Chapter 2 "Reading the Text" questions

After reading your article, respond to the questions under "Reading the Text" that follow it (not the "Reading the Signs" questions). Please put the title of your article in your subject line. Please do this before class on Thursday (9/29).

Masters of Desire

1. Americans want to be better than everyone else.
2. Status symbols are signs that identify their possessors' place in the social ladder or heirarchy.
3. Guilt adds work by creating narrative situations in which someone is accused of some social transgression. These ads are paradies of ancient religious rituals of guilt.
4. McDonalds presents senior citizens with bright fantasies of being useful and appreciated beyond retirement.
5. New adds try to act sincere and not be so fancy to relate more to people now.

A Gentleman and a Consumer

1. The feminine advertising mode usually persuades a woman to make herself feel good. The male advertising mode is based on detail and the power of choice.
2. Men are traditionally supposed to be trim and neat. To be excessively worried about one's own appearance is traditionally thought of as a feminine trait. For a man to be concerned about his appearance was thought of a homosexual.
3. Barthel claims that to be a man one has to be independent, has to savor freedom, live an adventurous life, to keep his cool, and to stay ahead of the competition.
4.Mens advertising usually shows women as being dependent of the man or they are actively submissive.

The Parable of the Democracy of Goods

1. What Marchand means by the "parable of the Democracy of Goods" is that everyone in a society is able to experience pleasure and fulfillment through an expansion of affordable goods.
2. The Democracy of Afflictions is an effective way to persuade people to use or buy a certain product to prevent negative effects.
3. An ad for e-ay shows that people can pay nearly half the amount for brand names products / Right Guard deodorant will keep people demanding for the product in order to maintain good hygiene.

How Advertising Informs to Our benefits

1. According to Calfee, some benefits he described were basically that without advertising we would not have some of the information we know. We can learn more than we think from advertising and it's almost essential in our society today. He states "it's a tool for communicating information." I think this is very true with consumers because the whole reason in which we buy the products we buy is because of the advertisements we see for these products.
2. The history of the Kellogg's advertising campaign was mainly about putting more information out there in the media about having a healthy diet and eating the right foods. Kellogg's used All-Bran advertising as a "vehicle" for the National Cancer Institute's public service messages, meaning they wanted to change consumer diets and reduce the risk of cancer by putting information in their commercials. It ended up unleashing a bunch of new health claims. Also, it greatly helped the Kellogg's corporation by giving them many more consumers than they had before.
3. He talks about that the information presented in advertising comes in "tiny bits and pieces." He says this because in advertising information is not given all at one time and even in full-context. Advertising likes to let consumers add their parts of the ad also and leave room for their personal opinoin of what this product is really all about. Also, he states giving only tiny bits and pieces in advertising promotes for quick , unerring attacks as well as quick responses. He says this is the ideal recipe for competition.
4. According to Calfee, competitive market forces ensures that information in advertising benefits consumers by making it cleaar to these consumers that the information presented in these ads is not only credible but also the seller invites comparison and welcomes tough questions. He states, "Inforational sparseness facilitates competition."

Kid Kustomers

1) An explosion in children's advertising occurred during the 1980s because working parents felt guilty about spending less time with their kids, so they spent more money on their kids instead, and companies began to advertise toward children to take advantage of that.

2) Pester power is the ability of children to nag their parents to buy something, and companies market their products toward children so that the kids will whine to their parents until the product is bought.

3) The Internet has contributed to the expansion of advertising toward children by obtaining the personal information of young Web Site visitors and turning the info over to marketers to use in their sales pitches.

4) Marketers use several methods to determine children's tastes in products, including: conducting surveys in shopping malls, organizing focus groups, analyzing children's artwork, staging slumber parties, and sending spies into stores and restaurants to eavesdrop on children's conversations.

The Parable of the Democracy of Goods

1. The parablen is that The Democracy of Goods is like our political democracy. We are all equal. We can have equal prodects and services just like we can have equal rights.

2. Instead of advertising for consumers to "be just like the wealthy" the advertising aims at saying everybody is on a low level. They are saying everyone can have halitocis, for example. Instead of getting consumers on a higher level with the wealthy, the almost bring the wealthy down a level. They are saying for "modest" Americans to not feel bad because "well-off" AMERicans have the same problem.

3. Democracy of Goods- Several cosmetic companies use this tactic. Many inform us that celebrity stylists use the same products that you can use.
Democracy of Afflictions- THis tactic works on a lot of health or medical issues. A certain pain reliever is for everyone. A disease will come to anyone unless you use our prodect. Matress companies use this as well. Everybody has back problems or such.

