m98mc week three fluid identities and advertising john keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

M98MC

Week Three

Fluid identities and Advertising

John Keenan

john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

So far...

Advertising’s role in maintaining capitalism. Five stages of advertising: utility, branding, symbol, personalisation, lifestyle. Methods, USP, semiotics

The rise of consumer culture. 19th Century, 1950s, 1980s

http://m98mc.wordpress.com

Reading check-upWeek One

• Understains • Words in Ads • Freedom • Captains of Consciousness• Decoding Advertisements

Watch Century of the Self and Ways of Seeing

Reading Check-upWeek 2

• Lury• Twitchell• Lee• Bocock• Goldthorpe• Papson• Baudrillard

Reading videos - volunteer

The postmodern condition

What do you know?

‘the game of sign consumption is an integral part of the ‘society of the spectacle’ Lury, 1997: 69

Postmodernism 1 – sign not goods consumption

Baudrillard‘all needs are socially created’ Lury, 1997: 68

‘the logic of production is no longer paramount; instead the logic of signification is all-important’ Lury, 1997: 69

‘The audience is increasingly made up of a media-literate generation, its members, rather than seeking the truth, in turn self-consciously mimic the media – they adopt the persona of fictional characters as a way of expressing themselves, they discuss their personal lives as analogies with the story-lines of soap-operas, and talk in catch-phrases of celebrities and the slogans of advertising campaigns. They know when they’ve been Tango-ed’ Lury, 1997: 70

Postmodern Consumption 2 - knowing

‘it makes no sense to criticize people for being insufficiently materialistic; instead, we should submit to the magic of advertising as a playful code’ Lury, 1997: 71

‘Objects are no longer related to in terms of their practical utility, but instead have become empty signifiers of an increasing number of constantly changing meanings. There is an overproduction of signs and a loss of referents’ Lury, 1997: 71

Postmodern Consumption 3 – fluid signified

‘Rather than people using objects to express differences between themselves... people have become merely the vehicles for expressing the differences between objects’ Lury, 1997: 71

Postmodern Consumption 4 – the consumed individual

‘the final triumph of capitalism...meaning is a sham...reality flickers like a television screen’ Lury, 1997: 71

Postmodern Consumption 5 - hyperreality

This week…

Targeting Fluid Identities

Targeting by demographics, psychographics, lifestyle, lifestage. The nature of discourse in the 21st Century

Are you an individual?

I love China

What is the most important thing in the world Ruoxi Chen?

Market Research

Conceptions of Audience

1. Utility

Unknown mass

2. Branding/Product Symbol

Manipulated mass

3.Personalisation

Socially created

4. Lifestyle

Media and socially created

crisis

wants turned into needs

Branding

Meaning

Constantly moving happiness machines

Branding/Product Symbol1890s-1960s

We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media

James Halloran (1970) cited in O’Sullivan et al, 1998, p.129

1960s

The audience as active and in control

uses and gratifications (Blumler et al, Lull)

encoding-decoding model (Hall, Morley)

No longer a mass

encoder decodercode

Awareness of sophistication of communication -

shared codes need shared experience.

How knowledge of audience power grew No longer a mass

article

Drugs are bad

The government

Posters TeenagersDrugs

are

cool

Music

Lasswell

Communication must be targeted

Personalisation Stage 1960s-present

People are targeted

Q. How can millions be targeted?

A. Discourse

Because we act/think/dress/walk/talk as types

genderethnicity

classage group

In society, perpetuated, exaggerated and fixed by the media

Discourse - how we can be targeted

Michel Foucault

The positions to which we are summoned

Discourse - how we can be targeted

interpellation

Discourse - how we can be targeted

Louis Althusser

Where is discourse contained?

Dress

Talk

Think

Walk

Objects

Activity

What is the male discourse?

