Advertising can also reduce confusion about a product
An ad can also solicit the attention of the intended audience by re-creating the lifestyle that the audience member either has or desires. Why do ads for beer show groups of people rather than individuals? Why are men rather than women shown in most beer ads? In what sorts of environments are the people in beer ads shown? How are the people in ads for beer dressed—formally or casually? Are the people in beer ads middle class or upper class?
Now consider the same questions about an expensive scotch (Chivas Regal) or gin. The lifestyle created in beer ads is different from the lifestyle portrayed in ads for more expensive hard liquor. The ads tell us that beer is an out-of-doors as well as an indoor drink that beer drinkers are active, often in MBT Shoes sports, and that beer is a drink for people who are comfortable in casual clothes with groups of friends; it is not a drink for the solitary drinker or for the man in the tuxedo. The advertisers single out their market by customers’ preference for certain sorts of activities. One beer urges us to grab all the gusto we can get; the appeal is assertive and rugged. Another beer tells us that it is the beer for “when it’s time to relax.”
The mood of the two ads will be different because the basic appeal is different. One is more active than the other, and one is more individualistic than the other. Beer ads also single out their audience by the types of environments in which the ad situates the product. Some ads place the beer drinkers in a bar; others place the beer drinkers outdoors. One beer’s advertising tactic has been to show appropriate and inappropriate times for enjoying a beer, with the slogan “It’s the right beer now.”
Many beer ads appeal to sports enthusiasts by including famous hockey, baseball, or football professionals in the ads. Some beer advertisers set themselves apart by appealing to an upper-class market. They do this by adopting an exotic name (Michelob rather than Pabst, Schlitz, or Budweiser), by packaging the beer in a bottle with foil wrap, by implying that the beer is made by more expensive processes than other beers, by charging more for the product, by labeling the product “premium” beer, and by stressing that the beer or its recipe is imported. Thus, ads themselves provide some of the clues about the identity of the intended audience.
The place in which we find the ad also provides clues. Ads targeted to children appear during certain types of television programming, such as children’s specials or cartoons, and at the hours when children’s programming occurs—early morning, especially Saturday. They also appear in magazines such as Boy’s Life. Ads designed for homemakers are seen at all hours, particularly during soap operas in the afternoon and during morning talk shows; they appear in so-called women’s magazines such as McCall. Ads for older persons appear more often during news and public affairs programming, the types of programming older adults are most likely to watch. Ads for men appear during sports events or in so-called men’s magazines; ads for adults appear during prime time.
An image-building ad for a corporation will appear adjacent to a prestigious public affairs program such as Meet the Press because highly educated persons, opinion leaders, and those who control the other media are more likely to attend to such programs.
Some targeting is controversial. When R. J. Reynolds announced that it was introducing a new cigarette called Uptown, directed MBT Shoes On Sale primarily at African Americans, pro-tests from the African American community and from Louis Sullivan, then U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, followed. The cigarette, which was to have been test-marketed in Philadelphia in December 1989, was withdrawn.
Advertising can also reduce confusion about a product. When News/Jay’s sister publication New York Newsday was shut down, Newsday worried that it would lose both readers and advertisers. To minimize that likelihood, the paper took out ads in trade papers in late July 1995 announcing, “Newsday’s Alive. Alive with over 1.8 million readers on Long Island and in Queens.” The ad went on to assure readers that the paper was alive and well. “Read by over 1.8 million adults daily and more than 2 million adults on Sunday, Newsday readers are educated, affluent, sophisticated and loyal. More than one million Newsday readers have a household income of over $50,000. And 60% read no other newspaper.”
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