Essay

Would advertising strategies work without its reflection to Panopticism's form of discipline?

The strategies of advertising reflect the principles that have emerged from the creation of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon in the late eighteenth century, enabling ‘a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind’ (Wikipedia, 2011, online), which developed Panopticism – a form of discipline developed by Michel Foucault that introduced a way of control through the mind, rather than resorting to violence.

The role of an advertising team is to project an image that will convince the consumer, both existing and new, that they ‘need’ the product that is being advertised, even if in fact owning it would be unnecessary. In order to produce an effective advertising campaign, they must first get to know their customers and understand their needs.

…”Ordinarily the business man does not realize that he means psychology when he says that he ‘must know his customers’ wants’ – what will catch their attention, what will impress them and lead them to buy, etc”…

This role that is created for the team behind any advertising campaign is similar to the role of the guards within the central tower of the Panopticon, where they observe the consumer just like the guards observe the individuals within the cells - monitoring their every move and generating a general understanding within the way that they think. This then enables them to play on this and manipulate it in order to generate interest towards what is being advertised.

…”Thanks to its mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into men’s behaviors; knowledge follow the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised”…

Upon observing the consumers, the advertising team obtains knowledge that they later translate into a unique selling point within an advertising campaign that will prove to be effective. ‘There is no element in an advertisement more important than the appeal – the reason you give the reader for buying’ (Caples, 1997, p73). In order to do this, the team recognizes the general aspects within the consumers’ lives, and project an image of a life that is somewhat superior to theirs which then generates a desire to have this life. This leaves the life they’re already living feeling belittled and not as good as it could be, and suggests that they could in fact vastly improve it by the one small gesture which is being recommended to them – to buy this product.

The consumer reflects the role of the individuals that were kept within the cells of the Panopticon that are monitored. ‘He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication’ (Foucault, 2001, online). Although the lives of the consumers are closely monitored and analyzed in order to appeal to them, the information that is actually discovered is never then used as a unique selling point within an advertisement. This is because what is being projected is a ‘better’ version of the consumers’ life of what it could become once this product is owned – to show them what they could have. In order for the advertisement to be effective, the advertising team must identify where the consumers’ deepest desires lay and then play on this, essentially offering it to them on a plate through the consumption of this product.

An example of a brand that grasps this concept exceptionally well is the men’s deodorant Lynx, with them now being ‘one of the largest consumer-goods companies in the world’ (Marketing Communication Plan, 2009, online) after being launched in 1983. They are targeted towards boys and young men who are forever becoming more conscious about their ‘sex appeal’ and how they are perceived by the opposite sex.

…”Lynx is Britain’s best selling men’s deodorant. The Lever Fabergé- owned brand targets young men in their late teens and early twenties. A central plank of the brand’s marketing strategy is the annual launch of new variants”…

Before the re-launch of Lynx under a ‘new brand strategy which encapsulated in the endline ‘The Lynx Effect’’, they previously ‘had revolved around the concept of attraction’ (Marketing Communication Plan, 209, online) which had worked well until during the nineties, when the brand began to loose its edge.

…”A new strategy was proposed that refocused its target market and identified a common truth: those young guys are preoccupied with the opposite sex, but often lack the confidence to do anything about it. The new campaign portrayed women finding Lynx users irresistible”…

Lynx understands that ithe importance of carefully planned communication marketing in achieving these ends can not be underestimated’ and their objectives ‘are to create sustainable brand awareness among the existing and potential customers’ (Marketing Communication Plan, 2009, online). As a result of Lynx’s close monitoring of it’s target market, it has allowed them, as did the Panopticon, to analyze and constantly review the behavior and needs of the subject, and ensure that their desires are being somewhat fulfilled without leaving them completely satisfied, ultimately causing them to want more and know what they will want next. Without this close monitoring and understanding, Lynx may not have fully grasped as well and effectively as they have that;

…”Men are increasingly concerned with their image and the image of their products is equally important…A growing number of men are said to be especially image-conscious and are particularly interested in the approval of their peers. Though deodorants are a staple item, men’s interest in grooming and physical appearance creates opportunities to target them with products that specifically address their issue, whether they are tangible, like alluring fragrances, or more ephemeral, like the projection of image through brand identification”…

An example of this is the ‘Getting Dresses’ Lynx Effect advert, where the opening of it begins with a very good-looking couple laying in bed together, before getting up and putting their clothes on. At first you see them put their underwear on, and then as they are putting other things on such as their trousers and t-shirts, you see them going on a journey which goes from a house, down lots of different busy streets, into a supermarket which then leads to two half filled shopping trolleys facing opposite directions. This promotes the image that just by wearing Lynx, no matter where he is or what he is doing he will be completely irresistible to females and they just wont be able to keep their hands off him.

