At last, we are starting!




advertising

Eventually, we are going to launch our blog on “undressing the ad”.  It is a blog you will resort to in order to think about certain issues (food for thought), share ideas with your classmates and teacher and post your considerations. 

 

Let’s proceed one step at a time, though.


Read the following quotes on advertising.  They were selected by me to prompt some kind of discussion.  I ask you to read them, choose the one you like the most and say why and then find one of your own and post it for your classmates and your teacher to read and reflect upon.

 

Welcome on board and let’s start our constructive voyage. 


advertising-creative The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.  Bill Cosby

Our society’s values are being corrupted by advertising’s insistence on the equation:  Youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness.  John Fisher

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.  Samuel Johnson

History will see advertising "as one of the real evil things of our time.  It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that."  Malcolm Muggeridge


Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless. Sinclair Lewis


Advertising is legalized lying. H.G.Wells  

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better. George Santayana


I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public. Aldous Huxley 



AdvertisingWeekideas

 

32 Replies to “At last, we are starting!”

  1. Dear Valentina,

    I liked your expression “people who buy hope or the tycoon who wants to make money”.  You raised a good point: there is an invisible sort of pact between the seller and the buyer.  The seller analyses society and seems to foresee and thus impose needs, the seller wants to buy something to feel happier and to “suspend” reality for a moment.  It is a vicious circles, isn’t it?

     

  2. No! I think AD is a science, an extremely difficult science to understand and to study but it absolutely not arrest human intelligence. I think on the contrary that temptations, provocations  even the“ baits ” which ad sends us ,are something more that make us reflect  and think about it.
    A commercial does not oblige you to buy or to do something, it just tells you about a product.
    In my opinion ,advertising is like a drug, a cigarette… you know very well that drugs and smoke  are unhealthy and nobody obliges you to become addicted… and we do it the same!! so,  is ad which arrests human intelligence, or human intelligence which wants, and lets arrest itself by AD?!?
    And it is for this reason that AD creates new culture. It could be a high culture (with people who really know what an AD stands for), but unfortunately it could be also a law culture with people who become AD ADDICTED.(I hope I can use this terms).
    Jessica L.

  3. It is a sort of vicious circle: tycoons have always new ideas,new products,new brands and new challenges for consumers,for us. Sometimes,according to me,they go too far,they dare too much,and in this cases I don’t believe they hit it big. It can be dangerous for buyers because they want to keep up with the market and with the society;but I continue sticking to my opinion :is consumer who decides what to buy and what to believe.
    Valentina

  4. According to what I have said before, I would specify that analysing an ad as a whole is really important for every customer, but we have to take into account that a very few people reflect seriously upon a commercial before buying what it is advertised. I was referring to little elements that often influence us when we are doing the shopping: I notice there are a lot of pasta brands and which brand I am going to buy? The one that recalls me an ad I particularly liked on Tv, because the soundtrack was beautiful. So, unconsciously I am predisposed to buy it. It is an impulse difficult to control.
    In my opinion, the quotation posted by Stefania is relatively true: when we are watching an ad we could be emotionally involved, but human intelligence does not stop; it works always, in every circumstance. Evidently, there is a great possibility that ads gain over intelligence, but they must be very attractive in order to put to sleep our rationality.
    The quotation posted by Chiara is really interesting, but I disagree with it. The majority of ads has nothing to do with culture, because money and culture are not correlated.

    Tiziana

  5. Dear Jessica,
    You can certainly use the term "ad addicted!.  It is your neologism, so just place it in " "!
    Tiziana, I like the fact that you refer to your classmates’ observations and comments. 
    Valentina, you made your point quite clearly!

    See you in class!

  6. I stick to the idea that advertising is making us want more and more, but this is a clear example of lie, because we can’t NEED something if we managed to live without it until now. In this way advertising is a sort of lie, the line between lie and truth is very subtle and it isn’t always easy to spot it. It has to appeal to our senses and cultures in order to trick us. Referring to what Valentina said, people aren’t always able to spot the lie, because ad can hit them in their critical points and hurt their sensitivity.
    Davide

  7. For me happiness means feel good with my self principally. But happiness has got lots of “face” like: freedom, love, beauty, good luck, health and many other… I feel happy when: I can sing because it’s my passion, I do my best (in general), when the weather is beautiful because It’s fantastic to wake up in a sunny day and so I can have good time with people that I love, however I feel good when I wear ..
    I feel good when my friends or my relatives are happy too, and meanly when they are happy because I’m able to help them! To help other people makes me happy, I feel enriched and important because I know I’ve done the right thing! when I can help my mum I feel an emotion that it’s unbelievable, it’s really more than happy but I don’t know how to explain.
    The phrase “you can’t have a rainbow without a bit of rain” for me means if you want the happiness, you will have to sacrifice your self a bit, because today “no one give you something” you have to earn every thing!
    however I think money can help you to much, but if you are the richest man in the world but you’re lonely, stupid, sick, all people hate you, you won’t be happy .
    Instead people who are poor have a great quality that every other person should envy: they live with simplicity! We should take them as example because our society is based on the consumerism and to be happy you have to do lots of thing, and more you have and more you want.
    I will post this phrase “I’M IN CHARGE OF HOW I FEEL AND TODAY I AM CHOOSING HAPPINESS” in my bedroom because I think I would start every day with a smile!
    My eighth step to the happiness is: BE LESS SELFISH, BE MORE GENEROUS!!

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