How Adverstising Informs to Our Benefits

1. Calfee describes what all we learn from advertising. Advertising lets us know so much more about products that what we would learn on our own. Advertising tends to make the products seem like we have to have them.
2. Kellogg's All-Bran ad is significant because it gets the consumers attention because of how it has the vehicle that has the National Cancer Institute. Therefore people want to help support that.
3. Calfee says that because when companies advertise they tell you what you want to here about their products.
4. Competitive adverstising is good because the companies tell the consumer how their products are so much better than the competitors products.

gentelman/consumer

1. feminine things are vain and directed toward a passive buyer. masculine things are all about power and percision and basically competition.
2. most women's magazines deal with glamour and beauty - men do not typically care about those things as much as women do, or at least the men will not readily admit it. the author suggests that thse "feminine" qualities are seen as homosexual if men have them.
3. according to magazines, a man is precise, competitive, and powerful in all aspects of life.
4. barthel says that women are portrayed as simply sexual objects to be desired and obtained.

how advertising informs to our benefits

1)Benefits to advertising broaded a subject. the example he used was Volvos. there is only a certain market for Volvos out there but, if they advertise about their features and how safe they are on the road, it might get some attention. Advertising can create a market and get exposure to a certain item or a business. It gets the name out there. Advertising today is not cheap but is well worth it.

2) the NCI ceded that they needed to change the diets of older people to reduce risk of cancer. Kellogg jumped all over this and saw this as an opportunity to make even more money by taking advantage of this and using their product as the lifesaver for the reducment of cancer. the Food and drug administration thought that if a food was advertised to prevent cancer it would begin being marketed as a drug. After arguments went down the ads came back perfectly legal.

3)Advertising come in bits and pieces. That is what Calfee is saying. He believes that it is like this because the ad or advertisments do not give all the information for the reason that consumers will be able to have an opinion on the ad or product being sold.

4) Well first off, if advertisments did not benefit the consumer would it not be a waste of money? It is beneficial because the ad has to have some kind of effect on the consumer so they will be interested in that certain thing being advertised. It is ment to draw out the consumer and get them excited or inform them on someting that they need.

The Parable of the Democracy of Goods

1.Marchand means that everyone in society is equal and can share every opportunity and product that at only one time only a certain class in society could abtain and through this everyone could attain personal satisfactory and happiness.
2. The Democracy of Afflictions is the opposite approach of Democracy of goods, it put even the upper class in a negative situation to show not everyone is immune to make the reader believe that if the rich are not immune then I am not either.

Masters of Desires

1.)The american dream is wanting more and better posessions, always wanting the fastest car, the best house, and the most money.
2.)Status symbols, the Huge House, or the Shine New Fast Car, the loaded accesssories in everything you own. These symbols wokr great, due to the fact that the public sees these symbols, and wants to stirve to have there own. The Consumer sees this great symbol and strives to have that pesion, or to make more money.
3.)"We all sin, repent", is a religious example of guilty adverstisment. It makes you think about your life or a certain aspect, and try to lack of a better word,sell there product to you. Since you feel guilt about what the add says you should be guilty for, you want to buy the product to relive your guilt.
4.) Mcdonalds advertisment is impressive due to the diverstiy of there audience, they relate there product to young kids all the way to senior citizens, and makes every persone feel special. It gives the people a view of a great life and bright fantasies.
5.) New realism enfisises the realism of the product, by trying to strive from the movie setting filming. Realism is the plot that the filming is trying to get across, and in osome cases works. These ads connect with the american dream due to the fact that the more real and ad looks, the more realistic it is for us to uptain that product. It is easier for the consumer to connect with the product when the product is presented in his world.

Kid Kustomers

1. The reason for the explosion was the fact, that parents felt bad that they were not spending enough time with their kids. Because of this, they bought them presents to make them happy.
2. Pester power is the way kids nag their parents for something. Advertisers use this so the parents will buy the products.
3. They use it to find information about the children. They even found up to 89% of sites requested information from kids. This is no longer allowed due to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
4. Clubs was one of the major strategies. Since the 1930s, they have been using clubs to find demographic information. Along with focus groups, slumber parties, surveys, looking at artwork, and watching children in stores.

Kid Kustomers

1. An explosion in children's advertising occured because the children's parents felt bad for ignoring their children. As a way to resolve this problem, the parents would spend more money on their children by buying them things to make up for it.
2. Pester power is when kids nag at their parents to get them to buy things for them. Marketers used it by having things appeal to the children and the children would nag (and nag well) at their parents to buy the item for them.
3. Internet sites would use characters that children liked and had them give information to the site. Some sites also asked the children personal information without the consent of their parents.
4. Marketers have surveys in shopping malls and organize focus groups for children to partake in. They also study artwork and fantasy lives and apply into their market strategy in finding the children's tastes.

kid kustomers

1. parents tried to compensate for them not spend time with their children. therefore, they bought there kids a lot of stuff.

2. marketers try to get their targets(the kids) to beg and nag at their parents to purchase the certain product.

3. the internet sites linked the children to characters and mascots that they recognized, sometimes asking them to give away personal information.

4. kids clubs as been a large strategy. they also use sleepovers, surveys, and looking at artwork to find childrens taste in products.