NIX EX NIHILO

Will you be my ETAM/MATE ?

* To pursue our line of thought on the referential mode employed in commercials, we could state quite fairly that 'nothing exists in a vacuum, ex nihilo'. That is, no theatre, cinema or TV commercial can be staged with the director having 'imagined' (or so we call it) a situation which is totally original

* Throughout our lives as sentient beings, we are constantly under the influence of others and their ideas or creations, even of their personalities. Each of us will, if of a creative bent, subconsciously produce works which are at best hybrid , at worst, plagiarist. The less hybrid, the more original and the more authentically artistic

* To 'create' or to 'imagine' are merely words we use to recompense artists for their works/ productions, but in reality, these 'creative' works are always in connection with the experiences and memory of the artist. The potter needs clay to make his pot, just as the film director needs stories or images

* Referentiality is therefore a constant source of inspiration to directors of advertisements. Even a purely minimalist shot of an immobile person sitting in a barren desert wouuld call up in the viewer memories/ experiences (ours or others') relating to sun/heat/water/suffering/solitude/family/barren lands in Africa or elsewhere/rejection/religion/danger/protection/films on the subject (Westerns, documentaries...)/other commercials...

* Referentiality is indeed a positive option for the ad director, for we are all of us gregarious creatures requiring exchanges of ideas and of experiences. Like some parents who live vicariously through the lives of their children. The aim for the adman is to manage the references in as effective a way as possible

* In a 2008 commercial for Adidas, we see two young men in different sports attire on a playing field in front of a soccer goal-mouth. They are exchanging information on how to kick, first, a soccer ball, then a rugby ball. As in a real match, there is a 'wall' of young men blocking the goal-mouth, the aim being to kick around or over them. There is also – elsewhere - a set of rugby goal-posts

* At first, there are a few referentials, necessarily (youth, sport, weekend, rivalry, sacrifice ...), until we realise that the two men are both world champions in their respective football codes : soccer (Beckham) and rugby (Wilkinson). Other referentials now appear, like fame, excitement, money, success, credibility, expertise, learning, calmness, sense of humour, humility...

* Of course, the major referential in this Adidas commercial, which targets young men interested in football sports (soccer OR rugby),is identification with the success of their idols and the resulting efforts to attempt to emulate them, if only to wear a David Beckham jersey. Or wear his brand of sports shoe... This positive referential, the adman hopes, will suffice to seduce the young male, future Adidas customer

* This referential mode is, it should be noted, more subtle than the simple testimonial especially prevalent in magazine print ads and so often used in the domain of sport (Rolex/Omega/Tag Heuer watches, Adidas/Nike/Puma sporting equipment...) and show business (perfumes, beauty products, accessories...)

* Hollywood star George Clooney's self-deprecating role in the series of Nespresso commercials is an exception to the rule in that the ads are aimed at women who have either bitterly concluded that they will never sleep with GC, or cannot accept his good looks and success with 'other' women, thus his failure to seduce young women in the commercials is proof that they were right not to try to turn him on in the first place. They were too good for him, voilà ! But they CAN still afford GC coffee...

* Many more examples could be given of the importance of referentials in commercials in particular (more than in films, longer in duration, '007' flix excepted), suffice it to say nevertheless that all referentials will not function with all viewers and some may function improperly

* To conclude here for the moment on this central point, there are two types of referentials, the simple and the complex. The commercial above for Adidas sports shoes is an example of the simple model, GC and his 'What else ?' an example of the latter


(to be continued later)

KING KOMMERCIAL RULES

Referential Tactics of the Adman

* When viewing commercials, people may do so in the role of citizen or consumer, generally as consumer, because we tend to watch television at home (the cinema is a different kettle of fish) and at home we will be more relaxed than at the mother-in-law's

* When at home, commercials are either seen as 'a necessary evil' or as straight-up evil, a time to zap /do something else /talk with others...

* Ads are commonly upbeat, deformed mirror images of an advertiser's hypothetical dream society (in the West) where we are all subjects of King Kommercial, King of Dreamland

* Or where advertisers are like your best buddy (in Australia - sportsmen, France - Cerise), how could you not believe them when they give you advice ?

* Or where the sneaky adman has decided to create viral mayhem by 'creating' a 'banned commercial', knowing the Internet will do the rest in terms of visibility for the brand /product

* In terms of tactics, the advertiser may decide to employ the referential mode, which can be effective in that it calls up memories in the viewer, memories which, because they go back into a relatively distant past, are often emotional and thus not easily controlled

* Aside from abstract ideas such as time, power etc., many other potential references may be brought in : references to films, actors, songs, TV personalities, historical events, happy events, holiday destinations, sporting prowess...

* The top aim of the TV advertiser is to RELAX the adult viewer (from critical citizen to Joe Bloe in 5 sec flat) through the use of humour, childhood memories, images of social success, or positive ideas, like vacations...

* In France in 2004, Patrick Lelay, publicly stated that as head of private Channel 1 his role was to "sell available human brain-time to Coca-Cola" , a statement which caused a stir, people not being prepared to hear the naked truth

* In France, it is well-known that towards the end of news programmes and before the clutch of advertisements (now limited on public channels), there 'had to be' a cute sequence of images made to undermine the critical sense of most viewers, by showing (say) jumping dolphins, frisky baby tiger cubs with their mother, a baby foal's birth etc. At one point, such images were even integrated into the weather reports on a certain channel

* Emotion we know, kills critical judgement. Emotion sells. Aim for the child and you will reach the parent. In a fairly old French ad, a cute little boy makes a cute play-on-words for the Peugeot 806 ('huit cent six') van he wants his Dad to buy , misnaming it a 'huit saucisses' (eight sausage van) - LOL

(tbc)

DECENTRALISING THE DINOSAUR

Direct Participation

* Given what has already been said in this blog about trends in advertising over the past few years, given the 'madoff mentality' of the West's casino economy (gain, but no pain, for a tiny minority, a max of tax tomorrow for the poor majority), given the fundamental flaws of mankind (main flaw : corruption by money), but equally, Man's ineffable creativity, what can be done by the educated citizen to turn this Titanic-economy around ?