Dress

Talk

Think

Walk

Objects

Activity

Targeting Men

Male + Northern England

1. Codes 2. Style 3. Target

‘We are both product and consumer; we consume, buy the product, yet we are the product. Thus our lives become our own creations, through buying; an identikit of different images of ourselves, created by different products…Advertisements are selling us ourselves’

Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements

Products are part of the discourse

Discourse - how we can be targeted

Demographics

Age

Gender

Ethnicity

Class

What to say, drink, eat where to go, how to think, what to wear

Demographic categories

Ethnicity

What lies behind the way we structure the world is, ‘not directly available to the senses … non observable … unconscious’

Strinati D 1995 An introduction to theories of popular culture London: Routledge p96

In pairs

1.What demographic discourses do you belong to?

2.What are the features of that demographic group?

3.To what extent do you ‘belong’ in this group?

Gender – class – age – ethnicity - nationality

Most adverts reflect discourses through

• Products targeted at them• Signifiers

However...

Foucault - The subject is produced performatively

What products are targeted at women

Althusser - hail

Semiotics

denotation-connotation

signifier-signified

signifiers

pink

soft

red - love

signifiers

blue

powerful

freedom

signifiers

white

pureinnocent

natural

signifiers

Green

natural

signifiers

signifiers

Psychographic targeting

Life-stage targeting

Lifestyle targeting

1980s +

Psychographic Targeting

Based on charting psychological-types

Examples of psychological types

Succeeder

Mainstreamer

Aspirer

Reformer

Individualist

Carer

Gillette 1

Gillette 2

What is the type?

What is the type?

What is the type?

What is the type?

Put your name on a sheet of paper and 4 adjectives which describe your character

Pass it to the person next to you and they choose an animal the adjectives describe

happy

loyal

playful

caring

Animals as psychographics

Independent

Like luxury

Scheming

Quick-thinking

Animals as psychographics

Powerful

Like to be in control

Calm

Competitive

Animals as psychographics

Life-Stage Targeting

Self actualisation – becoming all we are capable of being

Life-Stages

child

teenager

student

worker

singleton

coupledom

parent

empty-nester

pensioner

Life-Stage AcronymsDINKYDouble Income No Kids Yet.

GLAMGreying, Leisured, Affluent, Married.

OINKYOne Income, No Kids Yet.

SADFABSingle And Desperate For A Baby.

SINBADSingle Income No Boyfriend And Desperate.

SITCOMSingle Income Two Children Oppressive Mortgage.

SKI-ingSpending the Kids' Inheritance.

WOOP

Lifestyle Targeting

Targeting by a ‘way of life’

People act in discourses

Increasingly these discourses are media-originated

STUDENT

LIFESTYLE

DRINK TOO MUCH

USE RECREATIONAL DRUGS

LISTEN TO LOUD MUSIC

SLEEP IN UNTIL THE AFTERNOON

THINK POLITICIANS ARE CORRUPT

EAT TAKE-AWAYS

LIKE CHEAP

FRIEND DEPENDENT

LISTEN TO POP

WEAR JEANS

‘ZANY’OPERATE IN GROUPS

The Yuppie

4.42

The Earth Mother

Friends Lifestyle

.Plenty of sex/partners

Eat ice cream

SEX AND THE CITY

Skater/Surfer

Hip-Hop Discourse

.

Emo Discourse

Attitude: anti-everything mainstream, appeal of the unusual, self-reflection, melodrama, respecting others’ feelings

Words: rank, techie, panning

Lifestyle: live in a shared house/parents, vegetarianism

‘Following a band that seems like “your little secret”’

Cosmo Girl Loaded Lad

Today's Hottest Gossip

1980s-present

Lifestyle advertising

Lifestyle Adverts

First BT ad

Development

End?

Slice of Life

‘Advertisements are selling us something else besides consumer goods: in providing us with a structure in which we, and those goods, are interchangeable, they are selling us ourselves’

Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements

Adverts give objects meaning

We buy the object we buy the meaning

The meaning transfers onto us

We are the object

We have been sold ourselves

Adverts give products meaning for use in our social identity

Conspicuous consumption

Thorstein Veblen 1953

William H White The Organisation Man

inconspicuous consumption = an anti-social act

I consume therefore I amI consume therefore I am

The postmodern condition

The death of God left the angels in a strange position. They were overtaken suddenly by a fundamental question… The question was, ‘What are angels?’

