Advertising and Advertising Appeals

TOPIC: - Advertising and Advertising Appeals

PAPER 15: - Mass Communication and Media Studies

NAME: - Gohil Yashpalsinh Baldevsinh

CLASS: - M.A. SEM-4

ROLL NO.:-15

YEAR: - 2014

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various mass media such as newspaper, magazines, television commercial, radio advertisement, outdoor advertising or direct mail; or new media such as websites and text messages.

•      Indian Advertising starts with the hawkers calling out their wares right from the days when cities and markets first began 

•      Shop front signages 

•      From street side sellers to press ads 

Concrete advertising history begins with classified advertising
Ads appear for the first time in print in Hickey's Bengal Gazette. India's first newspaper (weekly). Studios mark the beginning of advertising created in India (as opposed to imported from England) Studios set up for bold type, ornate fonts, more fancy, larger ads 

•      Ads appear in newspapers in the form of lists of the latest merchandise from England 

•      Patent medicines: Advertised and sold.

•      Horlicks becomes the first 'malted milk' to be patented (Patent - A grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time) on 5th June 1883.

•      In 1905 B Dattaram & Co first Indian advertising agency in
Girgaum in Bombay 

•      During 1920s the first foreign owned ad agencies came to India. Gujarat Advertising and Indian Advertising set up.

•      Indian agencies, foreign advertising in the thirties

•      Indianising advertisements in the forties

•      Corporate advertising in the fifties

•      In 1951 Vicks VapoRub: a rub for colds, causes ripples with its entry
in the balm market 

•      Creative revolution in the sixties

•       In 1960, Advertising Marketing came to be recognized

•      Slowly, the medium has expanded and reached out to other mediums like TV, radio and films.

We live in the times of excessiveness. More populations lead to greater demand and thus mass production of good and services. Mass production demands a mass market and a mass distribution system. The very survival of this production system demands its continuous expansion. Such an expansion means also the expansion of the market, beyond the seats of production and even beyond the boundaries of the country. This may be called the horizontal, spatial or geographical expansion of the market. Such an expansion' is both national and international. At the same time there is also a vertical expansion of the market. The objective is to bring the entire society within the orbit of the market. This does not mean only providing the individual or the family with the resources to purchase goods and services in the market. A disposable surplus is not enough. A 'psychic desire' to consume more and different products has also to be created. Expansion of the market also means the creation of new goods and services and making them acceptable to the consumer. Without such a continuous expansion of the market, the capitalist economy cannot survive. This is a constant process of the renewal and increase of capital passing through the market. For this, people have to be informed, motivated and persuaded. 

With a mass market, national and international, this is only possible through a specialized communication system. Thus, modem advertising evolved, to meet precisely this requirement of the capitalist economic system. Its social relevance is to direct the desires of human beings, latent and expressed, and their needs, in such a way, as to ensure the continuation and expansion of sales of goods and services, so essential to sustain mass production by accumulated capital. In the process of bringing consumers in touch with products or services, advertising also helps create new consumers. Thus, it is involved in the social production of consumers.

Advertising is a component of a democratic society. The essence of democracy is that people have a choice and the right to exercise that choice. In the democratic economic system a variety of goods and services is available to choose from. Advertising enables the consumer to make the choice. In simple words; one can say that Advertisements tell consumers what to buy.

The main features of advertising:

•      It is directed towards increasing the sales of business.

•      Advertising is a paid form of publicity

•      It is non-personal. They are directed at a mass audience and nor at the individual as is in the case of personal selling.

•      Advertisements are identifiable with their sponsor of originator which is not always the case with publicity or propaganda.

Importance of Advertisement:

Advertising broadens the knowledge of the consumers.

With the aid of advertising, consumers find and buy necessary products without much waste of time. 

Benefits to Consumers:

Advertising helps in eliminating the middlemen by establishing direct contacts between producers and consumers. It results in cheaper goods. Advertising stresses quality and very often prices. This forms an indirect guarantee to the consumers of the quality and price. Further large scale production assumed by advertising enables the seller to seller product at a lower cost. It helps them to know where and when the products are available. This reduces their shopping time. This is perhaps the only medium through which consumers could know the varied and new uses of the product. Modern advertisements are highly informative. It provides an opportunity to the customers to compare the merits and demerits of various substitute products.

Advertising promotes choice:

Clothes, car insurance, computers, holidays... we have never had so much choice as consumers. Yet we all have different tastes and needs. No single product is right for everyone.

Companies use advertising to tell us about the distinct products they offer in response to this diversity. When you see an ad for coffee, for example, it can

• Inform you about lower prices (e.g. 'buy one get one free' promotion).
• Tell you about differences in quality (e.g. improved packaging that keeps the coffee fresh longer).
• Tell you about the options that best fit your individual tastes and values (e.g. coffee certified with the 'Fair Trade' label).
• Inform you about the options that best suit your lifestyle (e.g. coffee capsules for instant espresso).                                                                                                                           
  

Advertising, in other words, allows companies to provide a much broader range of options than would otherwise be the case. By telling us about them, advertising ensures that we don't need to settle for second best. It helps us exercise our right to choose.

