Advertising+and+Branding

=**Visual Literacy in Product Promotion** = Where Images Have Power

 Companies depend on the consumer to recognize their brand and spend much effort creating a memorable  logo or product shape. A brand is associated with certain company values and with personal experience of product performance. In this way, the sign (image) is connected to the signifier (message) to meet a specific purpose: cast a favorable impression of that brand on the consumer and build recognition and trust. Products influence the brand values, but for the most complete and unified values, it is best if the product design takes into account the brand values (Karjalanienan).

Choosing a brand image or logo is a very important venture, and companies are careful when changing their brand. In a Newsweek BackStory, the progression of various brands is shown, and the changes from the founders to today were noticeable and revealing from a visual literacy point of view. From Black or Red original designs, the current logos are colorful and bold with simplicity . The images are chosen purposefully. The Betty Crocker image reflects and affects the emphasis on youth culture and maintaining the looks of a young person. Pepsi hopes that consumers will remember their wartime patriotism with the red, white and blue design, and the round shape is retained from a former product. They also want to differentiate their product from their red-hued rival (Howells 11). John Deere customers are to see lawn tractors and more as innovations for the future along with the buck beginning his leap upwards. The Shell design no longer needs the company name because it is recognized as a gasoline station and convenience store.

Logos becomes so common  to our consciousnesses that they are a form of communication of their own. Wearing clothing with a particular logo many not seem to express anything unusual, but the fact that we consider these brands appearing in every place is usual reflects a passive visual literacy. Do you often look deeper into a logo? Does it have a definite meaning? Some argue that "logos are ... free floating signifiers" (Sturken 230) because they have been detached  from their origins, despite recognition. It is associated with the product and company, but as it is passed from context to context, it means something different. Does the iPod logo on a phone mean the same thing as one on a t-shirt? The iPod is an interesting case of an iconic brand. The company advertisements have done a very good job of associating a lifestyle with the product. It doesn't associate product benefits or even social status with the item as much as the experience of being tuned in (Jenkins 480). As an iconic symbol, it has a cult following based on the experience of immersion in music, and it has made the connection of the product and the experience so clear through repeated use that it is no longer and advertisement of a digital device but a symbol a digital generation (Jenkins 481).

Branding is also performed for less tangible commodities. In an interesting case, The New York Times newspaper sells reproductions of famous images in special history archives section. The company brand of The New York Times created by these pictures enhances its <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> identity <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">as a <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> keeper of national history and memory (Kitch 24). While doing this, the pictures are often universalized by not including names of the subjects and classifying them in the broadest sense as images of the American Experience, when this experience was really very diverse and never unified. The unity is necessary to appeal to the broadest possible public sector with their brand (Kitch 36). In the case of these images, having a "simple" representation of an entire historical concept is very convenient. An empty image can become a <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">carrier <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> for any of the concepts so fond to our ideology. Without the context for these photos, the visual literacy processing <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">of them is limited to their status as reproduced images and markers of history, not to the actual occurrences pictured. One picture included in this collection is "Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam" while a similar photo is not available as a framed and remastered print because it does not have iconic status. What does this reveal about American values and the type of images that become iconic? The workers in the photo above are <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">emblems <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> of independence and perseverance despite tough jobs (such as being 800 feet above the ground). In the photo to the right, the culture views sleeping at midday as lazy, despite the circumstances of the photo that have not be saved with the image. For more examples of iconic images, please see Brooke's page on photography.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> This is probably one topic you remember covering in school. The bandwagon and associative techniques among other used to make an image desirable to you are standard fair in high school English classes. It turns out that this topic actually becomes more complicated with further study and is especially important as a subcategory of visual culture. Purposeful messages and meaning creation is most seen in advertising.

Advertisers have a plan when they design their product packaging. In highly specific study, it was found that <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">placement <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> of images on packages influences whether a consumer likes and buys an the product. Even if these placement rules cannot be articulated (you might not know that you buy more crackers if the image is more central or high on the package), they do exist and are part of the psychology of advertising used by companies to promote their product. For example, placing the product image in the lower right has a feeling of "heaviness", which is associated with more satisfaction and richer foods (Deng and Kahn). The Chips Ahoy! cookies pictured have the product image in the lower right, which follows the findings of this study.

