advertising
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advertising
the process and the means (press, film, TV, etc.) by which the availability and the qualities of commodities and services are notified to a wider public. Drawing on SEMIOLOGY, Jean BAUDRILLARD (1970) has argued that in modern Societies CONSUMPTION entails the ‘active manipulation of the SIGN’, so that the sign and the commodity have come together in the production of the ‘commodity-sign’.It is in such a context that the power of advertising has been a central issue in modern sociology. In a popular sociological exposé, The Hidden Persuaders (1957), Vance Packard painted a picture of an armoury of psychological and sociological advertising techniques which made these techniques appear all-powerful. In the 1950s, the novelist J. B. Priestley coined the term admass to describe the drive to consumption which was fuelled by mass advertising in modern societies. Packard also argued that advertising promotes consumption as a solution to personal and political problems. Advertising creates ‘false needs’ which are met in a fundamentally unsatisfying way by conspicuous consumption, in the belief that wellbeing and peace of mind are provided by the purchase of commodities.
Against such views, more conventional paradigms in media research have often argued that barriers to mass communications (e.g. group opinion) exist which act as a ‘protective screen’ against any too easy manipulation (see TWO-STEP FLOW IN MASS COMMUNICATIONS). Feminist theories of advertising have taken another line, stressing its frequent sexism, an aspect of its more general recourse to gender, ageist, and racist STEREOTYPES.
A further aspect of advertising is that in the UK and elsewhere advertising influences the general content of broadcasting. In the UK, Curran et al., commenting upon the discussion in the 1977 Royal Commission on the Press on press finances, argued that advertising organizes both media content and structure, and effectively operates as a system of patronage supporting capitalist production values rather than democratic political values. Markets and sections of populations which are not attractive to advertisers and manufacturers, such as older people and people with low incomes, are not serviced by the mass media because of this dependence on advertising. One final point of interest is that some advertising agencies now employ operational categories which have much in common with ideas currently being developed by academic writers using the concept ‘postmodern’ to describe contemporary Western societies. Postmodernism proposes that the concept of CLASS has less relevance to contemporary experience than LIFESTYLE and CONSUMPTION. In this frame of reference advertising is depicted as seductive rather than manipulative and advertising agencies are increasingly abandoning socioeconomic classification systems and replacing them with the concepts of consumption class and lifestyle group’. See also CONSUMER CULTURE, MASS CULTURE.
Advertising
(in Russian, reklama). (1) Information about the consumer qualities of commodities and various types of services, disseminated for the purpose of selling the commodities and services by creating a demand.
(2) The dissemination of information about a person, organization or work of literature or art in order to create popularity. Corresponding to the Russian word reklama are the English terms “advertising” and “publicity,” the French term publicité, and the German term Werbung.
The simplest forms of advertising existed even before the Common Era. In ancient Greece and Rome, advertising notices were written on wooden boards, engraved on copper or bone, and loudly read in squares and other public places. Advertising achieved its greatest development in the era of capitalism. The origin of printed advertising in the early 17th century is associated with W. Caxton in England and T. Renaudot in France.
Modern advertising is done through the print media (newspapers, magazines, posters, bulletins, prospectuses), radio, television, films, store windows, signs (including those composed of lights), packaging, commodity and company insignia, and by other means. In the industrially developed countries, newspaper and magazine advertising accounts for 40 percent of total advertising expenditures, with the next most popular media being television and radio, in that order.
Advertising art is synthetic in character. Advertising makes wide use of commercial art, poster art, decorative designing art, and environmental furnishings.
The development of advertising in capitalist countries was occasioned by the struggle for markets and the struggle to obtain maximum profits. Advertising is a method of nonprice competition and is one of the functions of marketing. Apart from having purely economic objectives, it is used to shape the public politically and ideologically. Advertising, which molds the needs and living standard of bourgeois society, is a social weapon of the exploiting class. The advertising media, which are in the hands of monopolies, help impose superfluous needs, inculcate conformist views, and implant standards of “mass culture” and worship of fashion. Through the system of mass media, advertising encompasses the overwhelming majority of members of the “consumer society” and contributes to the increasing alienation of the individual. It has become a powerful means of ideologically influencing the population during election campaigns and other campaigns, foisting on the public political figures who suit the monopolies. Advertising is widely used to propagandize bourgeois ideology and the Western, especially American, way of life.