Advertising increases value for consumers:

By allowing companies to differentiate themselves and highlight their unique selling points, advertising stimulates competition in the marketplace.

Competition, in turn, means companies need to keep improving the value of their products for their consumers: pushing down prices and pushing up quality.

Just think how competition among TV manufacturers has brought about a steep fall in the price of flat-screen televisions while simultaneously increasing both their image quality and their size.

The link between advertising, competition and consumer value is immediate: when bans on advertising were lifted in some US states, the prices of spectacles fell by 30-40% thanks to increased public awareness and competition.

Various media for Advertising:

Advertising media are the means to transmit the message of the advertiser to the desired class of people. Channels or vehicle by which an advertising message is brought to the notice of the prospective buyer:

Types of Media:

There is no dearth of media today. It may be direct or indirect. Direct method of advertising refers to such methods used by the advertiser with which he could establish a direct contact with the prospective hand involve the use of a hired agency for spreading the information. Most of the media are indirect in nature, e.g., press publicity, cinema, etc. The various media that are commonly used are being explained here under:

Newspapers:

Newspaper (Hindi or English) (morning or evening editions) are bought largely for their news value as such they are most appropriate for announcing new products and new development of existing products. The choice of a particular news paper for advertising depends upon many factors i.e., circulation of the newspaper, the type of readers it serves, the geographical region in which it is popular, the costs of space and general reputation of the paper etc.

Magazines:

Another medium under press publicity is magazines and journals. They also offer good facility because magazine are read leisurely when the reader is mentally prepared to receive advertisements.

Advertising Appeal

The most basic of human needs is the need for food, clothing and shelter. Special need for these necessities cannot be created with advertising. However there are certain other products that provide comfort in life and advertising aims to generate demand for these products. Advertising uses appeals as a way of persuading people to buy certain products. Advertising appeals are designed in a way so as to create a positive image of the individuals who use certain products. Advertising agencies and companies use different types of advertising appeals to influence the purchasing decisions of people.

            The most important types of advertising appeals include emotional and rational appeals. Emotional appeals are often effective for the youth while rational appeals work well for products directed towards the older generation. Here are just some of the various different kinds of advertising appeals seen in the media today:

Emotional Appeal:

An emotional appeal is related to an individual’s psychological and social needs for purchasing certain products and services. Many consumers are emotionally motivated or driven to make certain purchases. Advertisers aim to cash in on the emotional appeal and this works particularly well where there is not much difference between multiple product brands and its offerings. Emotional appeal includes personal and social aspects.

1. Personal Appeal

Some personal emotions that can drive individuals to purchase products include safety, fear, love, humor, joy, happiness, sentiment, stimulation, pride, self esteem, pleasure, comfort, ambition, nostalgia etc.

2. Social Appeal

Social factors cause people to make purchases and include such aspects as recognition, respect, involvement, affiliation, rejection, acceptance, status and approval.

3. Fear Appeal

Fear is also an important factor that can have incredible influence on individuals. Fear is often used to good effect in advertising and marketing campaigns of beauty and health products including insurance. Advertising experts indicate that using moderate levels of fear in advertising can prove to be effective.

Humour Appeal:

Humour is an element that is used in around 30% of the advertisements. Humour can be an excellent tool to catch the viewer’s attention and help in achieving instant recall which can work well for the sale of the product. Humour can be used effectively when it is related to some benefit that the customer can derive without which the joke might overpower the message.

Sex Appeal:

Sexuality, sexual suggestiveness, over sexuality or sensuality raises curiosity of the audience and can result in strong feelings about the advertisement. It can also result in the product appearing interesting. However use of sex in types of advertising appeals can have a boomerang effect if it is not used carefully. It can interfere with the actual message of the advertisement and purpose of the product and can also cause low brand recall. If this is used then it should be an integral part of the product and should not seem vulgar. The shift should be towards sensuality. 

Music Appeal:

Music can be used as types of advertising appeals as it has a certain intrinsic value and can help in increasing the persuasiveness of the advertisement. It can also help capture attention and increase customer recall.

Scarcity Appeal:

Scarcity appeals are based on limited supplies or limited time period for purchase of products and are often used while employing promotional tools including sweepstakes, contests etc.

Rational Appeal:

Rational appeals as the name suggests aims to focus on the individual’s functional, utilitarian or practical needs for particular products and services. Such appeals emphasize the characteristics and features of the product and the service and how it would be beneficial to own or use the particular brand. Print media is particularly well suited for rational appeals and is often used with good success. It is also suited for business to business advertisers and for products that are complex and that need high degree of attention and involvement.

