Reading Response 5

1. The benefits of advertising are endless and beneficial to many people, not just the advertisers or the people who are trying to sell the product. The consumer learns about the product, and information that he needs to learn. For example, in the “All Bran” example, where consumers or people watching the advertisement learned that the fiber would held you fight colon cancer. It also shared that colon cancer is the 2nd highest killer of people among the cancers. This is important knowledge to know, and anything you can do to keep yourself from getting that is probably a good idea. Hence, the benefit of the advertising to not only the advertisers, but to consumers as well.
2. In his article, he says that advertising does not contain much information. This is broken up into tiny bits and pieces for many reasons, cost being the least of them. From what he says, most advertising leads to acquiring knowledge from other resources. Going back to the example on the “All Bran” cereal, someone could hear what is said about fiber being important, and try to do their own research to find out if that is the case. Someone could also check out the fiber content in the other cereals around to see if there is one of them that has greater than 9 grams of fiber per serving. The problem with this method or thought-process while advertising is that it might encourage people to find an alternative, like the cereal that has 10 grams of fiber. In advertising, I don’t think the goal is to be selling someone else’s product.

1. According to Calfee, the benefits of advertising are that it exposes society to information which would normally be ignored. He gives two main examples to support this thesis. The first of those examples involved Kellogg’s bran cereal. For years, the government (National Cancer Institute) had been trying to communicate that a higher fiber diet can reduce the risk of cancer, especially colon cancer. After months of little success, they received an unexpected phone call from Kellogg’s. Kellogg’s wished to advertise the fact that their cereal contained extra fiber, and thus would help prevent cancer. In only a few short years, knowledge that fiber helps reduce the risk of cancer become practically common. This was a result of the advertising campaign of Kellogg’s. The other example he gave involved the toothpaste industry. Throughout its development, toothpaste advertising helped to raise awareness of gum disease and other mouth conditions. It helped reduce cavities and infection by presenting the general public with information they normally would not have.

2. Calfee states that the information comes in little packets because with advertising, there is also another main purpose. The purpose is for the seller to convince the consumer to buy the product. The seller is really uninterested in teaching the consumer anything other than this specific product is best. Therefore, there is an overwhelming amount of irrelevant information floating around advertisements as well as useful information. Also, consumers must remember that advertisements are catered specifically for them to hear and thus the information may be slanted to appeal more.

In order to refute this argument, I would say that perhaps all information is useful. Although it may not be useful to a specific group of people, it most certainly is useful to another group. Because of the diverse culture of the world, different information is relevant to different groups. This is where consideration of the audience and what information to present to them would come into play...

1. According to Calfee, advertising is very useful for “public service announcements.” In other words, there are good for disseminating information our government wants us to know. Why Calfee would take such an angle is obvious through some of his research: “advertising, pharmaceuticals, and health care policies.” (Calfee, 210) His greatest example of this was Kellogg’s marketing of their All-Bran cereals. Surveys back up his claim of how much the public knows before and after these campaigns.

2. Calfee defends his statement by noting how little information is given through short television commercials and also by stating that the less that is said, the more that is left up to the consumer to decide. In my opinion, his argument falls there. If less information is given, less information can be used to make a well-informed decision about a product and then the product will be forgotten or looked upon with contempt. The public wants all the information it can give and if there are unanswered questions, then the public is unhappy.

1.) According to Calfee, advertising is not only a means of communicating information –– it also compels sellers to cater to consumers’ wants and demands. In this way, advertisements actually shape markets. While advertising is meant to persuade consumers to take a particular view of a product and purchase it, it also succeeds in doing much more than that. Recent developments have proven advertising to also be a useful tool of conveying information beyond the scope of the product itself.
Advertising disseminates information gleaned from research more effectively than researchers could hope of doing through traditional informational media alone. The benefits to both parties (marketers and researchers) provide an extra incentive to researchers to continue their research and make new discoveries, ultimately contributing to improved consumer awareness and health.
This research also forces producers of a product to continually improve it to make it better, and therefore more marketable, to consumers.

2.) He argues that while the amount of “hard” information conveyed through advertisements may seem to be minute, advertisements rely on much more on other outside elements to achieve their ends – in short, they also use the context within which the information is conveyed.
He argues that those ads considered to be the most credible “lean on” many outside sources, because while credibility is essential to a successful advertisement, achieving this credibility in a single ad wouldn’t make for a very effective piece, either.
His “bits and pieces” philosophy also seems to rely heavily on making concise attacks on a product’s competition, resulting in battle that takes place under the “watchful eye of the consumer.”
Consumers are usually able to easily identify unsupported sensationalist claims made in advertisements, but because this is what is expected of advertisements, it does almost nothing to change their mind about a product except to make them say, “As if I’m falling for that!” Sometimes however, these claims gain the attention of newscasters and reporters, who then begin to report on 1) the research behind the claim, or 2) the fact that the claim is unsupported. Either way, the product gains even more exposure.

