>> Hello and welcome to advertising in society. We begin this class with a question of what is advertising? And where did it come from. Today in particular we focus on the question of what is advertising. No we know it when we see it. We think of it as being just about everywhere. We're exposed to it thousands of times a day but when it comes right down to it how many of us can define exactly what this. Thing advertising is. Well along the way there have been many people who tried to give it some specific definitions and put some meats on the bon, meat on the bone of trying to explain what advertising actually is. I want to review with you three specific definition. Things that have been offered. Three that I'd like very much because they emphasize different aspects of advertising, and more than one of them, being the perfect definition, the three of them taken together show us various aspects of. Of advertising. And together help us understand the complexity of the phenomenon that we're dealing with. We begin with the first definition, which is that advertising is any device which first arrests the attention of the passer-by and then induces him to accept a mutually advantageous exchange. This definition was offered in the late 1800s by an art historian James Laver who was on the staff of the Royal Victoria and Albert museum in London. And what advertising does he says is it simply arrests the attention. Of the passer-by and then encourages that person to engage in a mutually advantageous exchange. Now this definition is really quite broad. It include things like this butterfly landing on a flower where the flower has, through it's color and nectar, attracted the butterfly. Butterfly and in return for visiting it it gets nectar which is important in its life cycle. So that definition of mutual exchange attracting attention and so forth would all to apply to a situation as broad as this. I think in the end we don't really want advertising to be defined so broadly. Because in doing so, we really lose the specificity of what it is. But nonetheless, I think what this does do is, it calls out the, the antiquity and the breadth of advertising, and how complex it really is, across time and space and history. But, for example, like this image of women at a roadside market in India. It's a lovely painting and in it, what we see are these women have not any words to display that they hear, but they've laid out in display form the various fruits, vegetables, and spices that. They have for sale. And this becomes itself a kind of advertisement for what, what is for sale. So this is an effort, again, to induce the passerby to stop, to engage in a mutually advantageous exchange. Money for spices and food. And that would apply. According to labor's definition to the notion of advertising. The idea of advertising really goes back very far in time. Some people say to the very beginnings of time itself, the very beginnings of human history. But we have some evidence. Specifically this comes from Herculaneum. In the ruins of, of Italy where cities were covered, over two thousand years ago by volcano ash, and in excavating this city, it's been discovered that there are things like this sign which shows a series. Of wine bottles. And therefore announces that inside the house there is wine available. And that it's for sale. And thus this would be an early advertisement from ancient Roman civilization. More recently we see adds of all sorts. Like this shop window in Hong Kong. Khan for example. Where this young couple stopped looking at the, they stopped by looking at the rings and jewelry that's for sale, and this also operates like the other situations that we're seeing. Where display encourages them to consider buying. What's being offered for sale. So what happens in this definition that Laver offered is that it, that it emphasizes ex, the exchange aspect of advertising. The buyer gives, and the seller gives, and a mutual exchange takes place. It talks about the attention grabbing features of advertising. Which all of these examples that we saw do. And about the mutuality. There's something in it for both parties. Now a second definition that I'd like to suggest to you for your consideration is one. That talks about advertising as the official art of capitalist society. Now this definition was coined by Raymond Williams, a British social theorist in the 20th century. And what he's doing by this definition is saying that advertising is. I kind of sponsored art that is a part of a particular kind of society namely capitalism. And that's many of the examples that we saw before wouldn't fit Williams' definition because what he is doing instead is locating advertising as we know it today in the context of a particular social historical. Cultural context. Now, what he's saying to us is that it's the official art of current society, of current capitalist society just as in the Middle Ages these church windows were the official art of the church of the society that supported the artist. So while Coke might foot the bill today for some of the best artists in making advertisements, the artists were paid in the middle ages by wealthy patrons like the church and by wealthy individuals and families who had them prepare. Various pieces of art under their sponsorship. So we could've said that, that, there is sponsored art in both cases. Artists required this kind of thing, wherever they work. And that in the current period, it is capitalism that sponsors art, whereas in the middle ages it was. The church are very wealthy families, or in this case the city of Florence sponsored Michelangelo's perforation of the David. Here we see a portrait of Catherine de Medici the kind of thing that a very wealthy person could afford. Brought down ordinary people simply had no access to or in this case Frederick