By the girl in the video being really good looking, maybe even perfect in some men’s eyes thanks to the constant images of women which are presented within the media suggesting that only this type of beauty is what should be admired, suggests that not only will the male become irresistible, but also that he could be picky with which girl he would ‘choose’ to let be all over him and ultimately sleep with him. The male in the advert also represents what is classed ae the ‘perfect’ male, with his chiseled facial features and highly toned body – this suggests that even if in reality you don’t look like this, once the Lynx is applied, you will immediately gain confidence and appear like this in the eyes of any girl you wish to have.

Another good example is the advert for Lynx Twist ‘the fragrance that changes’. Consisting of a different angle to the previous example, this advert focuses in more on the fact that men don’t always know what it is that is going on in a woman’s mind, or what it is she actually wants, and suggests that by wearing this particular type of Lynx, it will do all of the hard work for them and they can just sit back.

The video begins with an average looking male with messy hair and a beard trying to impress a good looking blonde woman, but the expression on her face suggests that she is bored. Then, just as it looks like the male is about to give up, a machine appears which alters his appearance to now suit  the woman’s new mood, giving him a hair cut and a shave – suggesting that this is what the smell of the deodorant will do – make the woman see the male differently to what she has been doing and not just loose interest. This happens again as the couple more on to a different location and the woman is bored once again, changing the males appearance to now suit the new mood of the woman giving him a more stylish haircut and trendy clothes.

What the advert is suggesting to its targeted consumer is that it’s ok for them not to understand what it is a woman is thinking as the changing fragrance of this particular deodorant will be able to alone keep her more than interested, meaning the male can just sit back effortlessly and still have her weak at the knees.

Although both of these Lynx adverts have different agendas, they both still link back to what they have learnt from understanding their target market by ensuring a promise to the male that by wearing this product, he will have no trouble with the opposite sex. It will make them oozing with a confidence that they wouldn’t be able to achieve otherwise, and will make them more appealing without having to do anything about it despite the fact that they are becoming more image-conscious.

In conclusion, the way in which Panopticism works as a form of discipline is reflected within the process of advertising theories as these use the same sort of principles where it is the way in which someone thinks and what they believe is what is being manipulated in order to make products more appealing to them. Without generating and projecting an idea of a ‘more perfect’ life to the consumer than what they have, and making them believe that this is what they need in order to be happy then advertising wouldn’t work as effectively as it does to generate sales because there wouldn’t be a constant need within each individual to better what we already have.




Bibliography 


2007. Advertising Media Planning and Strategy. [online] Available at <http://www.admedia.org/>


2009. Marketing Communication Plan. [online] Available at: <http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper_topics/2009/12/marketing-communication-plan-lynx-deordrant.html>


Caples, J, 1997. The Advertising Methods Fifth Edition. United States: Prentice Hall.


Farbey, A D, 1998. How to produce successful advertising. London: Kogan Page Limited.


Foucault, M, 2001. Michael Foucault: Panopticism. [online] Available at: <http://www.cartome.org/foucault.html> 


Heller, S, 2000. Sex Appeal. New York: Allworth Press.


Scott, W D, 2009. The Theory of Advertising: A Simple Exposition of the principles of Psychology. Milton Keynes: Lighting Source UK Ltd.


Thelynxeffect, 2010. Lynx Getting Dressed ad. [video online] Available at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4aFfW0bl>


Thelynxeffect, 2010. New tv ad for Lynx Twist - the fragrance that changes [video online] Available at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDISjpOVuaE&feature=relmfu>


Wikipedia, 2011. Panopticism. [online] Available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticism>

Essay - Lynx Adverts

Thelynxeffect,. 2010. New tv ad for Lynx Twist – the fragrance that changes [video online] Availably at < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDISjpOVuaE&feature=relmfu> [Accessed 21st January 2012]

Thelynxeffect, 2010. Lynx Getting Dressed ad. [video online] Available at < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4aFf5W0bI> [Accessed 21st January 2012]

Essay - Foucault Quotes

From the reference - Foucault, M, 2001. Michael Foucault: Panopticism. [online] Available at: < http://www.cartome.org/foucault.htm> [Accessed 15th January 2012].
here are a variety of quotes which I have found to possibly include within my essay.

