Page 130 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

Sport in Advertising • 119

stadium during a break in the action, chances are that you will be treated to an array

of advertisements around the field, in your programme and on the big screen. You
might even find that products for sale in the stadium are being advertised to you as

you consume them.
Major sports events offer a particularly compelling resource for advertisers due
to the ‘conventions of iconography, procedure, ceremony, media coverage, and of

course, the deep emotional current of national pride and lifelong affiliation with a
team or sport’ (Coots 2007: 28). Jackson, Andrews and Scherer (2005: 8) argued that
sport has an appeal for the marketing divisions of transnational corporations ‘that
stretches beyond the field of sport per se with sporting themes, images, narratives and

celebrities located within and across a complex and increasingly global system of
intertexual promotional cultures including movies, art, fashion, music and politics’.
At each major sport spectacle, advertisers are poised to convert mass audiences into
consumers. La Monica (2006) reported that thirty-second commercial spots during
the 2006 Super Bowl were selling for $2.5 million. The appeal of such events to
advertisers is clear: ‘a gigantic audience is virtually guaranteed regardless of which
teams are playing. More than 86 million people watched the Super Bowl [in 2005] in
the U.S. according to Nielson Media Research’ (La Monica 2006: para. 6).

Advertising and Consumer Capitalism

Advertising may be both ubiquitous and accepted as part of our daily lives, but
nevertheless, it has always faced harsh criticism from those who insist that it creates
‘false wants’ and encourages ‘the production and consumption of things that are in-
compatible with the fulfilment of genuine and urgent human needs’ (Dyer 1982: 3).

From this perspective, advertising tricks us into believing that our happiness lies in

the personal possession of the products promoted, making us selfish and materialistic
in our outlook. Dyer (1982) drew on Williams (1980) to show that the paradox of ad-
vertising is that it demonstrates that we are not materialistic enough: ‘if we were, the
presentation of the objects being sold would be enough’ (Dyer 1982: 7). A pair of new
trainers would be purchased solely for their utility as footwear, without reference to
social or symbolic meanings. However, as Jhally (1990) cautions, the utility of goods
cannot be separated from their symbolic affiliations. Advertising requires goods to

be associated with magical qualities that make them appear to fulfil our personal and
social aspirations. It is for this reason that Williamson (1978: 12) suggested that ad-
vertising does more than simply sell things to us: ‘it creates structures of meaning.’
In her now classic work, Decoding Advertisements, Williamson (1978) examined
the process of advertising, arguing that we can only understand what advertisements
mean by discovering how they make things mean something to us. Williamson (1978)
acknowledged that this is far from easy. It is difficult to detach ourselves from the

pull of advertisements. In the foreword to her book, Williamson (1978) positioned