One day there will be an ad on the moon.

Scary!

I used to think that I knew a lot about advertising as of yesterday. I had a pretty good idea of how it worked, the purpose and the methods that advertisers used to get our attention. Then I saw this great PBS program called "The Persuaders" which explored even more in depth into the world that is advertising.

After finishing the videos, my attitude towards advertising changed in a way that I'm not sure I felt comfortable with. The film went in depth into the advertising mecca and talked to corporate ad marketers and asked them about ad campaigns, emotional branding, methods of selling, subconscious messaging, and what it took to win the loyalty of customers. The topics alone took me by surprise in terms of how much thought and money go into these campaigns. Even the quantity of ads shocked me as I had never really thought about how many ads we are exposed to each and every day. Needless to say this made me a bit, you could say paranoid, about being manipulated by these forces.

Hypocritical owl!

The thing I found the most interesting was the section on subconscious marketing and the relentless attitudes that advertising agencies exude when planing these campaigns. There was even a gentleman in the film who had a job as a Marketing Guru, and he used psychology to map out the alleged desires and thoughts of consumers. It almost seemed as if these companies were trying to turn humans into living math problems that when solved, hopefully yields a large sum of money. I do believe this is normal though and that as a society, we have developed to a point where if nothing happens for 2 seconds in any aspect of life, we freak out. We are so fast paced and so relaxed in our thinking that companies have to go through all this effort in order to get some elbow room in an attention span that is already to crowded as it is. That being said, I really can't completely blame consumers or producers for our country's economic, environmental, political, or moral problems, because both are trying to pursue a way to make their life "better."But I do know that because of our human desire for material possession, we are only going to make things even more crowded. This scene from Fight Club displays my feelings towards advertising just perfectly.

As far as Song's advertising strategy goes, I believe that it would fit quite nicely in today's culture instead of 2004's. The ad campaign was very creative and fresh, but it may have been ahead of it's time. The ideas Song had felt very new age to me, something our generation might be interested in instead of a generation that wasn't as individualistic as our generation, and thats the feel I get from their promotions. They have this charm about them that seems fun, lighthearted, relevant, hip, and modern. Their colors are wild compared to other flight companies and their food is supposedly organic, showing that they are supporters of healthy lifestyles. These are all cool features, but sometimes it feels like simplicity might be the better strategy.

Script? No thanks, I'll just wing it.

If the title has you confused, the script I'm referring to is the one for the world famous musical: Life. It's not something that you have to see on Broadway or even have to reserve seats for because it's a production that all of society is a part of. Everyone has a role that they play, and and that is the Gender Role.

In the book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Sociologist Ervin Goffman compared social interaction within our society to that of a theater, saying that everyday people are actors performing in a play, and that everyone plays some sort of social role when they are around other people. There are roles to be played, fronts to be put on, and props that are used. In the context of gender, people have to decide if they want to read the script that they know conforms best to stereotypical society, or of they want to be the authors of their own script and risk being labeled as a social deviant.

Which role do we take?

The ideas of how gender codes work in Goffman's book closely relate to that in a film called The Codes of Gender by Sut Jhally in that they both have a similar concept of how gender is acted out in American Culture. The summary of Goffman's book supports the Codes of gender in terms of what is acceptable and what is not in our society. We see that like a play, when actors deviate from the gender script, such as a man who likes to cook and clean, he gets labeled as gay or queer for participating in a front or scene usually reserved for women in our society, and the same thing applies to females. In Groffman's analysis, sometimes people don't want to conform to certain roles of gender and they decide to break abandon their current role and take upon a new role with new lines, props, and characteristics. If that is to much for some, there is always the opportunity to remove your social mask when nobody is around or if you are with a group that shares your same code. 

Society makes this seem weird. 

Association with a specific gender starts at a a very young age and is influenced by parents, institutions, friends, and the mass media. We are quickly put in a gender box and are told that that is our role and that breaking it will not be accepted. Both Jhally's and Groffman's views are supportive of this stage like reality that we all live in and both seem to agree on how individuals express, change, inhibit, and hide their ideas of how one should behave in public. 


Personally, I grew up in a family with a lot of girls, and because of that, I happen to be different than most men my age. I am more emotional, have a decent sense of how to do household work, and I happen to like TLC's What Not To Wear. I don't really like sports and I know when a girl has had their hair done. So, I may not be the worlds idea of what the manly man should be like, but that doesn't mean that I'm gay ( Although some people think I am.) I just happen to to be not be the modern stereotypical macho man, but I'm cool with that. But if you want a Hollywood example of what a REAL man looks like *sarcasm* just watch this clip from the Boondock Saints 2!