Page 29 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Advert s ng and Persuas on

interpersonal relationships. Products are offered as the solutions to these per-
sonal and social problems. Mothers who wash their children’s clothes in certain
brands of detergent are assured happy, healthy kids who will continue to love
them while wearing their clean, white, stain-free garments. Such promises are
often made through compelling scenarios depicted visually on television and in
magazines. A variety of ads that play on guilt are directed toward parents. From
the OnStar automotive assistance system to airbags and tires, these ads make the
point that if you love your children you will use these products. Children some-
times featured sitting in the backseat talk about how happy they are that their
Dad bought a particular car.

Language of Association
Images are key to the persuasive strategies of advertising. Visual messages can
make associations and create implied meanings without advertisers ever having
to make direct promises about the quality of their products. Taking a picture
of gold nuggets placed next to coffee beans and adding the caption, “The Gold
Standard in Coffee,” allows the consumer to associate the value of gold with that
of coffee. The photograph and caption transfer the cultural value of gold onto
the brand of coffee being advertised. But even a casual “decoding” or “textual
analysis” of the ad can reveal the false nature of the communication. Under logi-
cal and visual analysis, it becomes clear that the quality of a mined metal has
little to do with the flavorful taste of an agricultural product, and that gold and
coffee have little real connection. Yet visual and verbal associations allow adver-
tisers to make claims about products without having to verify them or state them
directly. In this way, consumers often accept obvious exaggerations without crit-
ically evaluating them. Media literacy has become an important educational cur-
riculum designed to help the public, especially children, understand the ways in
which persuasion carries implied meanings that do not hold up under scrutiny.

The Promise of Belonging through Consumption
With the slogan “Pepsi, The Choice of a New Generation,” Madison Avenue
launched the lifestyle ads of the 1970s. Such ads often promised satisfaction
through group consumption. A picture of a group of friends all wearing the
same Dockers khakis, or all drinking the same soda, is an image of belonging.
Products confer a sense of group identity and a way to recognize other mem-
bers of the same peer group, now defined as a consumption subgroup. The ad’s
promise of fulfilling interpersonal relationships is made visually. Because of the
documentary nature of the photograph, it is indisputable that the consumption
subgroup is content being together. However, if these implied messages were
stated directly, “Wear these jeans and you will have the friends you want,” or
“The people who drink Coke have more friends,” the assertion would be much
less credible and therefore much less effective as persuasion. In this way, market-
ing strategies and aesthetic design work together to create more powerful modes
of persuasive communication, both visual and verbal.