For the most part, I agree with Calfee’s assertion that advertisements use outside sources to their benefit, but I suppose that overusing this might backfire on marketers… consumers may begin to disbelieve all of their claims.
Also, it seems that whenever I turn on the news, they are always reporting on some amazing new scientific discovery regarding the new benefits of consuming a particular food. A week later, they report that the same food is harmful in some other way.
After a while, consumers start to tune these reports out because they can’t keep track of it all. So much for the battle under consumers’ “watchful eyes.”

1 - Through advertisement we are able to attain knowledge about something that we may not have otherwise. Advertising not only gives knowledge to consumers but it helps the sellers in getting their name out into the consumer market. The more popular a seller is, the more ‘credible’ it becomes to the consumers. This tells us that advertisement works to help both sides of the scale, the consumers and the producers (sellers). The scale, as portrayed by Calfee, seems to lean heavier towards the consumer side. This idea is supported by the fact that information is priceless. What the sellers are doing is giving out free information that could help the consumer in many areas of their life. For instance, would you know that you could have an unhealthy kidney unless you saw an advertisement (i.e. for a drug that would help keep your kidney healthy) explaining why kidneys become unhealthy? Chances are, probably not.

2 – Calfee says this to summarize on how information given in advertisements is very little. He defends this idea by saying that his assertion is supported by research; only a few pieces of concrete information are shown in the average advertisement. Why would an advertisement give unnecessary information? After all, the goal of the advertisement is to give consumers information about the product, not bore them with a class-structured information session. The word information, however, is a vague term. What may serve as new information to one person may not be to another. So to take a stance against Calfees assertion, one could argue that all advertisements are 100% concrete information.

Calfee's biggest argument seems to suggest that the public benefits from advertising because of the information it provides. He believes that companies spend big money on research in order to advertise benefits of their product over another, and often times the information that distinguishes them from their competitors is valuable information that can help educate the public on important matters. He uses the Kellog's example to illustrate how the National Cancer Institute could not successfully inform people that increased fiber could potentially reduce your risk of cancer. Kellog's teamed up with the NCI and advertised how their product could lower risk of cancer, and suddenly people started getting the message. Calfee believes that the cost of selling pure information is just too high making it an ineffective solution for educating the public. Advertising on the other hand, can do the trick.

Calfee defends the statement "information in advertising comes in tiny bits and pieces" by illustrating how giving the public only a little information can actually benefit the company. He claims that for some products its better to give only a little bit of information and let the public fill in the gaps with their own ideas. While this may be the case for some products, this doesn't always seem like a good strategy to me. Depending on the product, consumers may want more information so they can make an informed decision, or they might not receive enough information to even learn enough about the product to be interested. Advertisers would not want the public to be confused about their products.

1 - Advertising is useful and beneficial, because not only does it help the advertiser, but it helps the consumer and the industry by giving them information, and provoking thought into more research on different topics. It is seen all the time, there are commercials that tell you what the advertiser needed you to know, but you're still curious for more, and go do more in depth look on things. A current example may be the "What Now?" commercials by State Farm, or the truth commercials aimed at the tobacco industry.

2 - Advertising supposedly comes in bits and pieces due to information from outside sources, and viewers' knowledge of this outside information. As it said with the Internet, you don't have to describe what it is, just give a simple reference to it and you're set to go. I think with some ads this is true, but others it is not. I think a prime example of this is the TV ads for medicine, they contain a plethora of information, about what it treats, and what the side effects are.

1.)Advertising greatly benefits consumers in several ways. The most basic of these benefits is how advertisements inform people. All advertisements have some kind of an informational message behind them which conveys data to the reader. This data can range from just information about what the product is to health claims about a product, such as All-Bran that was talked about in the reading.
Advertising can also lower prices for consumers. When low prices are advertised, this causes competitors to lower their prices to help sell their product more. This starts a cycle with competitors trying to lower their prices to be the most popular.
One of the biggest benefits is that advertising can spark public interested. Just as with the All-Bran case, it can start a media storm if the advertising presents a piece of data that gets people interested in that product or something about that product.
2.)Calfee defends his statement by claiming that there are several factors, such as cost and space that make the information come in small amounts. He explains that the facts displayed in advertising typically come from a credible 3rd party source and not from the firm selling the product, but lots of information cannot be fit on an ad without it being very expensive. This sparesness of information also creates competition. Competitors use short slogans and facts to essentially taunt other companies.

