Advertising, like it or not, is everywhere. It is on buses, billboards and hot-air balloons. It invades our living rooms, our classrooms and almost every aspect of human life.
It plays a crucial role in creating the image of a brand since it is a direct communication outlet.
Through advertising, the brand generates its structure as well as content, and builds up consumer behavior that result in the purchase of that particular brand.
Advertising is the key to the maintenance of the brand image. For effective ans successful branding and widespread knowledge and acceptance, repeating the brand image is necessary. This might be considered as one of the reasons of the trend of creating ad series.
It’s no secret that advertisements are supposed to persuade you to buy a product. That’s their job. Advertising may attempt to educate you or entertain you, but beneath it all, the ultimate goal is always to sell you.
The question is: are these strategies ethical? Do companies have an obligation to tell the truth or does the goal of selling the product override such ethical concerns?
Advertisers must create a scenario that heightens the consumer’s emotional state. No matter what strategy they use, they are always building a fantasy – one in which the consumer’s life is better because of the product.
Ethical questions abound when considering modern advertising techniques:
1- What responsibility, if any, does a company have for honestly educating the consumer about its product?
2- Should advertisers be allowed to suggest that a product will make a person more sexy/interesting/beautiful/successful/etc?
3- Is it ethical to use celebrities to sell products they probably don’t even use themselves?
4- Is it the buyer’s responsibility to be aware of these strategies and not allow them to manipulate their emotions?
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"First Things First"
From Wikipedia:
The First Things First 2000 manifesto, written and launched by Adbusters magazine in 1999, was an updated version of the earlier First Things First manifesto written and published in 1964 by Ken Garland, a British designer.
The 2000 manifesto was signed by a group of 33 figures from the international graphic design community, many of them well known, and simultaneously published in Adbusters (Canada), Emigre (Issue 51) [1] and AIGA Journal of Graphic Design (United States), Eye magazine no. 33 vol. 8, Autumn 1999 and Blueprint (Britain) and Items (Netherlands). The manifesto was subsequently published in many other magazines and books around the world, sometimes in translation. Its aim was to generate discussion about the graphic design profession's priorities in the design press and at design schools. Some designers welcomed this attempt to reopen the debate, while others rejected the manifesto.
The question of value-free design has been continually contested in the graphic design community between those who are concerned about the need for values in design and those who believe it should be value-free.[citation needed] Those who believe that design can be free from values reject the idea that graphic designers should concern themselves with underlying political questions. Those who are concerned about values believe that designers should be critical and take a stand in their choice of work, for instance by not promoting industries and products perceived to be harmful. Examples of projects that might be classified as unacceptable include many forms of advertising and designs for cigarette manufacturers, arms companies and so on. Adbusters has been a significant outlet for these ideas, especially in its commitment to detournement and culture jamming.[citation needed]
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We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.
Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.
Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.
We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.
In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
signed:
Jonathan Barnbrook
Nick Bell
Andrew Blauvelt
Hans Bockting
Irma Boom
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Max Bruinsma
Siân Cook
Linda van Deursen
Chris Dixon
William Drenttel
Gert Dumbar
Simon Esterson
Vince Frost
Ken Garland
Milton Glaser
Jessica Helfand
Steven Heller
Andrew Howard
Tibor Kalman
Jeffery Keedy
Zuzana Licko
Ellen Lupton
Katherine McCoy
Armand Mevis
J. Abbott Miller
Rick Poynor
Lucienne Roberts
Erik Spiekermann
Jan van Toorn
Teal Triggs
Rudy VanderLans
Bob Wilkinson
and many more
original Manifesto, 1964
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