Advertising & New Media

The aim for the lecture was to join the conversation surrounding new media, communication and creativity.

Traditional media or old media as some prefer to say has been used in both the advertising and marketing world for many years. In advertising old media is television, news papers, radio and magazine ads. We can look at these forms of old media as the roots of advertising. Old media is effective, but over the years there has been a change in the way of how to communicate with and reach consumers. New media is the future of advertising. Consumers and businesses tend to rely on new media as the digital world grows. You can say that new media is content that is easily accessible via many different forms of digital media. In advertising this can be different forms of online advertising, online streaming and social media advertising as we see much of. The positive is that you have a bigger capability to reach any consumer with ease.

Mobile phones is an interactive mass media as the internet is and that means that advertisers frequently take use of this device to use different viral marketing methods. That means that adverts or viral videos can be send forward to other people, it can be shared. This allows the consumer to be a part of the advertising experience.

"Mobile phones will soon become the greatest tool for persuasion, more than any other medium for advertising" (Fogg, 2003) 

"Shareability creates social content that cultivates deep emotional relationships between brands and their consumers." www.shareability.com (2016)

19th century emotive strategy:
This can be characterised by persuasion and impressions you get out of the advertisements. An example is ad A Dress Rehearsal (1888) a painting bought and used as an ad for Sunlight soap. Emotional strategy enhanced by naturalism of Newlyn school (Cornwall) persuaded use of Sunlight soap, mass media.

21th century emotive strategy:
This is characterised by engagement. It works not through persuasion or impressions but through engagement and involvement. And you have all different types of medias you can use to engage. The consumer wants to be a part of something. Feature and distribution.

"New media invited us to think in exciting new ways about advertising, as an industry and communication process" (Spurgeon, 2008)


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Class

What is class?

Class is a construct based on a set of values normally related back to both wealth and power. It works as the hierarchical stratification of groups of people. Normally these groups are working, middle and upper class in a pyramid structure. 

"The history of all human society, past and present, has been the history of class struggle"

- Manifesto

Marx, K. The Communist

London: Pluto 

Press, 1996

Marxist theory of class

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist and social scientist. His thoughts about labour, capital and power is what forms the basis of Marxism. 

The ruling class has material force because it has the means to produce material objects. He called all things relating to production the Base. 

He defined three classes:

Proletariats (Working class - those who work for means of production)

Bourgeoisie (Middle class - those who live off the means of production)

Aristocracy (Upper class - those who own land etc as means of production)

"Moving beyond Marx, but still moving alongside but not wholly within economics, class is made through cultural values premised in morality embodied in personhood and realised (or not) as a property value in symbolic systems of exchange"

- (Skeggs, B. 2005, reacting to Reality Tv)

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Levi's Laundrette Ad

Client: Levis Strauss co 
Agency: BBH

Levi's wasn't trendy anymore because it was under attack by other more fashionable brands and it had been a common jeans brand to be worn by middle - aged dads. The brands intended target audience for the 501 jeans was 15 - 19 year olds. The target audience saw the 50's and 60's as the cool and mythical america. It was either making a campaign based on this insight or go for an ad that fitted the jeans in a america of Ronald Reagan, which was the opposite of MTV and european chic. 

“I remember that the ad was running at a cinema before a movie, and I hadn’t seen it on the tely at that point. So I went to the cinema just to see the ad…” she says.“The commercial made those jeans sexy at a time when Levi’s were struggling to make their product appealing to women of my age, and really that’s where the big spenders come from. Suddenly those jeans became a must-heve item! I only wanted them because Nick Kamen wore them and took them off…” - Kate Thornton, a famous English journalist

How is this ad post modern?
The ad was so far from ordinary for it's time. The ad played a lot on sexuality with casting Nick Kamden and making him take his clothes off making the girls flustered. Using sexuality in this way was typical for the style of post modernists. It takes you back to the 50's and wanted to give people memories of that time, reminiscing back to that time was unusual for the age. It will say that the sexual humour and context of the scenes represents post modernism. There is no copy in the ad, only a song Through The Grape Wine by Marvin Gaye. 
The ad was influenced by MTV's music videos which only launched the year before. The ad looked more like a music video than an ad. This links back to new technology which at that time was looked at as post modern. 

Kanye Wests Yeezy season 3 fashion show and album release have some of the same post modern influences. In stead of a tv ad, he created an event that was held at Madison square garden. He did something we had not seen before and released both his clothing line and album in the same show. The way he presented it was not traditional for this time. He had all his models separated by gender and on two big stages. The show also commented on political issues, it was influenced by the context. The fashion line in general are fairly androgynous and neutral in the colour scheme. 

Levi's "Laundrette" 

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