1. According to Calfee, advertising has very significant effects on society as a whole. It gives everyone very useful information, which causes our lives to change in the end. The example he gives is of Kellogg's starting to advertise about how good fiber is on their cereal boxes. In this example, and a few others, the advertisement caused people to be more informed about how beneficial fiber is and how it can help reduce the risk of cancer. Over the years, many other companies started advertising about various health benefits of different products, in turn making consumers more health conscious and aware about the different nutritional necessities. Before Kellogg put this information on their cereal boxes, the people who actually found this information were trying to get the public to know. Eventually, they got the NCI interested, but the general public never took to this new information. This information was not spread well throughout the public, until Kellogg started advertising about it. So, these ads helped get very important information across to all consumers and aided society as a whole. The author, through this and other examples, is just showing that advertising is very beneficial to the general public overall.

2. Calfee states that most ads are mostly talk and trying to make the product look good, and they will throw in a few bits of factual information. He explains that it is expensive for advertisers to put more facts and other ideas into an ad. It also enhances credibility if the information originated somewhere outside of the advertising company. Calfee also explains about questioning competitor's products or information and communicating with few words so the consumer can fill in where the ad leaves off. Given all these ways that an advertiser can convey information in their articles, it is hard to believe that the information comes in tiny bits and pieces. It seems like most advertisements for actual products that one uses in every day life have a great deal of information about various things, while advertisements about shows, movies, or any entertainment related product has less information pertinent to people's lives.

1. Advertising can drive research and innovation that benefits consumers, by their need for credibility and support for advertisements. This can also apply to advertisements targetting health concerns of consumers as a selling point for products, possibly informing consumers about previously unknown health issues.

2. He focuses on advertising as concise and giving only a little bit of information, which has really fallen apart in recent years. What with car ads talking about low apr financing and safety tests, or drug commercials going on and on about the problems and risks associated with ____ and how you need to consult your doctors first. I think this evolved from the numerous claims of "false advertising" where stupid consumers went into things without any more than an ad as support...and quickly found side effects and problems plaguing their lives. Now we're stuck with overly wordy ads that in all reality should make the product completely unappealing and menus on McDonald's walls for consumers demanding more information and little effort on their own part.

I do not mean to degrade the idea of information in this information society, but ads will eventually fall out of favor with overt amounts of data dumping, I believe, simly by the increase in alternative means of knowledge gathering. (read: the Internet)

Take something more comparable to weekly opportunities to advertise: a new movie. Time was, an ad or preview for the movie might've been all you had to go on to decide whether to see it or not. Rising movie costs and the sheer number of new releases lead to pragmatism on the consumer end. We have abundunt sources of information about movies online, including reviews and trailers and discussions and pictures, and the access to this information removed from the ad itself. It's still not completely disparate, as movies will often still gloat about receiving critic praise and so many stars, but I think we can start to get away from this data dumping in ads.

1) A major benefit of advertising is the distribution of information. Specifically what happened in the 80's with the health fad kicking in. Information regarding health studies were being given to the people. As a result people were able to make more informed decisions. Another major benefit of advertising is that it keeps the prices down due to competition with other products.

2) He discusses the practical issues of time and money being the least of the problem. The advertisers have to pay for space or airtime. They have to pay for creating the advertising, paying the writers, paying the actors etc etc.

Honestly, I think that a large amount of the information given in these tiny bits and pieces are useless. Yes, they serve a purpose for the advertiser. Yes, the advertising does help get the company name out which in essence is the most important aspect of advertising. You want to make your companies name comfortable to the consumer. You want to make the decision to choose your product over the competitors easy. So sometimes the information used to sway the masses is completely irrelevant. Do I really care how much fiber is in my cereal? No, not really. Is it nice that it helps cut down on colon cancer? Sure. Is reading this article(and I'm sure Kellogg's loves that its advertising is being brought into the educational classroom) going to make me go out and by some Bran-cereal? No, because it tastes bad and colon cancer is the least of my problems right now. Eat happy sugary cereals that make you excited for the day not make you want to die.

The benefits of advertising are not only based around profit. A lot of advertising back then and today has been oriented towards informing the consumer, not only to say “buy this.” For example, in the article, it talked about the difficulty a governmental organization was having getting their message out concerning fiber intake and cancer prevention. Kellogg came to this organization and asked them if they wanted to do a joint advertisement. They would advertise their cereal and get the health message to the consumer. This caused other companies to take note, they started concentrating on the health factors of their products and informing the customer what positive health effects their product could have. This formed competition between companies, and caused the consumer to become more health conscious about the products they wanted to purchase.

Calfee defends his words by citing examples of slogans used. It is easier to create competition using brief statements as opposed to providing loads of information to the consumer. Also, minimizing the words used allows the consumer to develop their own thoughts about what the product is all about. It honestly depends on the consumer however, some just want things to be laid out for them instead of thinking too hard about the product. Purchasing a computer comes to mind, some consumers want to know why that company sells the best desktops instead of seeing something like “We provide the best quality for the best price” and then researching as to why they are the best.

