[Reader-list] advertising - selling fear, uncertainity and doubt == posting 4

[Prayas Abhinav]

Hi all,

Am posting some more of my notes and summaries of reference material 
filed at my blog - http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?cat=3.

Research: "Publicity, promises and the public space"

hope you find it interesting !
regards,
prayas

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[[Statements]]
* < interview with mahesh murthy > I got a chance to meet Mahesh for 
some time in Ahmedabad. I always admired his spontaeity and informality. 
He is one person – whom I feel awkward talking starchily to. We got to 
discuss various things in a light kind of way – new ideas, new trends…
Got to discussing Advertising. I always had this image in mind – that he 
is one guy from advertising who has come to believe that advertising is 
not a good investment – it is ineffective , citing businesses which have 
grown without fance Ad budgets. "I felt it was not the best way in which 
I could help my clients" – is one line I remember.
He clarified this time – "I believe advertising is not good for 
startups. Big companies need it. All products are generic and they are 
all competitive. It makes a difference."
The small chat I had with him confirmed the assumptions I had made – 
that fear, uncertainity, doubt (FUD) / confusion was a marketing tool 
which many companies used for want of other approaches. It also made 
one’s task much easier – if the consumer / customer is so lost he can’t 
make a decision any more, one can always appear to guide them rightly to 
your product.
Too many similar choices = confusion = sales == the backbone of a 
"free-market" / market-oriented society ?
Can "closed markets" / protected markets, communist economies be seen as 
an agressive reaction against the agression of confusion of a "free market".
But Mahesh said – "But that’s the game, we all manipulate. Someone or 
the other all the time."
Someone save me, before its my turn !
So we are all doing it all the time, manipulating others to extract 
benefit. So anything goes in advertising. Let them hawk our mindspace 
and dont even talk of negotiating a percentage ?

* < privacy exploded…> so was was the last time you were staring at a TV 
screen – looking at actors mimic initimacy, love and passion ?
if you are a well-adjusted TV viewer as so many of us these days – you 
are very conscious—This is Entertainment, These are Professionals and 
They are being Paid For It or They are Artists Performing. so 
discussions generally tend to revolve around the quality of performance, 
quality of mimicry.
an obseration: across the last ten years we are less and less aware of 
TV and film content as content and more aware of it as a medium, more 
aware of it as a art + craft as a performance. moving performances are 
praised not moving situations. now we are at a stage at which – we 
already know everything, are already aware of everything and we are 
testing the filmmakers – how tactfully, how delicately, how 
entertainingly can they say things to us. not what they have to say to us…
which technically bad content-rich film has been a success in recent 
times ? which technically perfect content-poor film has been a success 
in recent times ?
techniques can be taught. services for teaching can be advertised and 
sold. institutes flourish. voices cannot be trained ? so why bother even 
talking about it ? vision is a luxury. if you have it, good. if you 
dont, ok.
sorry for the diversion, but I was writing about the private self in 
public. so now everybody knows what I do in the garden, in the bedroom… 
in the…
publicity burns. there are cameras all over the place burning holes into 
our psyches. stealing us for the hungry visocous audience. there are 
people today who have lost the capacity to experience intimacy. to 
experience heroism, to experience goodness. they pay TV guys and 
filmmakers to make these actors be good.
"I want to remember" "I want to feel the boundaries of my bondage"
advertising agencies sell us the hope of feeling the things we cannot 
feel anymore. this hope is tokens which we can possibly redeem at cash 
counters. of course we have to pay, not collect. but that’s a minor detail.
so we see before us a cubist fantasy. our self disembodied and 
dismantled. our psychological / emotional needs being taken care of by 
people we wouldn’t trust our credit-card with. our mind’s a dustbin. 
maybe a public urinal. bring it on ?
=========
private acts are learnt form public performances. personal aspirations / 
ideals / concepts of "cool" evolve from trends, popular dreams which in 
turn create powerful peer-pressure.

ideal fodder / data for advertisers to manipulate us by.
=========


[[Reference]] ==== refer at 
http://www.prayasabhinav.net/blog/index.php?cat=8

++ Resistance - adbusting / culture jamming / anti-ad
* The Anti-Advertising Agency (AAA) - "Starting Points for Ideas - We 
share the following questions which are a starting point for our ideas. 
Many of these questions we don’t have answers for. We would like to see 
work from artists that can inspire further critical thought by asking 
more questions and beginning to provide some well-developed answers."
* The Anti-Advetising Agency - Mission - "The Anti-Advertising Agency 
co-opts the tools and structures used by the advertising and public 
relations industries. Our work calls into question the purpose and 
affects of advertising in public space. Through constructive parody and 
gentle humor our Agency’s campaigns will ask passers by to critically 
consider the role and strategies of today’s marketing media as well as 
alternatives for the public arena."
* The Art & Science of Billboard Improvement, Billboard Liberation Front 
- "Look up! Billboards have become as ubiquitous as human suffering, as 
difficult to ignore as a beggar’s outstretched fist..."

++ Resistance in Art
* Cesky Sen - "Cesk Sen (The Czech Dream) was a large-scale hoax 
perpetuated on Czech advertising industries and public by two film 
students in 2003. Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak invented a fake 
supermarket, ”Cesk Sen”, and created a massive advertising campaign 
around it. The supermarket was presented as having unprecented scale and 
low prices, featuring products such as a television for 500 Kc ($19)..."

++ Theories
* advertising: definitions & reflections II - here is mentioned again 
the “quality of advertising” – we need and expect quality – aesthetic, 
taste – in a product which is trying to persuade us at any cost about 
the quality of another product. what is our stake in advertising ? why 
do we care ?
* advertising: definitions & reflections I - the evolution of advertising...
* Today’s salespeople, whatever type, face a more sophisticated 
customer: cautious, cynical, and slower to say yes - "Understanding What 
Product Selling Is and Why It Won’t Work."
* Questions for Redressing the Imposition on Public Space - "The fight 
against the use of billboards as commercial adverts rather than as a 
medium for public self expression, protest and communication for social 
issues. Doctoral thesis research, by Jessica Hall. An Interview with 
'Jack Napier, CEO, Billboard Liberation Front'"

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Prayas Abhinav,

http://www.crimsonfeet.org
Personal web: http://www.prayasabhinav.net
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Mobile: +91 9227234979