The language of advertising
Ad speaks to "us" through modes of address. It intends to "talk" to us by incorporating the word "you" in the ads.
Ads speak to the consumer in a folksy or cheeky dilly tone, as if the as and the consumer was "having a nice chat". Convincing mass consumers will make product unique and different while consumer only one
The word "You" promotes the concept of Pseudo-individuality - a false idea of individuality which is a process of homogenization. You are all the same. This implies the erasure of differences in needs. Tries obliterate differences, uniqueness
Presumption of relevance
The world that ads presented is highly fictional and artificial. The word 'you' in ads implies that the product is assumed to be relevant to 'all', including the poor.
The process of self-marginalization and self-realization occur at an individual level. The exclusivity and the inclusivity of the world you is done "voluntarily" by the viewer to judge whether the car is meant for you or not.
Follow the flow to be not left behind. The reason is that the company have workers so they have to give worker works. To keep innovating, they have to keep making excuses using advertising. The image is artificial, fantasy, and it creates drama. Ads create impossible to become possible.
For example, a car in the mountain when actually in real life we dont go to the mountains using cars
This process of homogenization continues also in the production of "presumption of relevance" in advertising images through the differentiation and proposition.
For example, in this ad, a dark-colored female figure is propositioned with an animal. The assumption is that this female person is an African native who has the "aura" of a specific animal from that region - the tiger of Africa. This in itself is already encouraging a racial type of interpretation in the part of the viewer.
The message in context would be that an exotic black woman is similar to a predator. It is a play that is amusing but dangerous
Creating differences
The openness of competition
We know companies compete with each other, but some ads differentiate themselves from others. In short, as an example, mac speaks more to the youth, young hip people. Mac has a fixed target market and the cultural class is fixed. The images that they are producing shows it. Mac is trying to stereotype.
Ads participate in the capitalist society via this idea of therapeutic ideology
All ads speak the language of "transformation".
They tell their viewers that their products will change lives for the better - if they buy a particular product/package. This relates to therapeutic ideology. They assume we don't like our appearance relationship job.
Perfect Figures in Ads
Many ads imply that their product or what they offer can alleviate this state of dissatisfaction. They do this by presenting figures, objects, or illusions of glamour so that the consumer feels "envy" and wish to "emulate". The person we see in ads is presented as already transformed, and bodies that appear as perfect. Perfection is the ultimate goal of capitalism's organization of what constitutes "normal". It is just an illusion.
Most ads tend to produce a narrative of the "ideal body". Ads speak to our unconscious realm in terms of "self-management, and self-discipline". If not there will be some form of punishment or "guilt" that consumer tends to impose on themselves.
What is the standard bodies? Or is the body standardized?
Michel Foucault named this process as production of "docile bodies" to the consumer, meaning that our body should be governed, "socially trained, regulated and managed by cultural norms/laws. Consumers are incited by ads to seek individuality by conforming to particular standards of "beauty" or "ideal self".
It has become typical that the use of body parts, such as legs, lips, breasts, and hair, have become represent ed as "fetishized parts". Even gestures that allude to erotica are used for communications in advertising images.
This narrative or gesture that alludes to erotica or sexual pleasure is either literally or metaphorically communicated in certain ads. It can be argued that it is "pornography".
The idea of sexual pleasure is "normalized" or "tamed" and embedded inside the product as well as inside the viewer's psyche.
Today's Advertisement
Today's ads work differently.
And through social media platforms, ads no longer sit apart in a distance billboard.
It has entered into our private space. The introduction of "docile bodies", envy and glamour is way more subtle in its promotion and socialization by "everyday" citizens. Actors or models sits "among" us. The promotion of a healthy lifestyle, eating right is seemingly promoted and socialized "casually" and "voluntarily" by the netizen.
Today we are confronted by numerous "self-publicity" images and models backed up by giant corporations. We consumed ads publicly in the past. Nowadays, ads penetrate private space. The themes changes from masculine, heroic into private daily life. Ads enter micro and are intervening in our private space. Models in ads are no longer seen in billboard but it becomes among us.
The Mirror Stage
Is Lacan's theory of separation experienced as a splitting which marks the point from which we recognize ourselves as "subjects" apart from others via the mirror stage.
At the age of 2-6 years, the child develops a sense of self and identity and recognizes himself or herself as a separate entity from the mother through looking at the mirror.
This moment of the splitting of the self and the image, the self begins to recognize his or her self as an incomplete figure, as a figure of "forever lack".
Jacques Lacan
"desire and lack are central motivating forces in our lives. Our lives are structured by a sense of lack from the moment that we recognize that we are separate entities from our mothers."
Therefore, we are always searching to return to some state of wholeness that we believe we once had. We constantly consume products, to fill that lack. It is our human nature to nurture our sense of lack. We want to achieve something because we sense ourselves that we are lacking
Packaging Memory Advertisements
Many ads reach back to the past. They attach concepts of memory and history to their products. In creating an equivalence between products and symbols of the past, these ads are packaging memory into easily understood signs.
Therefore, we consume the product to fill that lack. Advertising speak to our desire so compellingly. It creates fantasies of the idea. Ads arefacilitating to this childhood phase. Advertising studies psychology
When we are independent we realize that we are not one body with our mother, that's when we sense of lack. Ads speak to the consumer in nostalgic terms. It connects to the earlier times. Makin us emotional.
Ads with Ideological Agendas
Let us consider the larger context in which ads or commodity signs operate. It speaks to represent "nations" or even "democracy". Here ads have ideological agendas. Ads, or the mass media, can be used to influence our thinking and to shape certain dogma.
The ideological function of the ad takes the form of speaking a language of patriotism and nationalism. In other words, ads that use an image of Indonesia, or other nations to market their products, are selling the concept that in order to be a good citizen and to properly participate in the nation, one must be an active consumer.
These products are presented as the means by which we can participate in national ideology.
Ads Establishing Codes of Difference
There are also ads that wanted to establish codes of difference. This usually takes the form of representation of "others" or otherness in the commercial ads. Ads wanted to speak to their consumer about a particular product of how they are naturally sophisticated. And one of these strategies is to represent the exotic other.
Typically this is communicated through the binaries of east and west. The white and the non-white. The non-western person and western person. Traditionally race has been used in advertising or commercial or in films to give a product a kind of "exoticism and foreignness.
According to Marx....we can see how commodity fetishism operates as a process of mystification, obscuring the complex reality of colonized places and former colonies in order to attach the meaning of difference in products. Ironically while these products promise to white consumers the qualities of otherness commodity culture are about the denial of difference.
Markers of ethnicity and race are used in ads to demonstrate social or racial and humanitarian values and to give the product an element of cultural sophistication. The point is cultural difference sells. The incorporation of multicultural diversity as a conceptual framework into the promotional campaign render the product as well as the company "hip" and "fashionable" and "progressive".
Some ads are encouraging and empowering to some, but can we actually buy "multiculturalism". The company seems to say, "you can!" But what exactly are we buying, or wear?
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