Text 17

1. Advertising slogans can range all the way from the ¹trite (“Beer, it’s lovely”) through the vulgar ²inane (“You’ll look a little lovelier each day with Fabulous Pink Camay”) to the idiotically bizarre (“I dreamed I made sweet music in my Maidenform bra”). For the advertising executive there is only one criterion applied to all of them: Will they induce people to buy more of the article in question, more brand A, more beer, more soap, more brassieres? Any effect that advertising has upon our culture or values or language is that unintended and (from the ³copywriter’s point of view) strictly irrelevant – but that doesn’t make the influence any less potent or less far-reaching. Indeed if culture is “the whole way of life of the community” there is a case for saying that the cultural ¹kingpin of twentieth-century Britain is the advertising industry. Certainly no one today can escape continual assault by advertisements in one form or another. (Can you remember a day this year when no advertiser’s message reached you – not even a ²hoarding, a shop-window display, a phrase on a cereal packet?) And in 1964 expenditure on all forms of advertising in the United Kingdom reached a record total of £553 millions – an amount which compares interestingly with a net expenditure of £545 millions in the same year on all primary and secondary schools in England and Wales.

2. The vast sums are spent by business firms in the expectation of specific economic advantages, and the exponents of advertising (usually the employees of advertising agencies) who are assiduous in writing letters to the Press usually base their defense on the claim that a modern industrial economy “cannot exist without advertising”. The economic case for advertising must be explained later. The main concern of this essay is with its unplanned yet pervasive influence upon the quality of your thinking and feeling, and upon the goals towards which we strive both in our individual lives and in the network of social relationships which make our civilization. There are two main questions to be asked here. First, what kinds of emotional appeal do advertisers find it profitable to play upon, and what is the effect on our sensibilities of the copywriter’s persistent ³harping upon our feelings? Second, in what ways does financial dependence upon advertisements affect the quality, content, and availability of the media (newspapers, magazines, television, and radio programmes) through which advertising is dissented?

3. Before we consider these issues, however, it must be made clear that there is a great deal of advertising which we can safely ignore because it confines itself, unexceptionably, to providing information about goods and services for sale. Broadly speaking, the classified advertisement in small print in a newspaper fall under this heading; as do the majority of advertisements in trade and technical journals which are directed at other manufactures or traders; together with a certain number of the display advertisements for local shop-keepers which appear in local daily or weekly papers. At the opposite pole are almost all television commercials and most of the display advertisements in national daily and Sunday papers and large circulation magazines – a very high proportion, in fact, of all the nation-wide advertising which is addressed to the ordinary purchaser or final consumer. These advertisements contain a minimum of informational content and set out primarily to work upon our feelings and half conscious attitudes by non-rational suggestions. This distinction between “informational advertising” and “advertising by psychological manipulation” is admittedly a rough and ready one, and there are many dubious cases in the borderland between the two. Thus “Asphalting contractor; drives and paths re-surfaced from 10s. square yard; phone – “ falls clearly enough in the one category; while “It’s smart to drink Port” belongs unmistakably to the other. We might find it harder to agree on a classification for the single-line advertisement which appeared in the New Statesman’s Personal Column for many years: “French taught by Parisienne; Results guaranteed.”

From: “Advertising”by Frank Whitehead, in: Denys Thompson (ed.),Discrimination and Popular Culture.

Preparing the Text

A. Studying the language

1. “potent” (1): find a synonym.

2. “assiduous in writing letters” (2): give a paraphrase.

3. What is the Russian equivalent of “display advertisements” in this context (3)?

4. What does the author mean by “non-rational suggestion” (3)?

5. “rough and ready” (3): give a paraphrase.

6. What is a “contractor” (3)?

B. Studying the contents

1. What does the expression “assault by advertisement” suggest (1)?

2. Which kinds of advertisements would you expect to find in the “personal column” (3) of a newspaper?

C. Studying the text: questions and stimuli

1. What is the main criterion for advertising slogans? (the verbal aspect of advertising)

2. What is the influence of advertising on culture? (the cultural aspect of advertising)

3. Compare expenditures on advertising and education. (the financial aspect of advertising)

4. How does industry justify this gigantic expenditure? (the economic aspect of advertising)

5. How is the consumer affected by advertising? (the psychological aspect of advertising)

6. What is the influence of advertising on the media? (the socio-political aspect of advertising)

7. Sum up the definition and the aims of the two different forms of advertising (informational advertising and advertising by psychological manipulation).

D. Points for comments and discussion

1. Comment on expenditures on advertising and education. Suggestion: discuss economic necessity of advertising (competition on national and international scale).

2. Discuss cultural aspect. In what ways is advertising “potent” and “far-reaching”? Suggestion: influence on fashion, eating and drinking habits, leisure-time activities, behaviour, etc.