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— main — nextSESSION A.3 : TRAINER'S NOTES ADVERTISING AS IDEOLOGY Objective: · To introduce Marxist and Semiotic analysis of Advertising. · To explore how community media could respond. BLACK WOMEN, FAT MEN AND THE PEPSI GENERATION Short introduction to set the scene. A programme rich in signifiers (significant, memorable images.) can create a consumer market; look at the Star Wars phenomenon. Similarly, advertising, as a significant component of the media, promotes a general consumerist approach to life, it extols the market system. It is clearly promoting an ideology. An early axiom of advertising was, ‘don’t sell the sausage, sell the sizzle’. This was an attempt to sell the benefits of purchasing the lowly sausage. Current advertising may not put it so crudely, but the message is the same. For instance, ads don’t sell you a drink, but a lifestyle associated with it. E.g. Pepsi is the signified, while the antics of the Pepsi Generation are the signifiers. People are encouraged to purchase the ‘right’ product and assume (or hope) that these products will signify a certain social class, status or lifestyle. Advertising also tends to work with a very small circle of characters. The ‘Advertising World’, as portrayed by the media, is populated by young, slim, mostly white and handsome men and women, even though sometimes neurotic, but this is a condition that a ‘purchase’ will soon remedy. This is a semiotic approach. A Marxist analysis would state that the media in a market economy keeps most people in a state of psychological terror; they are under constant ‘attack’, by print, television and radio advertising to conform to the advertising ‘norm’. Break into two groups ask each group to take a subject, (Semiotic or Marxist.) and discuss for half an hour or so. Have someone appointed as reporter. Materials. Writing paper, pens. Space to talk, and think. |