Advertising is handled by special firms and agencies with a far-flung network of departments and offices and the advertising departments of industrial and commercial companies, publishing houses, and so forth. Revenues from advertisements make up a significant share of the profits of bourgeois periodicals, radio companies, and television companies.
It is estimated that every inhabitant of the USA is subjected daily to a stream of approximately 1,500 advertisements. In 1970, the ten largest agencies, which include J. Walter Thompson Co., McCann-Erickson, Inc., Young & Rubicam Inc., and Ogilvy & Mather Inc., accounted for almost 30 percent of the volume of US advertising. In 1966, Japan had more than 300 advertising agencies, employing some 30,000 employees in all; Dentsu, one of the world’s largest agencies, accounted for a quarter of all moneys spent in the country on advertising. Advertising expenditures, which are included in distribution costs, have reached gigantic dimensions, totaling $22.1 billion in the USA in 1972. Advertising costs are passed on to the consumer through monopoly prices, with up to 50 percent of the price of certain new goods on the market due to advertising expenditures.
In socialist countries, advertising is done on a planned basis and is distinguished by truthfulness. It stimulates demand and promotes the formation of new social needs, a rise in the standard of consumption, and the development of the socialist economy and culture.
Among the first decrees of the Soviet state was a decree on the introduction of a state monopoly on advertisements. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, advertising promoted the development of trade between the city and countryside and the strengthening of contacts between trade and industry. Specialized advertising organizations were formed, including Promreklama (the industrial advertising agency of the Supreme Council on the National Economy) and Mostorgreklama (the Moscow commercial advertising bureau for trade advertising). Subsequently advances were made in the organization and techniques of advertising.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, a number of large specialized advertising organizations were created, including Soiuztorgreklama (All-Union Trade Advertising Agency), Rostorgreklama (Russian Trade Advertising Agency), and Glavkooptorgreklama (Chief Cooperative Trade Advertising Agency). A number of industrial advertising bureaus were created under various ministries and departments. Interdepartmental councils on advertising were organized to coordinate advertising activities.
More than 60 specialized advertising publications are issued in the USSR, including Reklama (Advertising), Kommercheskii vestnik (Commercial Herald), Moskovskaia reklama (Moscow Advertising), Novye tovary (New Commodities), Panorama (Panorama), and supplements to oblast and republic newspapers. As of 1974 there were more than 400 advertising films, and radio and television advertising programs are broadcast daily. Fairs for the sale of advertising equipment are held every year in Moscow.
Advertising is also developing well in other socialist countries. There are specialized advertising organizations in the German Democratic Republic (DEWAG Werbung, an agency that fills orders for all types of advertising), Czechoslovakia (Merkur, Optima and others), Bulgaria (Reklama), and Hungary (Magyar Hirdetö). Specialized advertising publications include Neue Werbung in the German Democratic Republic, Reklama in Czechoslovakia, Kirakat in Hungary, Reklama in Poland, and Reklama in Bulgaria. Representatives of the advertising organizations of the member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) regularly exchange news of achievements in the theory and practice of advertising.
REFERENCES
Voronov, K. G. “Reklama v torgovle kapitalisticheskikh stran.” In the collection Nauchnye zapiski Vsesoiuznoi akademii vneshnei torgovli, issue 13. Moscow, 1967.Degtiarev, Iu. A., and L. A. Kornilov. Torgovaia reklama: ekonomika, iskusstvo. Moscow, 1969.
Feofanov, O. A. SShA: reklama i obshchestvo. Moscow, 1974.
Reeves, R. Realizm v reklame. Moscow, 1969. (Translated from English.)
Spravochnik po torgovoi reklame. Moscow, 1972. (Translated from German.)
Sovetskii reklamnyi plakat, 1917–1932: Torgovaia reklama, zrelishchnaia reklama. [Album.] Moscow, 1972.
Mayer, M. Madison Avenue, U.S.A. New York, 1958.
Packard, V. The Hidden Persuaders. New York, 1961.
Boorstin, D. J. The Decline of Radicalism: Reflections of America Today. New York, 1969.
McLuhan, M. Culture Is Our Business. New York, 1972.
E. M. KANEVSKII