I've not had chance to post any real weblogs yet and I havn't really known how to go about it so I thought I'd start with an essay I wrote for my first year of study at University.

I admit this was a while ago and I've grown up a lot since writing it so I can't account for some of the naive, studentish things I may have said. Anyway, I trust this community enough to have something interesting and valid to say on my work and ideas.

Suspending Cynicism

or

Creating Legitimacy with Postmodern Audiences

Advertising, whether mass or localised, is the few speaking to the many. It is not just the few speaking to the many but a dialogue between people who will never meet. How then, do they speak to one another? Advertising research dissects audiences to discover those signs and codes which individual members hold in common. Signifiers of authority, legitimacy, emotion and power are the social glue that binds groups together and also the tools of the advertiser as they compose their message from client to audience.

As a result advertising must communicate on the most general terms possible, it must resonate with the largest majority of those people whom it targets. Therefore, advertising must use the most basic and widely accepted signs that a group permits. For western advertisers red will always equal stop, deficit and danger. Why? Because that is what it means to the vast majority of western people. There is no room for innovation or the undermining of social codes when a client’s business is at stake.

This poses an interesting problem, the cynical postmodern audience is sophisticated enough to understand that the meaning of our most widely held norms (to some extent) are arbitrary. Red means stop because that is what society has decided, and society at large is aware of that. Therefore have the ability to screen out a great number of the communications that are pitched at them.

How then, do advertisers create legitimacy and authenticity in a world that understands the arbitrary nature of their messages? How do they suspend our disbelief?

By definition, an article of advertising is communication that demands a response via our conduct. Do we buy that product or not, see that film or not, visit that country or not? Seeing an advertisement isn’t like experiencing any other communication, quite the opposite. When we see advertising, it sees us.

When asked a question, the individual has no choice whether to form an answer or not. Even if the individual doesn’t share their answer with the world at large, or put it into words, it is still formed, albeit silently or unconsciously. However, when posited with a question that demands a response via conduct, to act or not to act, the individual cannot do anything other than respond. Even choosing not to respond is a response in itself.

Similar to quantum physics, advertising causes a wave function collapse in our conduct. We cannot help but give away our position, either here or there, when the advert observes us.

‘Freedom from Want’ – Norman Rockwell

This image is part of a series entitled “The Four Freedoms” by Norman Rockwell. Rockwell was commissioned to do the series by the United States government to promote the selling of war bonds during World War Two.

The image is a perfect example of, with reference to Baudrillard, the collapsing of the distance between spectacle and spectator.

The image aims at realism through the use of a traditional medium (oil paint) and a realistic style. Taking in to account that photography in this period was limited to black and white then this would be the most appropriate medium and method at hand.

It must be pointed out, however, that though the painting is in a ‘Realist’ style that is not to say its realism is in any way natural. In the words of Christian Metz, “Realism is not reality”. The scene depicted is presumably a dynamic scene existing in three dimensions whereas the picture is static and two dimensional. Any realism is possesses is based on a cultural code of realism and is entirely conventional. The scene represented may not even exist, and very possibly so, being the combination of other cultural codes set to represent concepts such as father, mother, family etc. It is merely the codes of realism employed that assume its existence.

These same issues apply for photography. The contemporary audience is aware that photographs can be manipulated and for that reason may not be instantly swayed by the photograph. Again it is still a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional event. Furthermore, the characters in the scene may still be that, characters played by actors fulfilling a stereotypical role. For this reason painting, with its history of representation and being a gentile, respectable art form may prevail as the medium of choice.

The image at first appears like a window looking over a family enjoying a large meal together. However, in the lower right corner one man is smiling and looking directly at the audience. Why would he be smiling if the audience was the voyeur, wouldn’t he be alarmed and angry? Rather, the image operates more like a mirror and the man is in fact looking at himself. The image then ceases to a family enjoying dinner but becomes any family, or more specifically, your family.

As the audience project themselves and their family into the image the distance between them and the situation collapses to zero. Jean Baudrillard spoke of this collapse in Simulations (1983):

“We are no longer in the society of the spectacle... The medium itself is no longer identifiable as such, and the merging of the medium and message (McLuhan) is the first great formula of this new age. There is no longer any medium in the literal sense: It is now intangible, diffuse and diffracted in the real.”

The audience are at the same time seeing and starring in the advert. This outcome, even though it exists in paradox, is a far more engrossing experience for the audience than would be otherwise possible. It also works to overcome the limitations of the medium. After all, mirrors are also two dimensional. If the audience is in the advert, then they become that family at risk from want, it isn’t an abstract representation of a family the audience is being asked to protect, it is their family and themselves.

‘Colour like no other’ – Sony Bravia

Though engrossing the audience in such a manner is a powerful tool it does have one disadvantage. That is if the audience doesn’t recognise it as a piece of advertising. In the same way that someone will only become camera shy when they see the lens; an audience will only receive an advertisement communication on its terms when they recognise it as an advert.

For example, the recent Sony Bravia Television adverts have been applauded for their technical brilliance and imaginative scope. Yet, their treatment has straddled the line between advertisement and art film. If the world at large forgets that they are adverts, then the signs and codes used to compose the adverts will lose context and take on an utterly different meaning.

‘MAN’ – Calvin Klein

While audiences may regard particular ideals as unattainable or unrealistic why then do advertisers and designers, particularly of high fashion, continue to use them and how do they relate to our self conception? Some may argue that the postmodern self lacks a substantial, unified identity and is rather a collage of different elements woven together through our experiences and endeavours as consumers. David Harris explains in his book A Society of Signs (1996):

“As the consumer market is flexible and more dynamic than the older ways of regulating identities, much more fluidity is apparent: people can change their identities more frequently, experiment with them, select more options from a cultural supermarket with far less commitment that before.”

Postmodern consumers have realised that they do not have an absolute self with easily definable characteristics and limits. Whether it is a surrender to subjectivity or narcissism, the self is now considered something that is not so easily pinned down. Postmodern consumers have in many ways lost their ‘souls’, in the way that Descartes may have considered them. Rather they feel free to pick and choose (to shop for) their identity at will.

Reasons for this are many, but rising standards of living in the west have given consumers a far greater expendable income and as such consumers have a greater choice as to what they do with their money. As brands seek to set themselves apart from one another they create very strong identities and meanings, consumers recognise these differences and appreciate the impact they have on their identities in the eyes of others and themselves.

Perfume has no pragmatic use or logical description, therefore fashion labels must sell it on the basis of powerful, emotive images and strong brand associations.

Upon viewing the above Calvin Klein advertisement consumers may realise that buying that product will not turn them into that man, or turn their partner into that man. But that doesn’t really matter, because the perfume will only be the smallest part of the composition that the consumer calls their ‘self’. If the man in the advert was more ‘believable’ he would cease to be the fantasy that he is and the brand would be undermined by comparison to everything else in the consumer’s eclectic and vibrant self composition.

In an intriguing paradox, brands must be powerful and extreme in order to have relevance in our ever more complicated and eccentric lives. The unreal and fantastic must be as sensational as possible order to have relevance in our ‘real’ lives, therefore issues of legitimacy do not arise among the adverts’ audience.

To Conclude

This leads us back to the question of the cynicism of postmodern audiences. While in some senses these audiences are sophisticated enough to identify advertising and understand its basic mechanisms the requirements of postmodern life are such that brands have become the tools of the consumer in the authoring of their self. In what is an almost a perverse twist on the classical conception of advertising it seems that consumers are the ones reaching out via advertising and branding in search of things to represent their eclectic selves, rather than the brand reaching out to them.