Masculine Feminine Appeal

Used in cosmetic or beauty products and also clothing. This type of appeal aims at creating the impression of the perfect person. The message is that the product will infuse the perfection or the stated qualities in you.

Brand Appeal:

This appeal is directed towards people who are brand conscious and wish to choose particular products to make a brand statement.

Snob Appeal:

This appeal is directed towards creating feeling of desire or envy for products that are termed top of the line or that have considerable qualities of luxury, elegance associated with them.

Adventure Appeal:

This appeal is directed towards giving the impression that purchasing a product will change the individual’s life radically and fill it with fun, adventure and action. 

Less than Perfect Appeal:

Advertisements often try to influence people to make certain purchases by pointing out their inadequacies or making them feel less perfect and more dissatisfied with their present condition. These types of advertising appeals are used in cosmetic and health industries.

Romance Appeal:

These advertisements display the attraction between man and woman. The appeal is used to signify that buying certain products will have  a positive impact on the opposite sex and improve your romantic or love life. Frangrances, automobiles and other products use these types of advertising appeals.

Emotional Words/Sensitivity Appeal:

These advertisements are used to drive at and influence the sensitivities of consumers.

Youth Appeal:

Advertisements that reflect youth giving aspects or ingredients of products use these types of appeals. Cosmetic products in particular make use of these appeals.

Endorsement:

Celebrities and well known personalities often endorse certain products and their pitching can help drive the sales.

Play on Words:

Advertisements also make effective use of catch phrases to convey the message. Such appeals help in brand recognition and recall and can be quite popular with the youth in particular.

Statistics:

Advertisements also use statistics and figures to display aspects of the product and its popularity in particular.

Plain Appeal:

These advertisements use every day aspects of life and appeal to ordinary people regarding the use of a product or service.

Bandwagon Appeal:

This type of advertising appeal is meant to signify that since everybody is doing something you should be a part of the crowd as well. It appeals towards the popularity aspect or coolness aspect of a person using a particular product or service.

The Concept of Absurdity in 'Waiting for Godot'

TOPIC : The Concept of Absurdity in 'Waiting for Godot'

PAPER 09 : The Modernist Literature

STUDENT'S NAME : Gohil Yashpalsinh Baldevsinh

CLASS : M.A., Sem-3

ROLL NO. : 15

YEAR : 2013

 The term ‘Theatre of Absurd’ was coined by Martin Esslin in his essay ‘The Theatre of Absurd’. The main exponents of this school were – Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet. Although these writers oppose the idea of belonging to a particular school, yet their writings do have certain common characteristics on the basis of which they can be clubbed together in one category.

The term ‘absurd’ has also been linked to the mathematical term ‘surd’, which means a value that cannot be expressed in finite terms. In terms of literature, therefore, we can say that it refers to something that is irrational.

The concept of ‘absurd’ seems to have begun with Sartre’s philosophy. “The absurd is not a mere idea”, says Sartre, “it is revealed to us in a doleful illumination – getting up, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.” The idea is similar to what Camus expressed in his essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’. The point stressed here is, beginning all over again as if it were a new life. The actions of the absurd hero are meaningless and illogical. 

          Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot largely deals with the absurd tradition. The play is without any plot, character, dialogue and setting in the traditional sense.
In this play the setting creates the absurdist mood. A desolate country road, a ditch, and a leafless tree make up the barren, otherworldly landscape whose only occupants are two homeless men who bumble and shuffle in a vaudevillian manner. They are in rags, bowler hats, and apparently oversized boots--a very comic introduction to a very bizarre play. There is a surplus of symbolism and thematic suggestion in this setting. The landscape is a symbol of a barren and fruitless civilization or life. There is nothing to be done and there appears to be no place better to depart. The tree, usually a symbol of life with its blossoms and fruit or its suggestion of spring, is apparently dead and lifeless. But it is also the place to which they believe this Godot has asked them to come. This could mean Godot wants the men to feel the infertility of their life. At the same time, it could simply mean they have found the wrong tree.

          This setting of the play reminds us the post-war condition of the world which brought about uncertainties, despair, and new challenges to the all of mankind. A pessimistic outlook laced with sadism and tangible violence, as a rich dividend of the aftermath of wars. It is as if the poignancy and calamities of the wars found sharp reflections in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

          Then next comes the plot. In the traditional sense a plot should concentrate on a single motivated action and is also expected to have a beginning, a middle and a neatly tied-up ending. But it’s almost impossible to provide a conventional plot summary of Waiting for Godot, which has often been described as a play in which nothing happens. It is formless and not constructed on on any structural principles. It has no Aristotelian beginning, middle and end. It starts at an arbitrary point and seem to end just as arbitrarily. Beckett, like other dramatists working in this mode, is not trying to "tell a story." He's not offering any easily identifiable solutions to carefully observed problems; there's little by way of moralizing and no obvious "message." The pattern of the play might best be described as circular. The circularity of Waiting for Godot is highly unconventional.

