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| ADVERTISING | | | Gurmeet Kaur Allinangal | 8/2/2011 8:59:01 PM |
| Advertising is a paid form of promotion. It is used to communicate the benefits and utility of products or services to the target markets in a region, city, geographical area or a Country.
Nothing is good or bad but advertisement makes it so. The traditional medium of advertising was the daily newspaper and the periodical. But the print media can reach only the educated few among our teeming millions who are newspaper readers. Even today, advertisements are the staple food of the Press; without them, most newspapers would have to close town. Even during olden days, only a few journalists like Gandhi or Tilak made their papers out of bounds for them; for he who pays the piper, would call the tune. The government can pressure the management of a paper by extending or denying it patronage of those official advertisements that could be more paying.
But radio and TV make no difference between the educated few and illiterate majority within their reach. Their sphere of influence extends to all the news paper press has to face stiff competition from these new rivals. These business earn crores of rupee as advertisement revenues, licence fees are not needed and the listeners have no longer to stand in long queues at past offices to pay for the radio or TV fees.
Advertisements are ubiquitous; in the cities we see huge hoardings advertising some brand of bread or motor car or TV. The city buses carry them on their sides; the Telephone Directories and the Railway Time Tables carry them; the Cinema slides show them; religious functions and even admission broachers of colleges (with their multi-pictures ads of their 'Heroes', who topped in the university Merit Lists and sports tournaments).
One just has to step on to a railway platform and advertisements look down on him tantalizingly. Walls of parks, buildings and public places are splashed with advertisements.
If a programme for a cultural function or academic seminar has to be printed, the organizers approach government departments and firms for promotion (an euphemism for donation); otherwise who would pay for the production costs? There are brochures, handouts, posters, gift articles lottery chits, etc; to attract customers. Striking unions, election candidates, promoters of movements (civil as well as criminal) and their supporters must have publicity- even paid one- if the newspapers do not oblige them by printing their activities as news; in the absence of publicity, any movement is dead; it needs media hype to keep its fires burning.
Produce a thing that millions need- or can be made to long for by high voltage propaganda through advertisements and other promotional gimmicks- and would become a millionaire. The success stories of sales of soaps, oils, toothpastes, clothes, eatables, radios and TVs and countless other things of common usage amply prove this. Experts with specialization in a advertisement techniques can make the black look white and vice versa. In this game of competitive advertising, the advertising industry and the media are the chief gainers. 'A' must advertise his soap because 'B' is advertising his and 'B' must advertise his brand otherwise he would lose business. Their methods are professional; young, beautiful ladies are the chief baits. Sex appeal is the in-thing. A pretty girl is shown bathing with a soap (seminude female pictures leave a good taste in the mouth) and the viewer transfers her beauty to the product. This Oil makes hair grow so shiny and long. A popular actress uses a particular soap, Oil, toothpaste or brush; you too should join her lovely company for is she the one you should try to emulate. Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Sonakshi Sinha, Sachin Tendulkar recommend this powder, face cream, shaving cream, cold drink, toothpaste, Boost blade and our hero-worship would automatically extend to the articles of their patronage.
Where do we stand vis-à-vis these advertisement? The newspapers depend upon them for financial viability; the TV and radio media base their budgets on them; the businessmen make their millions with their support; the huge advertisement industry-with its auxiliaries provides employment and luxurious living of the millions. Advertisement indirectly and directly-has affected the quality of the media used by it. An advertiser would only put his advertisement in a newspaper or would sponsor a TV serial or radio programme which is popular. Thus the media via with each other to get the largest number of viewers or readers hooked on. Their survival depends upon the advertisers patronizing them. On Doordarshan, Chitrahaar or old film blues score the highest ratings in terms of popularity. So manufactures pay handsomely to sponsor this programme. How ever, the alluring programmes with lots of soft pornography and violence on cable coming from Channel-V, Star-TV, CNN is the USA have stolen the thunder from Doordarshan. Doordarshan fears losing its advertisement clientele. The information and Broadcasting Ministry, waking up to this fact, has thrown open the five newly introduced Doordarshan Channel to private entrepreneurs to back their viewers and the battle has been converted into a media war.
All the gainers. The only losers are the general public who pay for what they do not want which they never needed; they are taken for a ride a pleasant ride through on the face of it. The advertising costs ultimately fall on the customer. Synthetic foods are advertised, poor quality products are shown as superior ones and small firms are shown a big corporate.
Elders being worldly-wise, take these praises with a grain of salt but children (today, more assertive, as against the old and thoughtful elders) take these advertisements at their face values, forcing their parents to buy the advertised products against their better judgement. The elders too begin as hostiles and then they are spec tics; later they tolerate it and finally are drawn into this culture, through years of brain-washing.
Today, the most popular advertising agencies in India are Lintas, Rediffusion, ogilvy and Mather, Contract, Mudra and Clarion. Advertisements rely to a great extent upon the language gimmicks. There are clever jingles based on old popular tunes to arouse nostalgic associate; words are punned on to amuse and stimulate the viewer and the listener. All the mean of communication- voices, images, and sound effects are synchronized or doctored to create exotic impressions- are used. Star Casts, understatements, sensuous suggestions, oddities of expression placement of words, pictures, scenes and fancy spellings draw attention towards the message. A type of hallucination is created. The consumer is made to feel life is emotionally incomplete or his relations with loved ones are emotionally impoverished for product or a service. Continual dinning into the subliminal mind, especially during prime time watching when the viewer concentrations are high, makes the hypnotism complete. The hunger creates discontent and consumerism or the values that are difficult to realize. It loads to ugly envy are crimes. Besides, products of inferior quality find their way into the markets. The government should introduce an awareness programme through media itself to educate the public about how to discriminate between the quality of products advertised. The consumer protection for a can help improve the quality of advertisement in visual, audio and audio-visual media.
By: Gurmeet Kaur Allinangal
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