Barbarossa's wedding being committed to a painting for memory sake and for the value of preserving and showing this to people in the future. There were no photographs around of course at this point in time. And thus art was really only available to the wealthy patrons of the church. And families who could afford it. Today, it is under the sponsorship, largely, of corporate America. And other corporations that are worldwide. Where the very best artists usually work for the. And produce advertising as an art form. In his definition of advertising Raymond Williams is referring to capitalist society. Look at what happens by contrast in Soviet society where the official art is sponsored by the state and promotes the kind of society that back it up. Here is a large image of Stalin. Along with some of the things he had to say being promoted to the public, in, in an artistic manner. But this was what was socialist art. Now, interestingly, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the replacement of socialism by capitalism in Russia, what we see are signs like this, in the very places and very spots that the previous Soviet propaganda existed. Now, we have instead what might be called capitalist propaganda. To illustrate just how important the sponsorship of art is by capitalist society by corporate America and so on, think about the Superbowl that occurs every year. Here in January or February. This being the great festival of advertising, in American culture. The ads that air on it are the most expensive, produced. They are flashy. They are wonderful. They are. Wonderfully artistic. And for a corporation to have its advertising on the Super Bowl and even more important for it to be seen as a great piece of work and something that the public likes a lot is a great kudo on their part. It is the highest form of advertising that exists. In current America. I'd like you to watch this Super Bowl commercial which recently aired. And thus illustrates the very point that I'm making about the amount of work going into it. The high production values [NOISE] and the fact that this is some of the very best advertising produced at this point in time. [MUSIC] Now the key features of Williams' definition that advertising is the official heart of capitalist society. Are that it links advertising to the social context in which it exist. It's not just as we saw in labor's definition. All over the place and kinds of time and historical space. But it's link to a particular social context that of capitalist society. It focuses on advertising's modernity. Whereas Labor's definition had focused on the antiquity and breadth of advertising, Williams is limiting advertising to a particular historical period. Namely, since the industrial revolution, the pro, the mass production of consumer goods and the need to promote consumption in order to sell the things that are the. The bounty of capitalist production. the definition also views advertising as sponsored art really important to say that whichever we're using someone is footing the bill for the artist to do his or her work and at the current case it is corporate America. And Williams' definition very importantly understands advertising as supportive of the social, political, and economic system in which it exists. It's interesting and important as I mentioned compared to what happened Soviet period. Where the Soviet propaganda. That supported the social political economic system in which it existed. And thus it's not really wrong for us to say that if that was propaganda in the Soviet Union, then this is propaganda in capitalist America. Now the third definition that we'll look at today is. That advertising is nothing other than salesmanship in print. This definition was coined in the early part of the 20th century by John E. Kennedy, an advertising copywriter. The story about how it happened goes like this. He had retired from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Was visiting Chicago and sent a note up to the head of one of the large agencies in Chicago. And he said, I can tell you what advertising is. If you have the time to talk to me I'll be glad to share my views on this. Well, the advertising executive was so intrigued by what this man. Might have to say that he called him upstairs and indeed the story goes on that they talked for many many hours about it. But what it was that Kennedy was saying was that if we look at advertising what we can understand it as is that it is nothing other what had passed for salesmanship. Prior to print and that, that advertising really transforms the stuff down in salesmanship into a print medium. Now what he meant by salesmanship is the kind of thing that we see here in this old image of a department store. This is the kind of time and age where you would go into a department store and sit perhaps at a glove counter. There'd be someone across the counter who the knew the details of the products being sold. Really the kind of opposite of Wal Mart situations today. Where you can't find anyone to give you any real details about what's on sale. You've got to figure it out for yourself. But here there is a salesperson. Talking to the potential consumer about the things that're on offer. Lots of details are given like well do you have small hands large hands do your hands suffer from the cold and winter. What do you want them to look like? Do you want cloth do you want leather and so forth. And so in that dialog between the salesman and a consumer advertising or salesmanship in this case would be creating an exchange of information that could ultimately result in a sale. Now what Kindy was talking about in his. Definition was he was saying that advertising takes this phenomenon that is indeed been around for a long time. It would of applied back in that image of the women beside the, the, the