Question 1
Organizations today focus on empowering consumers, using self-reliance advertisers and applying new technologies in advertising their products and services. Additionally, the advertising industry has become more conventional because traditional advertising skills and capabilities find no room in the modern business world calling for their transformation, refinement, and sometimes replacement. However, some companies like Kellogg's have decided to maintain the traditional way of advertising.
Kellogg’s Company is one of the America’s multinational foods manufacturing company. The company’s vision is to enlighten and delight the world using quality foods and brands that are essential for consumer’s health. The company together with others in the same industry went against an initiative by the State of California to have all GMO food products labeled (Donaldson, 2016). While advertising their products (Corn Flakes), Kellogg’s Company used the phrase “The People US” but ignored putting any label describing the nutrient composition of the brand. Additionally, the company uses “spoof ads” that make consumers more attracted to the product.
Kellogg's success comes from its ability to make consumers discover the value of the product and increasing their knowledge on what they consume rather that hiding behind some laws aimed at covering the truth. Moreover, the company allows the consumer to make personal judgments about the product based on facts shown on the product label.
The advertising industry will undergo significant changes in the next three to five decades because of evolving scenarios and business advancements. Adbusters magazine plays a critical role in preventing the total takeover of the physical, cultural, and psychological environment by commercial advertisement forces. The path taken by the advertising industry under the modern digital era leads to organizations advertising for technology giants like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and others offering advertising platforms (Contributor, 2014). Adbusters should introduce an argument in the magazine that discourages unethical advertisements that offer misleading information making the consumer purchase of read an ad for a different product. The government should be keen on such ads and introduce penalties for such advertising organizations.
Question 2
People come in various forms of advertising in the media, along the roads, on the streets and different places and platforms. Advertising is a broad process whose definition makes different forms as described by William M. O’Barr in ten definitions. O’Barr (2005) related advisement to a mediated communication following the modern approach. He used the life of Albert Lasker to describe how advertisement started. The argument that advertising involves the transformation of a personal message into a mass-mediated message has a lot of weight in describing advertisement. The mass represents the target reached by the advertisement. According to (Straubhaar, LaRose & Davenport, 2010), mass media acts as a common channel for communicating the advertising message.
Second, O’Barr defined advertising as either the source of information for consumers or a method of manipulating the public by making them purchase a product or service. The following definition is very interesting because it becomes most advertisements are highly exaggerated. However, the author explains that irrespective of the viewpoint of the consumer or the marketer, the context of the ad determines its definition (O’Barr, 2005). Additionally, the O’Barr’s argument about factors such as gender, age, regulations, culture, and persuasion influencing the definition of advertising is true.
Finally, O’Barr’s definition of advertising as “the middle class talking to itself” contradicts with the way I understand advertising. An advertisement does not target only the middle class, but it also aims at getting the attention of the low and upper-class consumers. Advertisement aims at promoting specific social values to the target group, but it should also consider other elements such as age, gender, and culture. The middle class holds the highest population in the world, but advertisers cannot afford to ignore the upcoming population that will take over after the middle class. Moreover, how will the middle class survive upon entering the next stage? O’Barr should have included a definition that addresses the values of all social values classes.
References
Contributor. (2014, Oct. 140. The traditional advertising industry needs to be revolutionized.
Marketing. Retrieved 11 May 2016 from http://www.marketing-interactive.com/lets-revolutionise-traditional-advertising-industry/
Donaldson, J. (2016, April 13). The people vs. Kellogg’s. Adbusters. Retrieved 11 May 2016
O’Barr, W. M. (2005). What is advertising? Advertising & Society Review, 6(3), Retrieved 11
May 2016 from http://muse.jhu.edu/article/193867
Straubhaar, J. D., LaRose, R., & Davenport, L. (2010). Media now: Understanding media,
culture, and technology. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
