What is " advertising" ?
Advertising is defined in Webster's dictionary "as the the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements, to call public attention by emphasizing desirable qualities so as to arouse a desire to buy or patronize: promote."
Advertising is a mass-mediated communication. For communication to be classified as advertising it must be:
1) paid for,
2) delivered to an audience via mass media, and
3) be attempting to persuade.
In order to persuade, or be effective the advertisement must communicate to the audience the message it wants to relay. If for example, the advertisement is trying to sell a particular product than it must persuade the audience that for whatever functional or emotional reason they need to purchase the product.
Not only must the advertisement effectively communication the desired message, but the individual audience must be willing to "buy into" the desired message. In other words, for the advertisement to be effective, the communication must be sent and received. Advertising is a two way communication process.
The individual recipient is capable of interpreting the advertisement any way he/she wants. The individual should realize that they have the ability and the power to interpret the advertisement any way they so choose. They can either accept the message, ignore the message or rally against the message. As a matter of fact, the consumer has more power than they often realize to dictate what is communicated and what is not.
For example, a group of Boston-area women decided to do more than just complain about the glossy magazine advertisements that display women as anorexic. These women formed BAM - Boycott Anorexic Marketing . BAM boycotts products which feature women who are starving themselves .
BAM has been successful in convincing advertisers to depict true characterizations of girls in everyday life situations. For example, Kellogg Inc. has begun a new ad campaign which substitutes healthy, sports-minded models for their thin counterparts . Due to BAM's protests, Coca-Cola, which manufactures Diet Sprite no longer features a model nicknamed `Skeleton'. The few advertisements which do portray women in sporting activities - like Nike, Playtex, and Chapstick - are attempts to hit at the true essence of individual female strength and potential.
Cultural stereotyping and representations of beauty are often the result of “media gatekeepers” such as advertisers. A call for action from organized women's groups such as BAM has forced many “media gatekeepers” to be accountable for and to rethink their "what" their advertising strategies produces.
The "what" of advertising is the effective transmission of a message which stimulates the desired action i.e. purchase of a product, service, or idea. The "what" of advertising is the determination of what is the intent of the advertising? "What" is the purpose of our advertising, "what" is it that we want to communicate to the public?
BAM has been successful in convincing advertisers to not communicate a stereotypical thin beauty myth. BAM has successfully realigned the "what" are we trying to communicate to "what should we not" communicate? As consumers become more aware of and use their vast power, advertisers will have to increasingly ask the consumer "what". No longer will consumers be passively dictated to by an often out of touch, patriarchal, traditionally male-dominated corporate America.
The "what" of advertising is the what is our intent or purpose for this communication? But more importantly, as future advertisers we should never tire of asking ourselves "what effects do our advertisements have on society?"