How to Exploiting Social Movements ？
We learn the meaning of words from their use. Many words and phrases have gained especially rich meanings for some segments of an audience because they have been identified with an important social movement.
Because advertisements face severe time and space constraints, they tend to use symbols rich with cultural meaning. Using symbols drawn from social movements with which members of the audience still identify, however, is risky. A cookware manufacturer created the message “Black is Beautiful; White is Beautiful” to accompany a print ad showing a black and a white pot. Remove Cartier Replica the pots from the ad, and the statement “Black is beautiful” reflects the ideology of the civil rights movement. Add the pots to the ad, and the ideological statement is trivialized. People who hear the statement “Black is beautiful” as a commitment to civil rights are likely to respond to this ad with anger. A statement used to express an ideological position can no longer express that position if it gains currency as a slogan to sell kettles.
Feminist reaction to the slogan for Virginia Slims cigarettes is similar. “You’ve come a long way, baby” combines affirmation of progress for women with a complete denial of that progress. If those of us in the audience who are women have come such a long way, then why are you still calling us “baby”? By using “you” rather than “we” in the slogan, the advertiser dissociates himself from the woman in the ad and assumes a superior position to her. At the same time, the photographs occupying the upper third of the print ads reduce women’s struggle for equality to a fight with some man over the right to smoke. This trivializes women’s demands for the vote, for equal pay, for equal access to job opportunity, for equal access to housing and credit. If equal access to lung cancer is all the women’s movement has accomplished, then the “you” in the ad hasn’t come very far. However, by identifying itself with independent women and by imply?ing that smoking this product controls weight (Virginia Slims), this brand has captured a sizable share of the women’s market. This suggests that the campaign has not alienated its target audience.
In the 1990s, the social cause most exploited by advertising was environmental. Advertising has capitalized on a powerful public sentiment. As concerns about pollution of the water and air spread around the globe, they took political form. The green movement was launched in Europe. Environmental summits of world leaders were held. Within a society saturated with claims that one package was environmentally better than the other, one detergent more biodegradable than the next, National Geographic set itself apart with an ad campaign claiming, “Only one magazine covered the environment before it was an issue.”
No sector of marketing was left untouched by environmental claims. In summer 1990, Estee Lauder announced that it would “become the first major U.S. beauty company to bring natural, non-animal-tested products packaged in recyclable containers into department stores.”
Nationalistic Associations Some nations are associated with certain products, often as the product’s place of birth or most notable manufacturer. So when I say “whiskey” and ask for a high-quality nationality, you might say “Irish,” “Scotch,” or “Canadian,” but probably not “French.” An advertiser can capitalize on these associations by creating an image consistent with them. To exploit the Omega Replica Watches national identification of some products, advertisers give a name evoking the original country to a product of that type made elsewhere. Consequently, perfumes are often given French or French-sounding names, and beers are often given German or German-sounding names.
Sponsorship of the Olympics creates international associations and implicitly suggests that the sponsoring product has helped produce international harmony in a spirit of friendly competition. The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta had an official courier (UPS), an official soft drink (Coke), an official beer (Budweiser), an official credit card (Visa), an official fast food (McDonald’s), an official contact lens (Bausch and Lomb), and an official watch (Swatch).
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