The State of Advertising Address

 Let’s flush out the concept of advertising as it exists today.

In its purest form, advertising is a way to bring visibility to a product or a service. Its ultimate goal is some sort of conversion in which a person decides to buy a product or use a service or watch a particular movie. On a fundamental level, advertising attempts to steer our choices. It presents us with one specific choice which is accompanied by a message, no matter how subliminal, “choose me!”

But the state of advertising today is not merely a means to an end. In fact, I would argue that advertising is an end unto itself—not necessarily purposed as such by its producers and creators, but by its audiences who treat advertisements as products and more specifically, as entertainment. I’ll use myself as an example: as someone who has little to no interest in watching or understanding the game of football, the Superbowl has one main draw for me: the half-time commercials. Millions of dollars are spent every year on these commercials, and the airing of these commercials has become an event unto itself. If an ad is shocking or successful enough, it can even overshadow the “main” event—the football game itself.

Nowadays, we enjoy advertisements like we enjoy TV shows or movies. We pass YouTube links around telling our friends, “Watch this ad. It was hilarious!” When I go to the movies, I am as excited for the movie previews as I am for the movie itself, which is a testament to our affinity for the micro-narratives embedded into advertisements. I’ve been thinking about the psychology behind this advertisement-as-entertainment scheme, and I think advertisements function as short comedy sketches or vignettes that can fulfill our desires for new and interesting narratives without occupying too much of our time and attention. We are a distracted society, after all. But I think advertisements can also function as commentaries on our society in the way that they point out something we know about ourselves but would hesitate to talk about. Advertisements can be self-mocking; they can be absolutely ridiculous; they can be parodic; and they can be poignant. Advertisements as form do not need to conform to a specific genre to be functional or even successful—a fact which gives the producers of these ads room to be creative (I know there are corporations who place limits and constraints around this production, but I’m highlighting the fact that ads have the potential to be creative—not necessarily that all ads are creative). More and more, with the way that we spend so much time online or on YouTube, I think advertisements can begin to occupy an educational and innovative space—a space that would become interdisciplinary and multi-faceted, that would not solely be about a product or service or object but also include other kinds of commentaries and ideas. I see the advertising space right now changing with technology, and I think we will see the transformation of the medium of advertisements into a hybridized vessel that combines selling with other motives. The growth of technology is unpredictable and ever-expansive, and I’m excited to see how advertising will be changed because of it.

What Happens On Da Laptop, Stays On Da Laptop

As consumers with limited cash to spend, we make choices every day between the thousands of services and products vying for our wallets.  And amid the fray & frenzy, those companies and services that offer security, insurance, or precautionary measures can easily be overshadowed by more tantalizing products.  Buying insurance of any sort seem less urgent than, say, purchasing a new album or a concert ticket, or replacing your empty tube of toothpaste.  You’re not actually getting anything for your money – you’re only paying to avoid things you don’t want.  So a major advertising maneuver for security services is to elaborate (and exaggerate) the damages and disasters that might befall you should you choose to forego their security.  In many respects, companies that deal in burglar alarms or flood insurance have it easier -- they can show frightening images of the concrete disasters that they promise to fend off.  But if you’re a technological security service, such as Norton by Symantec, it’s much more difficult to put a face on the digital villain.  They must figure out how to render technological dangers perceptible to the buying audience -- and how to make those dangers feel not only real, but imminent.

Norton’s 2011 campaign is creative and entertaining, and succeeds in an unlikely way.  Their series of advertisements consist of a yellow background, with different file names printed in simple type across the page – .mp3 files, .mov files and .jpg files.  The entire thrust of the campaign lies in the clever file names, which hint at deeply personal content of some kind – content with sentimental value, historical value, or just potentially embarrassing value, such as "TheMomentSheSaidYes.jpg" (sentimental), “GrandpaDoingTheRunningMan.mov” (familial-sentimental), or “FellAsleepOnTheCouch_AKA_FunWithMagicMarker.jpg” (blackmail-worthy).  These file names, while specific and personal at first glance, are also fundamentally generic – I mean, you may not have a .jpg of yourself with a magic-marker moustache, but instead you might have a .bmp file of that time you passed out on Widener Steps in your Halloween costume.  Norton hopes that you see the file names and grin, because there's a good chance that you have a parallel file somewhere in the labyrinth of your laptop. 

The punchline of the ad comes in the small black print in the bottom left corner of the page: “It’s not just data.  It’s your life.”  And that's the sentiment Norton needs to sell if they want to sell their product.  Norton is marketing aggressively in the intersection of our everyday mediascapes, technoscapes, and terrorscapes­.  The media files that are strangely precious to you (and integral to your identity!) are technological in nature -- and at the same time, they are under threat from menacing technological forces.  By subtly (and, in the tagline, overtly) suggesting that your life and personal history are constituted entirely of data like home movies, pictures, and sound recordings, Norton markets itself as a hugely desirable digital safeguard.  

A Fantastic Example of Guerrilla Marketing

I wrote about guerrilla marketing yesterday, only to discover today what I think is one of the best examples of guerrilla marketing I have ever seen.

Here's what happens:

You've somehow made it to this website, STATE OF CHAOS - with the subtitle "THIS YEAR'S BLOCKBUSTER ON YOUR BLOCK." You're curious. You're impulsive (did you read the fine print at the bottom? I didn't - and didn't think for a second about giving my street address away - but that's another story).

After you've decided to provide this State of Chaos website with your street address (and maybe your last name), you click the button "UNLEASH CHAOS" because well, chaos is meant to be unleashed (and your friend told you this website was really cool).

 Next thing you know, you find yourself in YOUR neighborhood. No, I'm not kidding. Your actual neighborhood. You recognize the trees and streets and houses and everything. And on top of that, there is a colossal, Herculean, Megatron-like robo-monster stomping through the yard - YOUR yard. If you're like me, you're still in shock and awe that you are actually seeing YOUR neighborhood. YOUR house. YOUR trees. YOUR driveway. The 3-D modeling is unreal.

You're viewing your house through the eyes of the destructive robot, who is apparently on a rampage and has set your house as his next target. Resident located. And in the next second, your house explodes, smashed into smithereens. You're launched into space, and from a Google Earth bird's eye perspective, you see a burst of flames: your home has been destroyed.

Your first reaction is how epic and cool that whole simulation was. Technology' has come a long way these days, you think to yourself. You're fascinated by how real that video was, how much it was like that last video game you played, how personalized this actualization of a Godzilla-led doomsday really was.

And then this screen pops up.

STATE FARM.

BE PREPARED. BE VERY PREPARED.

Me? I was shocked. Then incredibly impressed. 

Shocked that this was an advertisement.

And then impressed that this was an advertisement (*especially by State Farm. Their TV commercials are pretty boring and unmemorable).

That State Farm could play off of so many of our current culture's obsessions, interests, and digital platforms while reinforcing their own status as "protector" is both creative and innovative.

What this campaign really does is solidify State Farm as a "cool" company. A forward-thinking, creative company with great packaging and presentation (I'm thinking along the lines of Apple right now). Next time you're choosing your insurance, you'll think back to this ad campaign. Of course, there's nothing in this ad that really substantiates State Farm's insurance policy as being better or less expensive or more valuable than any other policy, but that's not what you remember as a consumer (more often than not). You remember the AURA that was created. The aura is the message.

(TRY IT FOR YOURSELF HERE.)