Adverts - both print and moving image - use a range of persuasive techniques to try and positively influence their audience.
We need to learn a range of these techniques and later apply them to the two CSP adverts we need to study for the exam..
Persuasive techniques
Advertisements are generally trying to persuade their target audience to:
We need to learn a range of these techniques and later apply them to the two CSP adverts we need to study for the exam..
Persuasive techniques
Advertisements are generally trying to persuade their target audience to:
· Buy a product or service
· Believe something or act in a certain way
· Agree with a point of view
There are many persuasive techniques used in advertising. A selection include:
· Slogan – a catchy phrase or statement
· Repetition – constant reference to product name
· Bandwagon – everyone is buying it
· Testimonial/association – e.g. celebrity endorsement
· Emotional appeal – designed to create strong feelings
· Expert opinion – ‘4 out of 5 dentists…’
Examples:
· Slogan – Just Do It
· Repetition – Go Compare
· Bandwagon – Maybelline ‘America’s favourite mascara’
· Testimonial/association – FIFA18 ‘El Tornado’ / Ronaldo
· Emotional appeal – WaterAid ‘Dig toilets not graves’
· Expert opinion – Max Factor ‘The make-up of make-up artists’
Case study: Marmite
Marmite has a long history of unusual advertising based around the idea ‘You either love it or you hate it’. How many of the persuasive techniques can you spot in these adverts?
https://youtu.be/7R1TDZtNq9g
https://youtu.be/B_191RnWwww
Advertising: Persuasive techniques blog task
Create a new blog post called 'Advertising: Persuasive techniques'. Read ‘Marketing Marmite in the Postmodern age’ in MM54 (p62). You'll find our Media Magazine archive here.
Answer the following questions on your blog:
1) What does John Berger suggest about advertising in ‘Ways of Seeing’?
Advertising seeks to make us dissatisfied with our present selves and promotes the idea that we can buy our way to a better life. ‘All publicity works on anxiety’ suggested John Bergerin his seminal book Ways of Seeing (1972). Advertising offers us an improved version of ourselves, whether we are male or female: Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself
made glamorous by the product or
2) What is it psychologists refer to as referencing? Which persuasive techniques could you link this idea to?
Psychologists in the field call this referencing. We refer, either knowingly or subconsciously, to lifestyles represented to us (through the media or in real life) that we find attractive. We create a vision of ourselves living this idealised lifestyle, and then behave in ways that help us to realise this vision. But hold on a minute – this is the 21st century, isn’t it? We’ve known about this cynical manipulation of our baser emotions for decades now, haven’t we? Surely we’ve now evolved into sophisticated and highly critical consumers who know how to get value for money, particularly as we are now offered ever more ways to shop in a global marketplace? Well, yes and no. Contemporary consumers seem tohave entered in to a different kind of covenant with advertising – one based around the notion that ‘we know that they know that we know...’: essentially, a classic example of postmodern thinking.
3) How was Marmite discovered?
The product that was to become Marmite was invented in the late 19th century when German scientist Justus von Liebig discovered that brewer’s yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten. The Marmite Food Extract Company was formed in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire in 1902 with the by-product yeast needed for the paste supplied by Bass Brewery. Marmite takes its name from the clay French stock- pot used for reducing foods into stews. It was originally
supplied in small earthenware pots, but was made available in the characteristically-shaped black glass jars from the1920s. The stockpot remains on the label, however, with the connotations of traditional cookery and ‘boiled-down goodness’ that were a feature of early advertisements.
4) Who owns the Marmite brand now?
The product’s popularity prompted the Sanitarium Health Food Company to obtain sole rights to distribute the product in New Zealand and Australia
5) How has Marmite marketing used intertextuality? Which of the persuasive techniques we’ve learned can this be linked to?
A common tendency in postmodern advertising is to refer to other media products. Marmite’s 2003 ad featuring Zippy from the children’s television programme Rainbow is a good example. In 2007 an 18-month, £3m campaign featured the 1970s cartoon character Paddington Bear. These adverts
continued the ‘love it or hate it’ theme, but also incorporated nostalgic elements that appeal to the family member with responsibility for getting the grocery shopping done. Paddington Bear is shown trading
his well-known marmalade sandwiches for Marmite sandwiches. He is shown enjoying the taste, while others are repelled by it. The ads are designed to encourage more people to use the spread in sandwiches
less popular than Marmite on toast. ‘Paddington has eaten marmalade sandwiches for 50 years. If he can change his habit, so can anyone,’
6) What is the difference between popular culture and high culture? How does Marmite play on this?
High culture is the consumption patterns, mannerisms, beliefs, amusement, leisure activities, and tastes and preferences of a societies elite. And we're going to define societies elite as those with advanced education or economic success. And popular culture is the same thing, but for the mass of society.
Royal Warrants of Appointment are acknowledgements to those companies that provide goods or services to the British royal family; since 1840, this approval has been used to promote products, with a warrant entitling them to use the strapline ‘By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen’ alongside the royal crest. Unilever has spoofed this approach, with the Ma’amite series of advertisements, typifying the irreverent nature of their product – breadsticks form a crown and the Queen’s corgi dogs replace the lion and unicorn. The motto ‘One either loves it or hates it’ is a delightful comic conjoining of the
familiar product slogan and the Queen’s idiosyncratic speech.
7) Why does Marmite position the audience as ‘enlightened, superior, knowing insiders’?
Postmodern audiences arguably understand that they are being manipulated by marketing. They understand the conventions that are being deployed and satirised. Postmodern consumers are simultaneously aware that they are being exploited, yet also prepared to play the game – if it brings them a sense of superiority and social cache. Postmodern consumers get the joke and,
in doing so, they themselves may become promotional agents of the product through word-of mouth.
8) What examples does the writer provide of why Marmite advertising is a good example of postmodernism?
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