Mark Blevins

7 years ago · 4 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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Advertising and Media Literacy

Advertising and Media Literacy

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I started article on advertising and during my research found information on different advertising practices. Advertising is a huge subject. I found lots of information.

Some of it boarder lines conspiracy theory that some groups want to brainwash the public to articles about people who work for ad agencies who are just doing their jobs. What interested me the most are how people are using these techniques to market their own labels in a movement called Media Literacy.

People these days see an advertisement on the internet then they click the advertisement to get more information. They get information about the product, compare it with other products, and use an electronic order form.

With the internet, people can buy anything from groceries to travel tickets online. They might not realize they give the advertiser a way to collect their information.

There are times the website will gather more information than buyers realize they are giving out. Some of this information may seem safe—a favorite hobby, product preferences. In some case the site can get more information than they realize.

Internet advertisement can reach millions of people just about anywhere in the world. An internet user has the option of clicking the ad and will get put on an electronic mailing list.

Someone who isn’t interested just ignores the ad. Many people want to be on mailing lists to get information on discounts. There are also internet sites set up to collect information about usage patterns.

Information is used to target new customers by mail, telephone, and email. Some people see this as a convenience, others see it as an invasion of privacy and a possible threat.

Big data is the collection and analysis of huge amounts of information by supercomputers.

It leads to more advances in fields like medicine, science, and crime fighting. Big data is growing. IBM estimates 90% of the world’s data has been generated within the past two years (Price 909).

The use of big data also draws controversy.

It includes Tweets on Twitter, Facebook images and email addresses. It has potential to erode individual privacy. Governments use big data to conduct surveillance and companies use it for marketing products.  Civil liberties advocates want to limit the use of big data and others say companies should pay to use someone’s online information.

Some people who use big data say its benefits outweigh the risk and call privacy an outdated concept. Big data is a bonus to businesses. They use it for consumer marketing and reduce energy consumption.

A study shows product placement have a strong impact on audience reactions. Advertisers spend a lot of money to get their brands put into media content. This is known as product placement or brand integration. Spending on paid brand placement was 2.9 billion dollars in 2007.

Understanding of audience reactions toward brand placement is growing.

Articles that focus on brand placement in one medium don't necessarily show the same results for another medium-example, newspaper versus television. The definition of product placement can be summed up as "the purposeful incorporation of a brand into an entertainment vehicle.

It is important to note that the purpose of brand placement might differ for each placement. An unpaid placement is used add reality to a scene or character. Paid placements are only there for the advertiser's benefit.

Product placement traces back to Hollywood.

In the Late 1930's the De Beers diamond cartel was desperate to sell diamonds in the Depression. It's ad agency, N.W. Ayer had a hard assignment- to give American men the idea that buying a quarter carat diamond would let them get the woman they wanted (Epstein). The agency came up with a strategy to insert scenes in movies showing women falling in love with the man who got them the diamond ring.

They gave diamond rings to Hollywood producers, executives, and directors who in return gave them the scenes they asked for N.W. Ayer also set up a weekly Device called "Hollywood Personalities." This service provided 125 leading newspapers with gossip about Hollywood start wearing diamonds.

Literacy is the ability to read and write. Media literacy is the ability to reliably access, analyze, evaluate and create messages. These are crucial skills in today's world. We get information through text, images, and sounds. We need to make sense of and navigate this media environment because it bombards us every day.

We also need to use media tools and technologies.

Media literate youth and adults are able to untangle the messages we receive from television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, billboards, signs, the internet, and other forms of media. They can understand how media messages are constructed and how they have a meaning beneath the surface. They can also create their own media and become part of the media culture.

Media literacy skills help children, youth, and adults: understand how media messages create meaning, identify who created a particular message, recognize what the media maker wants us to believe or do, name the tools of persuasion use, discover the part of the story that's not being told, evaluate media messages based on our own experiences, beliefs, and values, create and distribute our own media messages, and become advocates of change in our media system.

Media literacy also helps develop critical thinking.

Product placement and other modern advertising techniques work, and regardless of what anyone wants, they aren’t going away-at least not any time soon. I think the best thing a consumer can do is to understand advertisers use the media to sell their products. 

If people want to learn about the techniques advertisers have been using, they can use them to get what they want as well.

I also think the more people who are media literate, they more likely the ones who have been using these techniques all along will have to use them responsibly.



Written By Mark Blevins

Thank You For Reading



Sources

"Advertising." Gale Encyclopedia of Everyday Law. Ed. Jeffrey Wilson. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Virtual Reference Library, 2006. 277-81. Gale Encyclopedia of Everyday Law. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.

 Epstein, Edward Jay. "The Stealthy World of Brands." Adweek 3 Oct. 2011: 22. Business Source Elite. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

"Introduction to Media Literacy." Media Literacy Project. Palante Technology, n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.

Reijmersdal, Eva Van, Peter Neujens, and Edith G. Smit. "A New Branch Of Advertising." Journal of Advertising Research 49.4 (2009): 429-49. EBSCO Business Souce Elite. Web. 19 Mar. 2014

Price, Tom. "Big Data and Privacy." CQ Researcher 24 Feb. 2014: 909-32. CQ Researcher. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.



About Me

I was a Construction Worker and Commercial Fisherman. An injury on a fishing boat in Alaska forced me into early retirement. Now I'm a Writer and Blogger. Having to start over forced me to realize people are more than their job title. 

Check out my blog at http://morethanatitle.net/blog

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Comments

Miguel López de la Oliva

7 years ago #1

Wow! Sweet honey! I work in that world and I could say that is not difficult to learn, but hard to know every detail about everything because it changes everyday.

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