Advertising overload
A Netherlands arts group, Studio Smack, put together this video which provides a stark look at all the logos and advertising one is exposed to going throughout a normal daily routine.
Cutting edge and archived advertising
If you'd like to see what's new and old in advertising, including cutting edge award-winning advertising, take a tour of Copyranter. Lots to see here.
Using Media-Friendly Images to Get Your Message Out
At the recent True Spin Conference in Denver, I attended a session titled "How to Create Media-Friendly Imagery," presented by Jason Salzman, who is the co-founder of Effect Communications, and the author of Making The News: a Guide for Activists and Nonprofits (1998). Salzman was also instrumental in putting together the True Spin Conference.
Salzman began his session with the idea that television is still the dominant news source for national and international news, according to a 2008 Pew survey. It is an undeniable fact that you need visual imagery to get your story onto the TV news. Visual imagery is also important for getting your story into local newspapers, another news source for many people.
Maybe you're thinking that newspapers and television stations should simply be reporting on important stories, whether or not there is an accompanying clever visual image. That's a nice idea that doesn't happen in the real world. You absolutely need to decorate your stories with creative visuals, or else your stories will be invisible to local media. As Salzman says, "This is often ridiculous stuff, but it works." He presented the conference gathering with a long list of types of visual imagery. He added, "When you see some of these things, you might think they are juvenile or stupid, but they really work. As long as your imagery is on message, it's good."
Now I know that some of you probably are still thinking that you're not going to sell out-- you would rather be dignified than be accused of being silly or desperate to get coverage for your important issue. Salzman encouraged the audience members to get over their inhibitions, however. "Stunts can be worthwhile. People forget the source, but they remember the message."
What kinds of visual imagery seem to catch the attention of the local news media so that you can get your story some real attention? I will walk through Jason's list of seventeen media-imagery techniques, one-by-one. He has graciously allowed me to reprint some of his slides to illustrate these ideas (using these images makes sense, of course, given the topic).
1. Costumes. Salzman stated that costumes are the "oldest and best" use of imagery available. By dressing up as a giant pea pod, he was successful in gaining considerable media attention while making the point that George W. Bush and John McCain were "two peas in a pod." As you can see, he wore his pea pod costume at his session.
As another of many examples, Salzman described how mobs of cameras once gathered around real pigs that were part of a protest of pork barrel projects. A member of the audience asked whether it would be better to surprise the media by suddenly pulling out the costume, but Salzman strenuously disagreed. "Don't surprise the media. Tell the media you'll be there [dressed up in your costume]." Members of the media love stories with images. "Tell them you'll be there and tell them how you'll be dressed. This will dramatically increase your odds of showing up on the news."
2. Dramatize a Phrase. Salzman pointed to an example of a huge "budget pie," to illustrate a story that one-half of discretionary spending went to the military.
3. Banners. If the timing is right, banners can work beautifully. Let the cameras pan those big banners! He gave the example of the New York garbage barge (at left).
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Advertising, the good old-fashioned way
Check out this collection of vintage magazine advertising, for a chuckle.
Fat Tire’s first prize: an obsolete bike. The rationality of costly signaling.
Fat Tire Beer is holding a contest, and first prize is an old-fashioned bicycle. It is a cumbersome and heavy one-speed bike that lacks most of the useful features found on modern bicycles. What does it have going for it? Nothing much worth my while. I buy my bicycles for performance, features and functionality, not looks. Others would say that the Fat Tire bicycle has an unique style worth coveting. I know a woman who recently paid a large amount of money for a "retro" bicycle much like the one in the photo. She bragged about her bicycle only in terms of what it looked like, and seemed to get irritated when I asked her whether she would miss some of the useful features found in most modern bicycles, features such as multiple gears, high-tech gear-shifting, feather-light frame, and front or rear suspension. It appears that Fat Tire Beer is looking for customers like the woman I just described, people who are obsessed with the looks of a bicycle rather than its functionality. I recently posted on Geoffrey Miller's terrific new book, Spent. At page 97, Miller discusses the "signaling value" of many modern products. Miller points out that modern corporations work hard to avoid competition based upon objective features that can be compared. Fat Tire Beer, for example, did not choose to offer a modern bicycle that could easily be compared to the many other bicycles currently being sold. Instead, the company chose to offer an old-fashioned bike that would signal a certain trait for the owner and his/her friends/acquaintances. Modern corporations
Use advertising to create signaling systems--psychological links between brands and the aspirational traits that consumers would like to display. Although these signaling links must be commonly understood by the consumer's socially relevant peer group, they need not involve the actual product at all. The typical Vogue magazine ad shows just two things: a brand name and an attractive person . . . there is a hidden rationality at work--the rationality of costly signaling. What matters in most advertising is the learned association between the consumer's aspirational traits and the company's trademarked brand name--the fountainhead of all profitability.Therefore, don't waste your time trying to figure out what obsolete styles of bicycles have to do with beer. The bicycle featured on the label of Fat Tire Beer has nothing to do with the taste or quality of the liquid in the bottle. Rather, buying Fat Tire Beer is an opportunity for a consumer to display to others that the consumer can afford a premium beer. The bicycle on the label gives consumers a further opportunity to suggest that tradition is more important than functionality. Those who buy Fat Tire Beer let the beer do their talking for them: "I'm a person who values tradition over functionality." That's my guess. I wouldn't accept that cumbersome and sparsely-featured contest bicycle even if someone offered it to me for free, because I know less-costly, less wasteful and more effective ways of convincing others that I often value tradition. It involves hard work and no gimmicks. It requires that you willingly put your life under a microscope, that you repeatedly show rather than tell, and that you show your values in ways other than through conspicuous consumption.