1) According to Calfee the benefits of advertising are primarily to increase general research on some important issues (primarily health and safety) that help promote the product but also help to educate the public about them.

2) Calfee defends the fact that “Information in advertising comes in tiny bits and pieces” by claiming that this is a benefit, allowing consumers to disseminate the basic facts that are necessary, and ensuring, in the process, that the information will be easily understood by a broad audience. However true this may be in some cases, I believe it is generally not a benefit to the accuracy of the information whenever it is snipped down to bits and pieces.

1. The benefits according to Calfee is that it it brought forth more information about a product. The companies researching about the facts for their adverstising made the health aspects of a product know. Then by one company allowing for that information to be public so the other competitors could compete they went out and did the same for their product. Also by having this kind of competition for better information it also helps with price wars because if one finds it is good for the same kind fo problem they might have to use the price to distinguish which ones will get the sales.

2. Calfee defends that fact that "Information in advertising comes in tiny bits and pieces" by saying there are many reason this is so. One is that the cost of an ad with more information would be expensive. Also that vagueness is not the effect of not enough information it is a way for the comsumer to bring their own thoughts to the product. Other reason is that by asking questions of the competitors help with the flow of information makes one another improve each other because they would like to have the better product and better sales. The way I would counter this stance is saying the facts might be true but maybe the reason that they question other competitors or don't have more information about a product is they don't wan to know the truth of what is the real infomation about there product is.

According to Calfee advertizing has many benefits. The first and foremost is to simply inform people of their interests. Advertising can peak peoples interest in a subject, and help them make decisions to lead better lives. On a more serious note, advertizing can inform the people at large of scientific breakthroughs. The Kellogg brand example is perfect. Data about high fiber was found, but the spread of information did not happen quickly until it was advertized at a plus toward a brand of cereal. Advertizing has helped spar competitions to better different products. This better product greatly helps the population at large.
Information is broken into tiny bits and pieces for a couple of reasons. Usually, the less said, the better for the company. Bold bland statements attract people and let them to come up with their own ideas. Too much information begs too many questions to be asked. However, with such bland statements, how can a consumer know what to think? Sometimes, minimal information is attractive, but others it is annoying. If your brand has this, most likely every other brand will too. Just because something is stated does not mean that it is convincing.

1. I think the main benefit that Calfee points out is that advertising has become such an ingrained part of our society that it has develop multiple uses, though some of those uses might not be immediately noticed. The main example of this is the point in the article in which Calfee tells the reader of the story about dietary fiber. Basically the main point he was trying to make was that because of the advertising efforts of Kellogg Corporation, people are now well aware of the benefit of having fiber in your diet. By attaching useful information to brands that have a high visibility, this information is able to penetrate a market that could otherwise be unwilling or indifferent to such information.

2. What he is basically trying to say is that advertisers are able to convey a large amoung of information in a few amount of words. Instead of over-loaded the viewer with information, the viewer is able to come up with their own conclusions by putting the pieces together. This can be a double-edged sword because although because of the broadness of the words used, people can often interpret the meaning differently from another viewer. On the other had you can get confusion from the consumer because knowone has a concrete idea of what is trying to be conveyed. Also a message can be too-broad if not done correctly and can be misinterpreted as common sense, or an undecipherable message.

I would say that the benefits of advertising as it relates to consumers, is explained in economic and social theories. It’s a trade-off between the consumer and the companies. The consumer gets information that is beneficial to them and the companies get their money. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, it’s symbiotic, and it’s a trade. By helping people better themselves, the companies become better for it. Advertising, when paired with the proper motivation to help people and society, becomes more than just a way of selling a good. It becomes a public service.
Calfree says that advertising is limited in the amount of information that it can communicate, because there is little space to add extra information. I would counter this by saying that in the design of the advertisements and logos, they can add more implied information rather than overtly coming out with the information. Add extra information through visual cues that lead the audience into a certain viewpoint or realization. For example, adding bananas to the picture of the bowl of cereal. And phrases such as “Part of a wholesome breakfast.”

According to Calfee, advertising is a way to provide information to the masses. For example, he mentions in the article that a benefit of advertising is price awareness. As advertisers provide prices of their products, other companies see them, and compete. This is beneficial to the consumer in two ways: providing cheaper prices, and the ability to know price information. Also, the example of advertising the health benefits of fiber is another instance of positive information reaching the public through advertising.

In modern advertising, as Calfee says, information comes in bits and pieces because of cost. It is to advertisers' benefit to use as sparse of information as possible in order to have the viewer be a be able to process the information. When the viewer is able to interpret the information, and the advertiser is able to provide a small amount of information, it is to the advertiser's benefit. However, when people misinterpret information, it could be harmful to the advertiser's cause because the message they are trying to get across gets processed in a different way than they expected.