In order to make rights and laws function according to pure theory, the jurists place themselves in imagination in the state of nature; in order to see perfect disciplines functioning, rulers dreamt of the state of plague.

the technique of power proper to disciplinary partitioning

They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible

Visibility is a trap.

He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.

The crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect, is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities.

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.

one is totally seen, without ever seeing

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection

Thanks to its mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into men's behaviour; knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised.

power is mobilized; it makes itself everywhere present and visible;

The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men.

Because, without any physical instrument other than architecture and geometry, it acts directly on individuals; it gives 'power of mind over mind'.

In short, it arranges things in such a way that the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, like a rigid, heavy constraint, to the functions it invests, but is so subtly present in them as to increase their efficiency by itself increasing its own points of contact

its aim is to strengthen the social forces

And, in order to be exercised, this power had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible, as long as it could itself remain invisible. It had to be like a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception: thousands of eyes posted everywhere, mobile attentions ever on the alert, a long, hierarchized network which, according to Le Maire, comprised for Paris the forty-eight commissaires, the twenty inspecteurs, then the 'observers', who were paid regularly, the 'basses mouches', or secret agents, who were paid by the day, then the informers, paid according to the job done, and finally the prostitutes.

Essay - Advertising Strategies Quotes

How to produce successful advertising
Farbey, A D, 1998. How to produce successful advertising. London: Kogan Page Limited.

• "It does not of itself sell goods (unless the subject area is direct marketing) but it creates the conditions for selling goods." - page 14
• "Advertising aims to meed a need" - page 14

The advertising methods fifth edition

Caples, J, 1997. The Advertising Methods Fifth Edition. United States: Prentice Hall.

• "Early in Han's own advertising career, a supervisor told him that all successful advertising was based on one or more of three appeals: 'sex, greed, or fear'." - page 70
• "An ounce of belief is worth a pound of half-belief" - page 71
• "There is no element in an advertisement more important than the appeal - the reason you give the reader for buying." - page 73

Theory of advertising

Scott, W D, 2009. The Theory of Advertising: A Simple Exposition of the principles of Psychology. Milton Keynes: Lighting Source UK Ltd.

• "I have attempted to read broadly on the subject of advertising; I have tried to talk with business men - manufacturers, salesmen, publishers, professional advertisers, etc, and in all that I have read, and in all these conversations, I have never seen or heard and reference to anything except psychology which could furnish a stable foundation for a theory of advertising." - page 2
• "Ordinarily the businessman does not realise that he means psychology when he says that he 'must know his customers' wants - what will catch their attention, what will impress them and lead them to buy', etc" - page 2 and 3
• "And this will come through a closer knowledge of the psychological composition of the mind." - page 4

Lecture 6 - Cities and Film

Here are my notes from the sixth lecture Cities and Film on 01/12/2011.

Cities in modernism
An urban sociology
Public and private space
City in postmodernism

Georg Simmel was asked to lecture on the role of the individual in the city but reversed it and wrote about the effect of the city on the individual
Looks at the resistance of the individual to be levelled, swallowed up in the social technological mechanism.

Louis Sullivan - Architect
Creator of the modern skyscraper.
Influential architect and critic of the Chicago School
Guaranty Building

image of building and detailed images

The details are influenced by the arts and craft movement. Can see the natural influence of the plants.
Divided the basement into 4 zones, basement ground level, middle zone is offices, top zone is lift materials and more offices.
It must be every inch proud and souring.

Skyscrapers in the modern city represents the upwardly mobile city of business opportunity.

Charles Scheeler

images


The city is a towering, mechanical presence. Images taken in Detroit as part of a 1.3 million dollar advertising campaign.

Fordism: mechanised labour relations
The human becomes embodied by the machine.

'The eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out standardised, low-cost goods and afford its workers desin enough wages to buy them'

Stock market crash of 1929
Factories closed, unemployment rises. Leads to the great depression.

Flaneur
Comes from the french masculine noun flåneur.
A person who walks the city to experience it. Suggests that art should capture this experience. A figure who is simultaneously a part and not a part of the crowd. Just there to observe peoples actions and reactions.

Walter Benjamin
Adopts the concept of the urban observer as an analytical tool and as a lifestyle as seen in his writings.

Photographer as Flaneur

Flaneuse
Female version of the flaneur.
The invisible flåneuse.

Susan Buck-Morss
Suggests that typically what we think of when we think of a woman alone on a street is either a bad lady or a hooker.

Arbus/Hopper
2 images


Distanced observed moment of a lady alone in a bar. A sense of threat, the darkness on the right has a depth to it. The representation of the darkness is represented as the head and shoulders of the dark clinging on to her.
What we get is an observed moment, just before or just after something that has or will happen. Something where our imagination has to fill in the gaps.

