Subject Four: Hard Sell

The last theme in this two week stretch. Thanks for all who have viewed, if not commented. Thanks to Panagiotis for his contribution. Strange thing is I see him in class, and therefore could have had this debate off the computer, but never mind.

For the final subject I wanted to start the notion of 'to what levels would a piece of graphics go' to sell its message. I am a great admirer of the author Marshall McLuhan and his book 'Understanding Media'. If you are interested in Creative and Lateral Thinking with relationship to the medias then this is a book you should read. Several of the chapters he talks in have many aspects to the values of the visual medias and in particular he talks on the 'medium is the message'. This whole philosophy is a little deep and hard to add to a short blog post, but basically it is the notion that our society has devised (consciously or subconsciously) the methods by which a combination of words and structures have moved from the position it holds into the thought process by which we accept it. It is a very fascinating analysis of modern living aspects. It does include much related to advertising. Another subject McLuhan talks of is the 'Hot and Cold' process or theory. This is very much associative to the notions of advertising as it evaluates the trickery that media forms can use or hold to make people more connected or repelled to a form. Again, a complex subject to add here, but the idea is that certain media hold either a hot or cold value. This meaning that for example, TV is a hot media, as it holds much of the transmitted information and therefore doesn't take too much audience effort for it to manifest. The opposite is a cold media. This requires much involvement from the participant. An example would be playing some Mozart on a piano or reading a book.

Taking this into consideration the values held in advertising have a strange duality in holding both 'Hot' and 'Cold'. This is because superficially the overall view of a billboard or TV advert is openly simple. That is to give the blatant information of the product. However, the other aspect which has evolved into more modern advertising is the 'cold' value. Which draws the viewer to analyse and interpret possible angles on the information being transmitted. The last image in the event folder does a simple job. It is trying to sell a paper. However, the audience looking at this can then reflect on the hidden messages that the advertising is trying to say. In some respects this is what makes an advert both clever and memorable. Now, there is a slight issue here that the foreseen planted message could be mislead. In an economic sense this is not an issue. Remember the success of Benetton adverts by Toscani? Many people were shocked and disgusted by them, but it didn't stop people talking about them, and making Benetton a more successful company. Some of these messages however, could be harmful, or reverse effect in they promotion of a message. The image at the top of the page is a very good and clever advert. But what is the main point of adding it as the trigger to this debate is to start the debate on how much of a 'hard sell' does a campaign or piece of graohics need to make the real message work. There was a video placed in the main creative thinking folder about living with the consequences of road accidents. Basically it has a very good point, but the deeper aspects can evoke other concerns looking at the harshness of the underlying messages. So this begs the question:
1) How much concern to hard selling a message should be employed if there are stronger underlying messages that could have adverse effects on their viewers? Or is it about sell, sell, sell?