos. Unlike older times, there are so many advertising platforms, too many for some I am sure. Just flip the television on and there is a promotional advertisement of the upcoming season of The Voice. Take a short trip to the store and you could hear voices telling you to grab Yusuf Taiyoob dates. Drive down the open highway and colourful billboards accompany your trip. Everywhere you go, advertisements undoubtedly follow. Back then, it is just printed ink on newspapers or dull flyers being passed around or unclear voices on the radio.

There are several segments in the documentary that caught both my ears and eyes. One of them is about Volkswagen. It is pretty incredible how the advertisers managed to turn Americans’ views on the German company, especially since there is a lot of tension between the two nations after World War II.

Another would be of the famous clothing line, Tommy Hilfiger. Initially, Tommy Hilfiger (an unknown fashion designer back then) himself disapproved of well-known designer George Lois’ idea to slot Hilfiger’s name next to much more famous men’s clothing designers’ names, deeming it as ‘bragging’. However, Lois managed to convince Hilfiger to display the advertisement, citing the idea as ‘unique’. And it worked effectively.

Nike’s famed tagline ‘Just do it’ has an interesting origin storyline and it was enlightening to discover how it came to be. Inspired by a murderer’s last words? I did not expect that. But it is amazing how even that from the most unexpected places, ideas become reality. And not only just that, the tagline has actually made a big impact on people’s lives and not just physically-health wise. The fact that it convinced drained women to leave their horrible husbands and the insecure to finally find the courage to dare to do things they never thought of doing is astounding, that one measly sentence could actually have an impact on people’s lives. It blew me away, without a doubt.

This documentary has truly opened my eyes to the world of advertising, a world that I did not expect to have such interesting places to view. That it is not just about money-obsessed men in suits pitching their money-generators to the world or nuisances that would never stop stalking my every move.

It is also about touching people’s lives. It is about convincing people to take their lives by the reins and live the way they have dreamt of living. It is about giving back to the people. And it is so inspiring and amazing.

But truthfully, did the documentary convince me to actually enter this particular field? Not really.

It may seem like a fascinating area of mass communication, all colourful and innovative, but it is not really my cup of tea. I am not the most creative person around and I tend to rely on logic instead. Additionally, brainstorming for ideas is not my strongest suit. And coming up with catchy taglines? Do not ask me to try.

Advertisements made such a big impact on people’s lives that I think it would feel a little empty without them. Highways would just be filled with vehicles speeding down tarred roads, newspapers and magazines would just have article after article after article. Airwaves would only be filled with music and radio DJs’ voices. Televisions would just screen their scripted shows.

Well, I would not mind the last two much but sincerely, it would be a dull place. It would be too empty, too quiet. Some people would not be aware of the newest products that are on sale. Most usually find out of new releases through advertisements. Some might not even have been inspired or gained the courage to the things they did, thanks to advertisements. Companies might not even be still around if it was not for advertisements and would have been bankrupted a long time ago.

Plus, I would not be able to make fun of the king of all advertisements in my opinion, Yusuf Taiyoob advertisements, and I think that would be an ever duller prospect.

Writers: Jasmine, Sara, Daphne, Yin Wei

Researchers: Jasmine, Sara, Daphne, Yin Wei
Editors: Jasmine, Sara, Daphne, Yin Wei

References:

1. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1ASAGd1wIO1gzgpmj1Yf9srJIL8sD5jEtVrUVhYynQQ0_m58Zv1pXfLamsKz4ZWAxmX7kZtLHqLCD9enFkfw6nkMBJqGdvAR1-GNoe0zAhnZx6lns1oRie909kQLV4_PRB8_4QpIb-U/s200/proper-media-allocation-media-advertising-guerrilla-marketing-for-small-businesses-mass-marketing-houston-models-houston-marketing-research-inexpensive-marketing.jpg

2. 1. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAUQjhxqFQoTCO65_9OppcgCFcgZjgodYjYKXg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tophdgallery.com%2Fcableone-idaho-falls.html&psig=AFQjCNFlk8xRRBZHR9su_Un0VPSEGp5mIQ&ust=1443928141074396

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