Sophie Calle
Creates a photographic piece of work where the person has a relation to the city. Followed strangers on the street and took photos of them without them knowing.

4 images


She creates an experience that is somewhere between stalking and a love affair. Creates a relationship between herself and the man she follows.
The act of following encourages this obsessive reflection.

Venice
Labyrinth of streets and alleyways. Somewhere that would be easy to get lost, but because it's small it's easy enough to end up back to where you began.

Don't Look Now - the story of a couple who travel to venice to recover from the death of a child. The woman in haunted by a figure in a  red cape that glides around the city. Every time she sees the figure it disappears. Trauma of grief.

Calle - The Detective
image


Gets her mum to hire a secret detective to follow her. To document her existence in note form. Wanted to take him to places in Paris she loves and what not. Leads on a journey creating a kind of relationship between the two. A story written by her documented by the detective.

Cindy Sherman
Looks at the figure of the woman in the city - stereotypical. The woman is in some sense almost lost or trapped by the city. Low angled view points, looming presence of the skyscrapers in the characters behind in the cities.

image of back of the aoman


Weegee (Arthur Felig)
Dark side of the lowers east side of New York. He developed his work by following the emergency services and documenting their services. He persues the incident as they happen, develop the photos and take straight to the press.
images of people on floor


The Naked City

LA Noire
Based on the idea that is found in the naked city. Set in 1947.

The street and anything that happens on the street is available for artistic consumption.

Postmodernism in the modern city


9/11 Citizen journalism
The end of the flaneur?
Impossible to become a detached flaneur. The body in the city is also destroyed in a mental capacity.
Different aestetic. Returns photography to it's original use. Returning to the idea of citizen journalism.

Further research list available on the powerpoint.

Lecture 5 - The Gaze and The Media

Here are my notes from the fifth lecture The Gaze and The Media on 24/11/2011.

'according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at' - Berger

Woman carry around an idea of being looked at - not vanity, proliferation of images.

The word vanity is used as some sort of sinful regard to oneself.

image of woman on bed

lost in thought, lost in a moment of reverie and this allows us to look at her without the challenge of her looking back at us. Her body is arranged in a fairly low view point, the main focus is between her legs but thats ok because of the mirror.

babys flying image


Depict the female figure in a reclining position. She's raised her hand which partly covers her eyes. This gesture suggests either just woke from sleep or just going to sleep. This position allows us to look at her body.

image laying on back


Sophie Dahl for Opium - withdrawn because of its overt use of nudity. The naked body takes up 3/4 of the image and the rest is where we rest our gaze.

portrait version

This version of the advert was allowed and the only change really is the image has been rotated. With the vertical image there's more emphasis on the face rather than the body.

girl on bed

Woman looking in an inviting way, so is looking directly at us from the image. Welthy woman who has servants in the background. Knows we are there looking and allows us to do so.

image of woman in bed with black behind

This image was painted during modernism, so this one has a modern view. Slightly elevated on the cushions and uses hands to cover area, but position is more assertive and endorses the likeness of a wealthy woman, not a hooker. Servant offering flowers but she is turned away disregarding which suggests they are from one of her lovers.

gorialla girls poster


Do women have to be naked to get into the met. museum? Was cancelled because the fan was taken as more than just a fan and suggested other things.

girl in bar


gentleman is stood face to face with the barmaid, this is represented through the mirror. We are also in front of the barmaid also seeing what he sees. The mirror reflection is a distorted reflection as we wouldn't see it if this was real life as the reflections would be directly behind the woman. Womans gesture is approachable suggesting she is ready to wait on us.

mirror image


Reinterpreted the previous image. No hidden device. The camera is directly in the centre of the image. We are in the middle section, the woman on the left and artist on the right.

The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the street. - Coward, R. (1984)

hello boys


Wonder bra ad. The link between the text and image, either the woman is saying 'hello boys', although she isn't looking at us she is looking down at herself, at her cleavage, her own body. Imagine it huge above a street, she is looking down on the people below the billboard.

Coward also looks at voyeurism, Peeping Tom, character with the camera spies on women and lures them to his apartment then records himself killing them. Obsessive take on women. Perversion.

image of guy


Underwear advert of male in the reclining pose the same as the previous looked at ones in paintings. He has his eyes closed, so we are able to look at his body in the same way.

d&g ad


From 2007. We see here a display of male strength, sport, the male body. Obsession with the cult of health. Every single guy returns the gaze in the image.

