To Make your life easier Janine!

JANINE, LOOK HERE! 

Heres just a list of what theories and research that I have been influenced by from the Seminars, and have gone on into using for my Context of Practice essay titled, "The Death of ONline Advertising". 

- "Baudrallards Simulation" compared to the simulation of online personalities in Social Media

- The Gaze influenced my opinions on visual methodologies, and how can you appeal to the true human desire through the internet, is it even possible? 

- Creative Rhetoric's states that being online has helped creativity + creatives. Im posing an argument against this, as well as disagreeing with Trevor Beattie's statement that the internet is "the best thing since the wheel".

- Panopticism is referenced through the affect of businesses collecting data on absent minded consumers, and that we know we are being watched, but by who exactly? 

- Cybernetics plays into this essay extremely well, with it being based around interactive communication. Im arguing if businesses and ourselves have destroyed the "perfect haven of advertising" that Gossage would have revelled in. Is online advertising actually dying? 

All of these questions are answered in my essay, Which I hope provides a decent enough conclusion to this ever growing problem of over saturation in all forms of media. 

Cybernetics and The Amazing Mind of Howard Gossage

From Advertising, to the Theory of Relativity, this course still blows my mind sometimes. 

there are two ways of running a campaign
-Advertise simple USP ,block book your adverts, repeat until the message is heard.
- Print the advert, sequence for 3 to 6 months, see the reaction and then repeat.

Gossage went against this by measuring feedback. He would create an advert, listen to the consumer support, and if it was successful continue. It meant more work but it yielded greater and richer rewards.

He states that advertising had gone past static transmission, and was very much Dynamic. He said that

"I will go further and say that it is not only wrong to influence an audience without involving it but it is unethical and dishonest"

In short, this guy basically understood the rewards of engaging an audience, whilst single handedly pioneering what today is interactive advertising. He did this decades before the invention of the internet, and realised that speaking directly one to one with an audience is the way into the audiences hearts, and in turn wallets.

His ideologies are one that I follow strictly, and writes that it isn't always needed for the advert to be about the product or service, your challenge is to sell an idea, and an idea alone.

Amazingly, this can be linked to Isaac Newton's laws of relativity. In saying how ever action has an equal and opposite reaction, It can be said that:

 "every advert has an equal and opposite consumer response." 

He changed the perception of advertising, into it being a passive mundane activity, into a conversation between the product and its consumer (very active). the method he used to do this was through Parrallel structures, which can be explained in 4 easy steps:
1) Find the product you want to sell
2) Find an unrelated idea with an underlying message
3) Link the two and tell to the audience
4) Consumers have better understanding, measure feedback.

Gossage vs Ogilvy
You cant really say that Gossage and the advertising god David Ogilvy really saw "eye-to-eye". They has completely different approaches when it came to advertising.

Ogilvy is a man of rules, and prefers structure, routine, and regime. he felt the consumers should be put in their place, with the product being given to them as clear and as simple as possible, with not emotional engagement, just facts and figures.

Gossage came in and believed the complete opposite, and blurred the lines between consumer and product relationships. He felt it was wrong to provide magical USP's into products, and that adverts should be methodical, precise, yet from the heart.

An example of the cybernetics information loop is from the company Froyo Factory. I had a first hand experience of this whilst on holiday in California. As you went in,, you were handed a cup, and allowed to select and choose what your favourite flavours were. From here once you pay, the combination is logged and added to the "Scoreboard" to see which flavours is the best. The most popular flavour was then given a 20% discount for that week, and users could vote on facebook/twitter.

So in short, it allowed its customers to vote for the Flavour if the week, and give a discount on that per week.

Panopticism

1) What is the major effect of Panopticon?

To induce a being into a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. Disconnects individual from the viewer , ca not see the authority. CCTV?

2) How does the institution create and sustain a power relation independent of the person who exercises it?

By using constant and methodical surveillance of the person, and it should always be visible, to induce fear/scare the person into control. The inmate must never know if he is being watched. Disindividualises power, no one authority.  – Data about us online, not sure how can look at it

3) How is Panopticism so effective?

Because it supplies to need of uniformity to the person, and if kept well, does not need constant monitoring, no bars on windows so to speak. The dominance of power is obvious, and is ingrained into the persons nature. Self-Surveillance.

4) How does Panopticism do the work of naturalists. 

It allows observations to made on people without the need of a clinical based study, and research into psychoanalyses can be done in a natural environment, harnessing reliable results on the aptitude and attitudes of people.

5) In what way is Panopticism a laboratory?

It produces a social, identifiable norm, to asses the changes in behavior and attitudes against how the constant used to be. It could measure the effect of different punishments, medicines, etc, through reactions alone.

6) List the Conditions in Which Panopticism strengthens power?

• Can actively increase/decrease people who have power
• Can intervene at any moment
• Can also be left to follow its on demise
• Acts directly on each individual

7.

The ever-growing influence of the state, to its even more profound intervention. How much data is available.. Think of ancient Rome, voting for the best way to go forward. Lack of visibility is better in society.

8.

The individual is carefully pre-fabricated, the sort of people that the state once. Institutional power at any level. 