How can imagery have this much affect on us? Simply, we are subconsciously familiar with lots of "usual" broadcasted imagery of items, and come to associate the <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">typical <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> with images we have seen more often. Sometimes, these images do not match with the reality of first-person viewing. Mass circulated images of babies, for example, are contented and rarely screaming. Images that depict the baby screaming, becasue they are more rare, depict a departure from normalcy (Holland 41). No matter how often babies are actually contented, this is the image that is mass circulated as normal.

Knowing that images are grounded in the culture they are created in raises questions about global visual advertising. There are a few interesting anecdotes about the cultural limitations of <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">global <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">advertising. Without knowing the particular arbitrary meanings for an image in a different culture, the advertisement may become comical and misrepresent completely the idea intended if the visual precedent has never been seen before (Messaris 154, 158). Sometimes the trouble isn't always with the cultural meanings, but with the semiotic <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">signifier <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">. In a rather humorous example, the Chevolet car named "Nova" has a wonderful signifier in English - a bright new star. In Spanish, however, "no va" means "doesn't go", which is a very bad name for promotion of a car (Howells 96). Showing bare feet in shoe ads in countries where it may be offensive or including a six pointed star shape on a product used in Arab nations are other examples of visual mistakes (Messsaris 153). Despite this possible limitation, the global flow of information has not been hindered, and humans worldwide can learn to understand all time periods and contexts of human experience (156).

The television commercial below was used as an example of semiotics and meaning infused into an average object, in this case, a car. At first glance the form is so common it is hard to see the detailed explanation behind the images. media type="youtube" key="JbiAbBnGACY" height="385" width="480" align="left" <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">This commercial is from the mid 1990's for the Renault car company. The <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">subject <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> in this clip is a man who we understand to be a priest. "The car is then made to signify the ultimate in sexual allure .... a product so desirable even a priest would be tempted" (Howells 109). Watch the caressing and touching of the car and the desire of the other priests. Other <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">signifiers <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> include the sunglasses, the timeless appeal of tourists to Italy, and the classical sound of the music implying an expensive taste and class (110). Consider also the lack of words or text in the advertisement until the end.

Television commercials are only half a minute or a minute long, but thought and purpose was given to every aspect of this commercial. Perhaps your new found visual literacy knowledge will foster a new <span style="background-color: #bf70e1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">appreciation <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> for creative advertising personal. Or, it may help you see past the trickery before you purchase those new shoes or gas grill. Beyond either of these, take some time to think about the bigger questions related to advertising. What does it mean to live in a visual culture? What skills do you need? How does the Internet and the ability to replicate pictures or brands and put them in new contexts affect your visual understandings? By considering these and other media literacy questions, you can become a smart, educated consumer. In the words of one visual media enthusiast, "When advertising is done well, it is smart, visually stimulating, and deviously clever...I don’t think that people will ever become immune to the power of persuasion through corporate marketing, but I think we can become smarter about it through awareness of how it works" (Quiq).

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Deng, Xianoyan and Barbara Kahn. //"//Is Your Product on the Right Side? The "Location Effect" on Perceived Product Heaviness and Package Evaluation." //Journal of Marketing Research// 46 (December 2009) : 725-738. //Communication and Mass Media Complete.// Web. 4 March 2010.

Holland, Patricia. //Picturing Childhood: the myth of the child in popular imagery.// New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004.

Howells, Richard. //Visual Culture.// Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2003.

Jenkins, Eric. "My iPod, My iCon." //Critical Studies in Media Communication// 25.5 (December 2008) : 466-489, //Communication and Mass Media Complete//. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Web. 11 March 2010.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Karjalainen, Toni-Matti and Dirk Snelders//. "//Designing Visual Recognition for the Brand." //Journal of Product Innovation Management// 27.1 (Jan 2010) : 6-22, 16 p. //Communication and Mass Media Complete.// Web. 4 March 2010. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 11pt;"> Kitch, Carolyn. “Selling the Authentic Past – //The New York Times// and the Branding of History.” //Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture// 4.4 (December 2007): 24 <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">-41, 18p. //Communication and Mass Media Complete.// Web. 14 Feb 2010. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Messaris, Paul. "Visual "Literacy" in a Cross-Cultural Perspective." Robert Kubey, Ed. //Media Literacy in the Information Age.// New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997.

Number 17, NYC and Matthew Phillips "What Will Betty Crocker Look Like at 100?" //Newsweek.// 19 April 2010: 64. Print.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Quig, Alec. "Art: Matt Siber." //bombsite.powweb.com//. BombLog, 15 April 2009. Web. 4 March 2010.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. //Practices of Looking// New York: Oxford University Press. 2001, 2002.