[Reader-list] advertisements in ahmedabad (2nd posting)

Sun Feb 27 10:11:05 IST 2005

Hi all, 

my second posting. Hope you find it interesting ! 

regards, 
prayas

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2nd posting -- Publicity, Promises and the public space
Summary of the postings at the research blog at:
http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?cat=3

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===== **Statements** :

2/26/2005
confusion
Confusion as a tool used by marketers and advertisers to make their job easier.
You dont need to clarify – confuse. And then collaboratively
substantiate the confusions. And then take the confusion for a
reality. And then hardsell.
So banks, financial institutions, mobile companies will have a bounty
of options – will keep ambiguous differences between them and will
sell you any product you seem to be convinced of.

2/25/2005
"aisa hi hota hai" / "this is the way it is"
If you are saying this. You have already been consumed. You are
already trapped. You are an ideal customer, you are an ideal employee,
a promising artist, a good citizen.
Because you swallowed the bait. You are promising me that nothing is
possible. You are convincing me about the non-existence of hope. You
are destroying any urge to think freely.
You are clipping my wings. And then I will become like you too. soon.
then I will go around dissuading people, dissuading them from
questioning the mantlepieces of conviction in front of them. The
hoardings screaming in their face – to hold on.
You are asking me to keep my politics, my scathing criticism, my
idealism, my quarter-realized half-baked dreams home. The big world
cares more for euphemisms, for decorations, for functional friendships
and mega events – than anyone speaking out everyday. Reality should be
a blushing bride / kept under a viel and presented on a silver
platter.

* promises serve as gurantees
Lifestyle / lifetime promises serve to support other efforts for mass
disillusionment.
They serve as the gurantee in the transactions in which hope, privacy,
aspirations are traded for toothpaste.
Promises which gurantee fulfillment, happiness, success in business –
love – marriage – exams inspire, coax and emboolden one to spend,
change brand preferences experience discomfort.
These "promisory notes" of course are never redeemed, these IOUs are
left floating in the marketplace and are trampled on… but it doesn't
matter. Because noone is looking down, walking on the streets.
Everyone's eyes are point towards the sky, towards The Light.
The new hoarding with the bright halogens. swallowing baits,
configuring terms of transactions.
(more… http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=25#more-25  )

2/24/2005
internet advertisements vs. real world advertisements, part 2
part 1 – "real world", traditional media
interrelating the character and form of advertisements on the internet
[approaching the internet as a public space] and advertisements in the
"real world"
(more… http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=24#more-24 )

2/22/2005
internet advertisements vs. real world advertisements, part 1
part 1 – internet, "on line"
interrelating the character and form of advertisements on the internet
[approaching the internet as a public space] and advertisements in the
"real world"
(more… http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=23#more-23 )

2/21/2005
the use of the
its a pretty obvious observation – the use of "the". proclaiming and
promising singularity when aware of the plural. "wishing everyone
away" "steamroll everyone away" "selling omnipotence".
is it related in any way to religion ? the insistance of followers to
believe in a supreme path, truth, teacher and God – while all the time
aware of other such claims by other groups. Is it related in the
singular and undebatable relationship that children and most adults
have with the family, replicated in all spheres.
an attempt at suggesting a partial pardonable truth.
Instances in ads:
1) Suzuki Samurai – The no problem bike. (old campaign)
2) Bodyline – The Lifestyle Store
3) [[ more to be added ]]

2/16/2005
"The attempt to arrest mind space through hoardings"
< < excerpts from http://www.magindia.com/ >>
"It would not be an overstatement to say that outdoor advertising has
come of age. From the conventional laborious hand painted signage days
to the emergence of advanced imaging and digital printing technologies
by night.
Arresting eyeballs with faster digital printers and vinyl cutters are
some of the beautifully printed signage as hoardings on top of the
buildings, clutching the towers, hanging in kiosks, dotted about the
city streets – making a night of it.
Marvel at some of the displays for visual communication that glow
against the night sky in the city of Ahmedabad."
(more… http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=8#more-8 )

2/7/2005
Minds do as dogs do,
(they draw lines)
every day a dog dies
trying to cross
trying to bridge sides…

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===== **Reference material** : 

==  public preferences in advertising: 

