#6 Consumer society and advertising

On the 6^th weeks we talked about “consumer society and advertising”.

To talk about that we should start from the Industrial Revolution, when the technological developments radically altered the organization of production, distribution and consumption of goods. For these reasons the Industrial Revolution had massive effects on politics, economics, culture, educations and society. The exponential increase in non-essential goods and consumption entailed the rise of the professional advertising industry. ( McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)

The mass advertising industry emerged to notifying consumers about products, developing sophisticated techniques for inducing desires and needs among ordinary people for things that hitherto they did not relies they needed. Its purpose is to persuade people to purchase, subscribe to or consume a particular brand, product, service or organization.( McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)

Advertising was and continue to be a key driver for commercial media, facilitating by the grow of press, radio, television, movies and digital media.

I would like to talk about the newest kind of advertisement: the viral marketing.

The first example of viral marketing hail from 4 July 1996 when Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia, Hotmail founder, decided to write at the end of every e-mail this message “PS Get your free e-mail account at http://www.hotmail.com." This message appeared as a suggestion from the sender and the result was that Hotmail reached 8,2 million of users in 18 months. (http://www.nobrandagency.com/articoli-marketing/marketing-virale-nobrand.pdf).

Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networking services and other technologies to try to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses. (Wikipedia)

Thanks to the viral advertising agencies reduced their costs on media by asking consumers to spread their messages for them and gain credibility by getting friends to share their content. Viral messages are typically humorous, original, due to ease a production and dissemination across newer forms of media.

The fact that they are forwarded between peers means that they use advertising to create their online identities.( McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)

There are many different kind of viral marketing, the most common are videos, and some of them have become really popular. I searched online the list of the most popular viral video of the last year, they are very different but the aim of every one is to affect the viewer for something special: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6649/10-Examples-of-Amazing-Viral-Marketing-Videos.aspx

Another very common think is monitoring consumers and their activities in real time as they use media, media companies track your movement online to deliver a more personalized and individual experience. This is called data mining.( McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)

This means that I will found in each page I will visit advertisement about some I’ve searched before in another website. Many people thought that online tracking technologies compromise our individual privacy but others affirm that tracking tools help streamline daily life.( McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)