          As per as the portrayal of characters is concerned the play also fits into the absurd tradition. A well-made play is expected to present characters that are well-observed and convincingly motivated. But in the play we five characters who are not very recognizable human beings and don’t engage themselves in a motivated action. Two tramps, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), are waiting by a tree on a country road for Godot, whom they have never met and who may not even exist. They argue, make up, contemplate suicide, discuss passages from the Bible, and encounter Pozzo and Lucky, a master and slave. Near the end of the first act, a young boy comes with a message from Mr. Godot that he will not come today but will come tomorrow. In the second act, the action of the first act is essentially repeated, with a few changes: the tree now has leaves; Pozzo is blind and has Lucky on a shorter leash. Once again the boy comes and tells them Mr. Godot will not come today; he insists he has never met them before.

          The speech of the play begins with ESTRAGON’s disgust at his work, though here his work is very absurd, “to take off his boot”:
“Nothing to be done. 

These words symbolically shows the absurdity and meaninglessness of life which the characters will elaborate later. 

          In his play, Beckett presents before us a highly absurd situation of two tramps – Vladimir and Estragon – waiting for their appointment with the never defined Godot, who doesn’t come. Both the tramps follow the same routine every day. They cannot but wait: 

Valdimir: Let’s go
Estragon: Let’s go
(They both don’t move.)
Martin Esslin comments,
“The subject of the play is not Godot but waiting, the act of waiting is an essential aspect of human condition.”(p.44)

Therefore, in order to only pass time, they indulge themselves in some senseless activities, talk on and on, argue, joke, imagine themselves in different characters, rebuke, protest and question each other. 

ESTRAGON: That's the idea, let's contradict each another.
…………..
ESTRAGON: That's the idea, let's ask each other questions.
But again they keep on waiting the whole day and find that
“Nothing happens, nobody comes … nobody goes, it’s awful!”

Estragon’s putzing about with his boot is a central iteration of absurdity in the play. Look at their absurd activities
(Estragon with a supreme effort succeeds in pulling off his boot. He peers inside it, feels about inside it, turns it upside down, shakes it, looks on the ground to see if anything has fallen out, finds nothing, feels inside it again, staring sightlessly before him.) Well?
ESTRAGON: Nothing.

The unreliability of memory is one of the reasons that Waiting for Godot lacks rationale and establishes a world of absurdity and purposelessness. 

ESTRAGON : What did we do yesterday?
VLADIMIR : What did we do yesterday?
ESTRAGON : Yes.
VLADIMIR : Why . . . (Angrily.) Nothing is certain when you're about.
ESTRAGON : In my opinion we were here.
VLADIMIR : (looking round) You recognize the place?
ESTRAGON : I didn't say that.
Estragon can’t recall his original question: the questions of the past have no meaning in the present. 

Vladimir and Estragon switch rapidly from serious subject matter to absurdly inane details. This is part of the play’s attempt at "tragicomedy," but this is also the reason why Vladimir and Estragon can’t take part in anything meaningful: they are too distracted by the petty habits of everyday life.
VLADIMIR : I thought it was he. 

ESTRAGON : Who?
VLADIMIR : Godot.
ESTRAGON : Pah! The wind in the reeds.
VLADIMIR : I could have sworn I heard shouts.
………….
ESTRAGON : (violently) I'm hungry!
VLADIMIR : Do you want a carrot?

Lack of communication:
Vladimir asks his question five times without response
VLADIMIR
You want to get rid of him?
   

           The characters of the play recognize like Macbeth, though there is fundamental difference between them in their action, that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing”:
VLADIMIR : (sententious). To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.
ESTRAGON : In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.

            In the play ‘Waiting for Godot’ many times, a possibility is suggested then immediately undercut by its unhappy opposite. This technique is used by Beckett to relay his theme that life is uncertain and unpredictable at its best, unfortunate and unending at its worst. To further state this theme, Estragon asserts that "There's no lack of void" in life. It is actually of little importance where they were the previous day, as everywhere every day the same empty vacuum envelops them. Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features in the play.

            In this way we can say the play Waiting for Godot contains almost all the elements of a absurd play. The play depicts the irrationalism of life in a grotesquely comic and non-consequential fashion with the element of "metaphysical alienation and tragic anguish." It was first written in French and called En attendant Godot. The author himself translated the play into English in 1954. The uniqueness of the play compelled the audiences to flock to the theaters for a spectacularly continuous four hundred performances. At the time, there were two distinct opinions about the play; some called it a hoax and others called it a masterpiece. Nevertheless, Waiting for Godot has claimed its place in literary history as a masterpiece that changed the face of twentieth century drama.