# 2/26/2005
Weighting Accountability In Advertising
By Cory Treffiletti
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=42)

Twinings: I can see the poetry but I can't smell the tea
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=41) 

Zee Cinema: can really fight with this ad
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=40) 

HDFC: Self-reliance
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=37) 

'Believe and thou shalt be saved!'
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=36)

Microsoft Windows: I will not watch it
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=35) 

Contextual toilet advertising
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=32)

Advertisements…and the Indian woman
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=31)

== reference

2/26/2005
An advertisement for National Harmony
View the story board at agencyfaqs.com
[http://www.agencyfaqs.com/advertising/storyboard/National_Harmony/1457.html]
Advertising and your child: A Parent's Guide
"The National Toy Council has produced this publication for parents of
children between two and twelve years old. It is intended to help
parents and all those involved in caring for children understand what
may be appropriate or inappropriate advertising for their children. It
provides parents with guidelines to help children understand and judge
advertisements.
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=34 )

* Fact Sheet: Children and Advertising
TV and School
* For children ages 6-17, the number-one after school activity is
watching TV. * On average, children watch three to four hours of
programming a day (28 hours a week). * Students spend about 900 hours
in the classroom and 1,500 hours in front of the TV each year. *
Children who watch four or more hours of TV a day are less likely to
read at grade level, spend adequate time on school work, play well
with friends or have hobbies.
Commercials
* By age 21, the average child will have watched 1,000,000
commercials. * Children see at least one hour of commercials for every
five hours of programs on commercial TV. * The majority of children
under age six do not understand that the purpose of a commercial is to
sell a product. * Children who watch four or more hours of TV a day
are more likely to believe claims made by advertisers. * Saturday
morning commercial TV advertisers bombard children with ads for sugary
cereal, salty snacks, fast food and junk food. * Before teens reach
the legal drinking age they have watched 100,000 alcohol commercials.
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=30)

* Advertising Images of Girls and Women
A Report from Children Now, Fall 1997
Advertising is designed to sell products. In the process, ads also
sell aspirations and communicate concepts of acceptable behavior and
gender roles. Just as todays kids use ads to navigate the vast sea of
our consumer culture and in the process largely determine how billions
of dollars are spent annually so do they readily consume the subtle
messages sent by the thousands of ads they see each year. Advertising,
with its daily repetition and high accessibility, is a truly powerful
medium. The influence of advertising on childrens development is
hardly surprising.
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=29)

* (don't) confuse publicity with the pleasure or benefits to be
enjoyed from the things it advertises…
"The following if an except from John Berger's Ways of Seeing, put out
by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1972. It is considered an
early and very accessable work of postmodernism.
In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity
images every day of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so
frequently. In no other form of society in history has there been such
a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.
One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them
in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either
memory or expectation. The publicity image belongs to the moment. We
see it as we turn a page, as we turn a corner, as a vehicle passes us.
Or we see it on a television screen while waiting for the commercial
break to end. Publicity images also belong to the moment in the sense
that they must be continually renewed and made up-to-date. Yet they
never speak of the present. Often they refer to the past and always
they speak of the future.
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=28)

2/25/2005
postmodernism & disillusionment
"..Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of
fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates
that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make
meaning then, let's just play with nonsense….
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=27#more-27)

2/17/2005
The future of advertising
from **"The harder hard sell"**
"IT MAY have been Lord Leverhulme, the British soap pioneer, Frank
Woolworth, America's first discount-retailer, or John Wanamaker, the
father of the department store; all are said to have complained that
they knew half of their advertising budget was wasted, but didn't know
which half. As advertising starts to climb out of its recent slump,
the answer to their problem is easier to find as the real effects of
advertising become more measurable. But that is exposing another,
potentially more horrible truth, for the $1 trillion advertising and
marketing industry: in some cases, it can be a lot more than half of
the client's budget that is going down the drain. "
The Economist: The Harder Hard Sell
[http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2787854]

* History of Indian Advertising, 1800s - 2002
Compiled from books, articles, journals and inputs from professionals
in the industry by MagIndia.com @
http://www.magindia.com/history/intro.html
(http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=10)

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===== Photographs: 

Now archived 125 photographs at http://www.prayasabhinav.net/section21.html

===== Documents: 

Summary of the video [http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?p=44]