Communication in Advertising

Tom Mairs - April 2003

Communication in marketing is all about repetition and emotion. The world of marketing is quite complex and deals more with affecting the emotions of the masses than any personal communication. Unlike a business letter, or position paper, a piece of marketing is transient. A television ad has only 30 seconds to deliver a message and may never be seen again. A web page has only 15 seconds to grab your attention and newspaper pages can fly past your eyes in less than 5 seconds. In order to command the attention of an audience, marketing and promotional materials have to grab a viewer’s attention and deliver an important message as quickly as possible. There are many known and proven ways to accomplish this, and all of them involve preying on human emotion.

So-called ‘shock’ ads are dramatic examples of this. Quite often these are used by police or security services for public advisories like the drinking and driving awareness campaign, also used my M.A.D.D. (Mothers against Drunk Drivers). These usually open with a twisted sports car surrounded by police cruisers and EMS vehicles. In the background you can hear the chatter of police radios and the scene is backlit by flashing emergency lights. In the foreground you can see a half empty bottle of alcohol, obviously knocked from the car in what must have been a horrific collision. You hardly need to see the words that follow on the screen to know what the message is all about. In 30 seconds you have been given a terrifying look into how your Friday night may end up.

In the above example, no words were needed to convey the message. In other forms of marketing, words and repetition are everything. There is a very effective ad from the Lottery Corporation that simply repeats the word BIG about 10 thousand times. Lottery ticket sale skyrocket shortly after this ad is played partly because people know the lottery prize will be large, but also because the repetition of the ad keeps ringing in your head, reminding you to buy that ticket. Repetition is a very common tool in marketing communication. The general rule is to repeat the message 3 times if you want to leave an impression.

Marketing professionals know that in order to deliver the most effective message, they need to appeal to our most basic emotions. This means they will hit you with guilt, pride, and sex as many time as they can in their flashing moment of exposure. Thirty-second television ads will show you a successful businessperson using a new cell phone, or PDA implying that you will need one too, if you want to be that successful. Your pride takes over and before you know it, you are wearing an Armani suit and holding the latest in cell phone technology.

Guilt is also on the top of the marketing favorites list. Have you seen the organ donor ad with ‘Katie’ and the pile of teddy bears that were meant to cheer her up? If someone had given her the kidney she needed, she might be alive today to enjoy them. This technique is used heavily in fundraising as well. Think of the last time you flipped past a World Vision or Unicef sponsored infomercial trying to raise money for yet another hungry South African country. There is a reason why they pick the sickest, weakest looking children for their profiles.

What about sex? Let’s face it, sex sells and it sells well. Imagery and innuendo are all that is needed to fire the imagination long after the 30 seconds of advertising are history. Look at the television ad for a popular shampoo that sounds much like an orgasmic explosion, or the current print ad for Chanel perfume that shows a model wrapped in nothing but cellophane. Then there is the radio ad for a local nightclub that jokingly mentions it is ‘clothing-optional’. All of these capture your attention, and then leave you with a lingering message attached to a sexual image.

Perception is everything. The truth is really irrelevant in the marketing world if you can manage to leave an impression without actually saying anything. There is a very fine legal line that marketing companies trod lightly on and it runs between the delivered perception, and the actual words in the message. A typical children’s ad for Barbie shows the doll doing cartwheels, and running, but the very small fine print at the bottom of the screen will tell you that Barbie does not actually move like that on her own. I find it very unlikely that any child will take the time to read the fine print.

Comparative imagery is also used extensively in marketing. This is where a product is placed in a situation that makes you feel differently about it. There is a television ad for a jeep that shows it driving through some very unlikely terrain, but you get the message – it will go anywhere. Another example of this has an astronaut looking at a wristwatch floating in open space. Most people know how harsh the conditions are in space, so the imagery conveys the message – it’s tough enough for any environment.

Marketing is definitely a whole area of communication on its own and one that advertising professionals revel in. I have to wonder what part ethics have to play in that world. Earlier I touched on the fine legal line advertisers have to walk when marketing a product and then they tend to justify unfair marketing practices with legal loopholes. Effective marketing balanced with ethics can be a very powerful tool, but the lure of profit can turn marketing into a vicious one-sided game played at the cost of the public trust.