Basic Factoids :
- TV commercials are just that – commercial ; they know that we know that. This explains the multiple levels at which ads are pitched and the presence of humour to ‘defuse the unsaid’ or 'non-dit' (taboos, for example). An example was a funny Spanish ad for an optician, which showed a man in serious need of glasses happily cleaning his teeth in the morning with a cream for piles, instead of toothpaste
- But the medium via which commercials are transmitted is more often than not a commercial operation in itself, which explains, amongst other things, their persistent ubiquity
- The verbs ‘to watch’ and ‘ to see’ do not have the same meaning : one cannot knit or read in front of TV, otherwise it is just radio. Doing something visual while in front of TV would be like smoking marihuana without inhaling…and look where that led. TV commercials are so placed in the programming schedule as to reach either a specific TV niche audience (the youth slot for Star Academy on French TV, the male, armchair sportsman slot (Eurosport, Turbo etc.), or the vast general public around prime-time programming, such as sporting events, popular series or the news.
- TV commercials, just like society as a whole, function according to social class factors, based on socio-economic reality. The Mercedes commercial will not aim at buyers of basic Opels
- There is no love-hate relationship towards commercials - they are just time-fillers so that people can feed the cat or put the kids to bed. People in France tend to appreciate advertising whilst remaining rather mistrustful and critical of possible abuse
- Members of the general public do not all possess the same gift for understanding a visual message : the young are more au fait visually and referentially-speaking, whereas the older are more cultured, more literary, more 'paper'. In terms of the five senses, some of us are more auditory, others rather olfactory. The plump, gustatory.
- However, the young tend to manipulate the new media with greater speed and skill than their elders, since they possess the codes to these since birth. Indeed, the new media seem pertinent to the young, even, sometimes, exclusive of all else
- Certain cosmopolitan groups in society, generally the young, whose networks are more highly-developed, see videos of advertising on YouTube for example, as a source of entertainment, even art, to be appreciated and then shared with friends via the web
- Apart from pop-ups, Flash and banners, newer forms of participatory, interactive and
(to be continued)
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