* Ahead and surrounding us, the icebergs of over-consumption. The opening of the ozone-layer. More pronounced global warming, as the middle-classes of India and China demand a slice of the pie we Westies have been happily munching for decades.

* Don't get me wrong, let us not abandon ourselves to facile feelings of guilt about the way things were in the past and are evolving at the moment. What we must do in the 'developed' countries is to lead - by example - the rising tide of Asian, South American and sub-continental consumers towards a better future, even if it means, and it will, a diminishing standard of living for the masses of the West. Compared to the fate of the Mumbai miserable, it should be possible...

* Leading by example and renouncing (some of ? most of ?) our former spendthrift ways may seem idealistic to some. However, we in the West, perhaps more than other nations, do possess the technological savoir-faire to make the breakthroughs necessary for the planet in the fields of clean power (see the Portuguese use of wave energy), communications, work practices, health, medication, the environment etc...

* If we decide, in the 'developed' world (this includes Russia), to merely wait and see, which seems to be the case, to allow our industrial society to continue to force-feed consumption through ubiquitous advertising practices in a hyper-commercialised environment, creating huge quantities of waste and a growing urban lumpen-proletariat, we will go down on our Titanic in a surprisingly short time. Violently...

* Not only this, but since 9/11, our societies are becoming more invasive of privacy, more technology-dominated, more secretive and less democratic (LCD ad signs, DNA samples, nanotechnology, embryo research, video surveillance, Internet snooping and hacking…)

* Technology, like advertising and banking, MUST be closely overseen by competent government/ independent bodies to prevent such dangerous deviations from the democratic norm as are being revealed these days

* More transparency, more democracy are the watchwords for today. To imagine our society rushing headlong towards a future of private-security, 'gated-community' inequalities and societal violence far worse than today, is unimaginable to those who have some leverage/ time in this society – i.e. the young, the educated, the politically-aware, concerned parents and retired people. These groups must stand up and demand changes of their local and national representatives in all fields (read Naomi Klein on this)

* In 'Fences and Windows' (Flamingo, G.B., 2002), the Canadian journalist notes some of the areas where citizens must act to protect the public interest against speculative, commercial interests :

- “...keeping advertisements out of schools (...), profit-making interests out of health-care, or news outlets from acting purely as promotional vehicles for their owners' other holdings (...) separating genetically-modified crops from crops which have not yet been altered” (Preface p.XIX-XX)

* As Klein says, citizens must reclaim the space taken over by private commercial interests, “ students kicking ads out of their classrooms, or swapping music on-line, or setting up independent media centers with free software (...) (or creating) farming co-operatives.” And : “...there are some things that don't want to be owned. Music, water, seeds, electricity, ideas...” (p.XXVI-VII). Direct participation is her keyword.

* To conclude, we need to become more involved in our democracy, through or within :
- the education system (as students, teachers or parents)
- local politics (housing, environment, advertising, waste management...)
- political parties (proposing positive ideas)
- Internet citizen involvement (blogging, targeted campaigns)
- media involvement (forums, letters to the editor)
- pressure groups, associations, unions, volunteer work
- street protests, to prove the citizen holds the power (Marx was wrong)

HERTA CONCLUSIONS

Rêvons d'un monde meilleur...

* So far we have looked at what advertising is, why it exists, the forms it takes - from paper to screen - where it is practised (principally , capitalist economies, i.e. most) and when it began (3000 B.C.)

* What interests us most however (I am employing, by affinity, the Victorian form "we", you will have noticed), is the conundrum involving Man's need to communicate versus the capitalist tendency - via the advertising industry - to forsake ethical principles for financial gain

* To better follow our logic, let us consider some simple, explicit conclusions which require writing down. We are assuming of course, that as a species, Man does have the right to exist and to survive, a point that the Deep Ecology movement (see later) might contest. These are :

- Conclusion 1 : primitive, gregarious Man needed to communicate with other members of his species. He tended to congregate in groups for protection, procreation, exchange...

- Conclusion 2 : Man is constantly creative. With his intelligence and ideas, he will attempt to survive, whatever the political regime, whatever the meteorological or economic climate

- Conclusion 3: Man as a species is also, as you may have noticed, chronically destructive. Destructive of himself, of others, and, more to the point today, of his environment

- Conclusion 4 : after a long historical process, most of the planet in 2009 lives in a market economy, under what Karl Marx denounced as capitalism. Capitalism places profit, not Man, at the centre of the the universe

- Conclusion 5 : modern capitalism, like a coin, has a creative side and a destructive side, corresponding to Man's nature

- Conclusion 6 : we live (until further notice), in a world of finite natural resources

- Conclusion 7 : global capitalism, in its scope and appetite, is objectively destructive of these finite natural resources (forests, oil, coal...), dependent as it is on growth to fuel what has become the 'consumer society' (1920s-?), soon to engulf India and China

- Conclusion 8 : the engine of growth in 'developed' consumer societies is the advertising/public relations industry, disseminated via a wide variety of media, events and spin-offs

- Conclusion 9 : like the financial industry, if left unfettered in its operations (CL, Enron, Lehmann, Madoff ...), the advertising industry requires strict regulation to prevent exploitation of the humble, the weak and the ingenuous Sciences-Po student...

- Conclusion 10 : the law of the jungle will not reign.