road in India selling their spices and, and vegetables. Where there would be that dialogue. All these are salesmanship situations. But it takes that and puts it into the new medium of newspapers and print, and conveys there what would have been conveyed in a face-to-face situation. So it takes what is, what has been interpersonal face-to-face dialogue. And puts it in a form that is mass communication in a mass medium and can be communicated to more than one person at the time. Now here's an example of how far this went in the late 1800s when advertising began to emerge as a really important part of cap to the society This particular image is from a train station in London, but it shows the walls literally covered with advertisements offering all kinds of things services and goods for sale. And it's just the spectacle of what's on display. If we look at this image from New York about the same time. In the 1880's, for example, we see these billboards outside and lots of notices are posted. So this is what's happening in this time period, where the salesmanship, the face to face stuff is shifting in. Into print, into a new media, to be communicated in that manner. Now, it took awhile for this to develop in the form of magazines, and the use of photographs as we see here. Photographs didn't come into advertising until around the 1920s, when they were of sufficient quality and. In reproduction, to make them a good way to to illustrate advertisements. Now when radio came along, we see the shift from the print medium to radio as a new advertising medium. And so really this definition of salesmanship. Different print would need to be changed to take into account the emergence of new media. Like, for example, the radio first, which occurred in the late 1920s and television later, which occurred in the later 1940s. These become new advertising media as well. And that's what we are seeing happening. Is a shift in the media that are available for advertising communications. So, in pointing out originally that salesmanship as a face to face interpersonal thing. Shifted into mass media. First through the form of print. Then in the form of radio and then in the form of, television, is a way of saying that, advertising is highly dependent on the medium in which it is presented. Listen briefly to this, radio advertisement. But from 1936 where we see the program being produced by a brand brand, the programming branded in that particular way. And thus people came to associate things that they liked as radio content. With the sponsors, in this case, Lux soap. >> Hollywood California, Monday, May 3rd. The Lux Radio Theater presents Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea in Hands Across The Table. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC] Lux presents Hollywood. Our stars, Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea. Walter Pidgeon and Gloria Holden. Our guests, [INAUDIBLE] Hollywood newspaper correspondent, and Earl With unusual facts about strange jobs in picture. Our producer? Cecil B. deMille. Our conductor? Noah Silvers. Looking over the footlights I see many motion pictures celebrities in our audience too. Reading. The makers of Luxtronoscope welcome you and all the world to another hour in Hollywood. And the Lux radio theater is on the air. Mm. Who's the girl in blue? Introduce me, Tommy. She's a peach. When you hear men talk like that about a girl, you can be sure of one thing. She's a girl with clear smooth skin. A girl who's smart enough to keep her complexion free of those unattractive little blemishes, [INAUDIBLE] and enlarged pores. That mean cosmetic skins. She's probably a girl who's taken a tip from Hollywood, removed cosmetics thoroughly with Lux toilet soap. For the active lather of last year's complexion soaps removes from the pores every trace of dust, dirt, pale, rouge, and powder. No dangerous pore choking. No gradual loss of beauty. It's foolish and needless to risk cosmetic skin. Lux toilet soap guards against that. And now our producers. Ladies and gentlemen Mr Cecil B deMille. [APPLAUSE] >> Now in the long run a definition of advertising also needs to account for things like all the stuff that's happening. On the computer and on mobile devices of one sort or another. It needs to account for product placement and displays in sporting events. The body of this, racer, as well as the various stadia, have advertisements plastered all over them. So that original definition of print is not quite right. It's just in various media and here we also need to think about what happens in face to face communications where one person tells another about a product. That's also a part of it. To summarize advertising has been defined broadly as any device to a. Attract attention. Narrowly, as the official art of capitalist society. And, in terms of media. That is, as salesmanship in print and other forms of mass media that are used to communicate advertising messages. All of these taken together give us a better sense of what advertising is than any one. By itself. I'd like to recommend that you turn to the unit in Ad Text entitled what is advertising. It contains a discussion not only of these three definitions, but of seven others making a total of 10 where people have brought up. And defined advertising in different ways and brought up different aspects of what it is. This will give you a sense of the complexity of the phenomena that we try to define and also make you appreciative of just how complex it is to pin down what this thing that is so much a part of our lives is. Through out this course what we'll be doing is exploring how this works. And what advertising is in relationship to society, culture, history, and the economy. This course is a collaborative venture of. Duke University and the Advertizing Educational Foundation.