Ideas about the gaze comes from Laura Mulby's theory of the gaze. She looks at the cinema from the 1950's. The framing focuses on the areas that allows us to look at and be pleasurable to see. The body is an object for consumption.

Freud referred to the pleasure in looking at other peoples bodies being pleasurable. Mulby suggests that the cinema allows for more closer look into the bodies that are being displayed on screen. Pleasure in looking has been split between active male looking and female role.

beheading image

There's also a tradition in art history that suggests that the woman is passive. This image reverses these roles by beheading the man.

Women are 'marginalised within the masculine discourses of art history'

'I shop, therefore I am'.

is it her that did the 2 fried eggs and a kebab sculpture? its minging either way

polaroid money


Self portrait of her 'stuffing money in herself'. The idea of the body replicates a pornographic pose. The idea of women making money from their art.

Reality Television
Appears to offer us the position as the all-seeing eye- the power of the gaze
Allows us a voyeuristic passive consumption

Turning voyeurism is turning this into an everyday activity. Contestants are performing for us to watch. Is it really real?

Looking is not indifferent. There can never be any question of 'just looking'.

Lecture 4 - Critical positions on the media and popular culture

Here are my notes from the fourth lecture Critical positions on the media and popular culture on 10/11/2011.

Aims

• critically define 'popular culture'
• contrast ideas of 'culture' with 'popular culture' and 'mass culture'
• introduce cultural studies and critical theory
• discuss culture as ideology
• interrogate the social function of popular culture

What is culture?

Gain culture - they grow and as they grow they gain culture - the process of general emancipation 

A way of living - a certain subculture, values, attitudes, certain ways of thinking about the world.

Global cultures - thinking globally.

It can be used to describe a cannon of really important artworks or type of literature, i.e Shakespeare, Beethoven.

A marx's reading of culture is that you have a particular class/relations, and because of these relations a superstructure forms  ideology.

boat image

Culture emerges from the base, then culture almost legitimises and makes possible the relation of base production.

Culture could be a site of political conflict.

Popular culture

If you think about popular culture instead of culture, you get different answers. Theres 4 answers for this all of which are different.

1. The idea of popular culture as an idea of something that is popularly measured. The problem with this is that it leads to confused results.

2. Different but most common is that popular culture is a somewhat inferior form of culture, work that is mass produced as opposed to individually produced. Works that aspire to be important but for various reasons they fail.

3. Anything that aims to be populist comes under popular culture.Work that is easy and for the people is easy and less important. There's an elitism.

4. Culture that's made by people for themselves. By the people for the people. The working class popular culture would be brass bands.

Inferior or Residual Culture

• popular press vs quality press 
• popular cinema vs art cinema
• popular entertainment vs art culture

The reason why we question wether something is good or bad comes from the fact that we're coded to think and accept certain things - to do this is flawed.

There are different levels to popular culture, and the dynamics.

Prior to modernity and urbanisation, society had a modern culture on top of a shared common culture. The first time this changes is with industrialisation and urbanisation, people are condensed together  but aso physically separated. Where these people now start to live when industrialisation comes in to action the classes get really separated, working class, elite, etc. 

You get a physical distinction between the rich and the poor. This starts to create a cultural separation. Classes then start to create their own culture forms, and activities- such as drinking, playing piano. They find their own form of literature and music. 

This starts to emerge a working class voice/working class culture. Before this moment in charge of setting what was important culturally was the ruling class. Now there is two voices competing against each other.

Massing people together gets them to start thinking about how their culture should be, writing new ones.

Culture and Anarchy - M Arnold (1867)

He tried to define what culture was. The book's about him defining what culture is. 'The best that has been thought and said in  the world'. He explains how one gains culture by the perceit of culture.Culture is the force that can minister the diseased spirit of our times - meaning the opposite to culture. Anarchy, that has its own voice heard. If we teach them how to respect our culture, they can be welcomed in, but if they start to develop their own then its classed as anarchy.

These theories start to emerge when the control of the working class starts to be questioned. 

Leavisism- F.R Leavis & Q.D Leavis

- still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country.

Throughout the 20th Century, we have seen a dumbing down of culture. A cultural decline. 'Culture has always been in minority keeping'. 

It's a form of snobbery that can still be seen now in attitudes towards popular culture - such as attitudes towards x factor and big brother, the snobbery in the way that people just dismiss these programmes emerges from Arnold and Leavis. They have an agenda.

Frankfurt School

Theodore Adorno & Max Horkheimer

'the culture industry'

At this time there was the start of mass production in America.

Frankfurt School

Herbert Marcuse