Postmodernism: identity

Modernism

THE IDEA OF PROGRESS

Creation of Metanarratives

Rational Thought

History

Voltaire (1694-1778) - ordered history and set it in a time frame and judged it by a fixed morality and scientific laws

ScienceNewton (1643-1727) - science. 17th Century onwards: ‘science became the major aspect of human life…science could only move one way, forward’ SIDNEY POLLARD LONDON: MIDDLESEX, 1968, P.20

Philosophy

Descartes (1596-1650): I think therefore I am

Pascal(1623-62): ‘men…as one man, always living and incessantly learning’ cited in THE IDEA OF PROGRESS, SIDNEY POLLARD LONDON: MIDDLESEX, 1968, P.20

All that is solid will melt into airBerman cited in Hebdige, After the Masses, in New Times, Hall S and jacques (Eds),1989: p.76

We are swimming in a sea of signsJean Baudrillard

Postmodernism

Postmodern culture is a fragmented culture John Fiske, Postmodernism and Television, Chapter 3 in Mass Media and Society, 2nd Edition (1996), London: Arnold p.56

metanarratives 1

Science By understanding the world we will control it

The universe was made by a Big Bang

People evolved from apes

People keep improving life

We exist to make the world better

(progress)

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

metanarratives 2

History Cavemen were wild

Civilisations like The Romans controlled them but were violent and dangerous

Kings established a secure civilised country

Democracy came and gave us power

We live to maintain this progress

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

Metanarratives 3

Church God creates world

People go bad

Jesus dies to save people from Hell

Repent and go to HeavenLife is a trial

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

metanarratives 4

AuthoritySome people have special skills

These people should use them to serve society

We must respect those who serve for our good

Life is about knowing your place in society and serving where you can

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

metanarratives 5

State I am born an Englishman

I like roast beef, drink pints and show no emotion

These values I will fight for my children to have

I exist to maintain the natural way of life of my people

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

metanarratives 6

Marxism We are all born equal

We must take from those with more than they need and give it to those who need it

I exist to ensure that the world becomes fair

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

Some have more than others, some starve

metanarratives 6

Feminism Women are oppressed by men

I exist to make the world fairer for women

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

Women need to rise up and take an equal place

Post-modernism

Lyotard - an incredulity towards metanarratives

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

High Windows

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

A culture with

No progress

No common ideology

No common meaning

We are free.

We are lost.

The loss of metanarrativesPostmodernism 1: Metanarratives

The loss of meta-narratives

Dick Hebdige

3 Negations

Against totalisation

Against teleology – designed for result

Against utopia

As if (1950s) As if (2000s)

Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives

‘Consumers use these symbolic meanings to construct, maintain and express each of their multiple identities’

Elliot 133

Postmodernism: identity

‘The self is conceptualised in post-modernity not as a given product of a social system nor as a fixed entity which the individual can simply adopt, but as something the person actively creates, partially through consumption’

Elliot p.132

Postmodernism identity

‘the individual endeavours to construct and maintain an identity that will remain stable through a rapidly changing environment’

Elliot p.131

Postmodernism identity

Amir Khan

British - accent

Northern - down-to earth

Muslim - prays to Allah Pakistani - supports

them at cricket

Male - watches football

Teenager - wears a baseball cap

Sporty - Adidas

Postmodernism identity

Amir Khan

Who am I?

rural

green

rich

Who am I?

I am powerful

I am sporty/be the best

I am independent/art above science

Who am I?

Educated and liberal

Fashionable/active

Young and sociable

‘The individual is offered resources to achieve ‘an ego-ideal’ which commands the respect of others and inspires self-love’

Elliot p.131

Who could you be?

Who could you be?

A pool of possible selves

10. ‘Culture and commerce are now fully intertwined’

Davidson M, The Consumerist Manifesto, 1992, London: Routledge, p.191

‘The self is a symbolic project, which the individual must actively construct out of the available symbolic materials’

Elliot, p.131