How To Associate And Participate?

By Author: Friendhdx
Total Articles: 47
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Implying Causality Many ads imply a cause-and-effect relationship: use this product, get that desirable effect. Critics of advertising ask if the effect occurs at all, if the effect is a result of using the product, if the effect is a necessary result of using the product, and if the effect is a result of using the product in conjunction with other factors or of the other factors alone. A toothpaste advertisement may claim, for example, that brushing regularly with that specific toothpaste will give you brighter teeth, fresher breath, and fewer cavities. Are these good things the result of the Cartier Replica brushing or of the toothpaste? If you substitute baking soda for the toothpaste, would you achieve the same result? When an ad for a breakfast cereal, bar, or drink claims that when the product is served with milk, toast, and juice, you get a completely balanced and nutritionally sound breakfast, you might wonder whether the milk, toast, and juice alone would have had the same result. What does the advertised product contribute to the total nutrition ...
... of the breakfast?

Juxtaposition Ads commonly juxtapose products and smiling people. Are the people smiling because they are using the product? (They're probably smiling because they are being paid to smile and will earn a lot of money in residuals when the ad is repeatedly aired.) Juxtaposed images encourage us to infer a relationship between the images, in this case between the smile and the product. Often we assume a causal relationship. Scenes that would not otherwise be juxtaposed can be edited together for television, and we accept such editing as part of the grammar of television and are comparatively uncritical of it. Televised ads can therefore create arguments by association more readily than print ads or speeches. The relationships between the juxtaposed images imply arguments. When an ad says, "Gimme sunshine . . . gimme a Dew" (Mountain Dew, a soft drink), as scenes of young people are intercut with pictures of the soft drink, we need to ask what the relationship is between the product and the other scene. The relationship is not inherent; the ad has simply juxtaposed two images. The audience fills in the relationship. If we assume a causal relationship, then the ad comes to mean either that drinking Mountain Dew gives the drinker sunshine, friends, and fun, or that having sunshine, friends, and fun gives us Mountain Dew. Since the last relationship makes no sense, we will probably conclude Breitling Replica Watches that those who drink Mountain Dew are more likely to have the fun shown in the ad than those who do not.

We may also see the relationship as one of identity. In this case sunshine and Mountain Dew would function as synonyms, and the relationship we read into the ad is described with the simile "drinking Mountain Dew is like experiencing sunshine." The ad may also be expressing a list of things important to us: give us friends, sunshine, fun, Mountain Dew.

Exploiting Coincidental Relationships There is no necessary relationship between use of a product and status, taste, or love. If these characteristics are related to the product at all, the relationship is coincidental. Advertisers would like us to believe that the relationship is a necessary one and to infer causality where none exists.