The IPA is an institution. Panopticism is a theory on institutional power. Argument is that advertising teaches you “how to be” and conforms your individuality into socially acceptable and desirable needs.

The Virtual Revolution - Groups, join groups of people who are lie yourself, become a type of person online, there are online personality

Creative Rhetorics

The Nine Things 
1) Creative Genius 

2) Democratic & Political Creativity

3) Ubiquitous Creativity

4) Creativity for social good

5) Creativity as economic imperative

6) Play & Creativity 

• Divergent thinking activities 
• Image surfing 
• Brainstorming
• Improvisational theatre
• 100 –mile-an-hour thinking
• Free- thinking
• Creativity as a type of play/thinking

7) Creativity & Cognition

8) The creative affordance of technology

9) The Creative Classroom

These are the nine forms that being creative has come under, and almost unknowingly followed by creatives, however is merged more into the art of learning the practice, rather than being religiously taught. however a sector I particular found of interest was the affordance of technology. 

It stated that creative streams have been greatly advanced due to the increase into technology, and allowing more business to jump onto the online bandwagon. As well as this, it has allowed students and creatives alike to share, post and discuss work, speeding up the transfer of information infinitely. 

Heres a summary of Trevor Beattie's thoughts on advertising 

Beattie (BMB) ECD:

• Internet is the biggest idea since the wheel 
• Greater information transfer
• Most interesting point in communications history 

I like this, however I somewhat disagree, being online doesn't just necessary mean its a good thing?

These questions interest me, as I feel its naive to think online culture is easy to jump into, and takes a lot more thought and time to get it right. This subject interested me, and may expand this further closer to the time of writing the Context of Practice Essay.

Gaze and why Mulvey is such a boss!

If this image doesn't show what Mulvey was on about, I don't know what will! 

Mulvey was a complete boss in her time, she basically started off the theory that women serve no purpose in advertising apart from being objectified by men, as "thing" of desire. This was all during the suffragettes movement and really attached to people beliefs on advertising, and a lot more effort was placed on agencies and creatives to realise that women are realising whats going on, and it isn't good!

But how can you ban something which proves to be so successful in engaging someones attention. SEX SELLS! A women is the perfect analogy of an attention grabber, and relies off our subconscious needs, and uses them to extort out emotions.

This is where the theory on Visual Methodologies applies, And there are different ways we can create this underlying, unforgettable attention. The methods are:
- The Unconscious
- Subjectivity
- Scopoillia (the pleasure of looking with sexual desire)
- Voyerism
- Fantasy
- Desire

All this means tat there are many different ways advertisers can appeal to your "needs", and place the reader in situations where you can "visualise" yourself, with power and the idea of domination being the top two conveyers.

This can be rounded off with Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage which states;

"An advert is a mirror into the conscious mind, and when the mirror is stared into reveals a loss of ego, and which to claim that ego back by buying the product/service"

This advert really sums up what the gaze means. The women is on the floor, being "dominated" with other men staring down at her. Its as clear as day/ However more importantly, something which often get overlooked is the position of where the models eyes are.

The eyes are the single most universal face recognition element, with it being transposed over animals like wise. Eyes control where we look, and in turn where eyes are pointed create a "Focus point". To demonstrate, here is the same advert with the direction of eyes highlighted.

Simulacra: What on earth?

Simulacra basically means that NOTHING IS REAL! Here are my lecture notes

Reality is nothing more than a sum of all appearance. It only makes in history, and the belief that "I think therefore I am"completely applies here. It goes against traditional methodologies in philosophy, and challenges the idea of a "unique personality", and that is nothing but an illusion. What we perceive is not the truth, and the simulation is so real that we are "dubbed" into believing it is real.

A more simple analogy is to think of the plot for The Matrix. The matrix is nothing but a computer code which represent reality, however reality is something very bleak.

Baudrillard goes onto say:
Most media is becoming very transparent, and flattening its meaning to some degree. Having too much meaning can lead to total entropy, rendering it completely useless. It says that advertising does not work, adding no communication. He goes onto to state that it serves no purpose apart to feed the constant supply/demand nature of humankind, using the objectification of emotions and human behaviour for personal gain alone.

The last statement I took from the seminar was, "We are creating for a creationist society, and is looped to infinite", which basically sums up Baudrillard thought on advertising.



So in short, someone in advertising realllllllly pissed of Baudrillard at some point in his life, and nothing is real, GREEEAAATTTT!

Better start topping up!

Heres and excerpt from a book I found called "Always On"


"Searches conducted on mobile phones have skyrocketed in just the past few years - up 400% since 2010. Mobile internet usage is fast approaching PC internet usage and experts predict that by 2015, the primary platform for internet traffic will be mobile phones.

Having a website that is optimised for mobile devices translates into a better experience for all users – both those who search for you directly and those who locate your product or service through search. A mobile optimised website is not simply one viewable on mobile devices, but rather a site that is designed specifically to be easily readable and fully functional on small screens."

It really is amazing to witness and research how adapted and dependent we become to things almost instantaneously  The introduction of the mobile phone wit internet usage happened in 2002, and now its impossible to think of a phone that can not gain access to the internet. It changes like these which will be continuously intermediate, and more brutal, and any company or brand that is not ready for the new technology can easily get caught out, and get lost in digital translation.