The Social Bowl

These days the Super Bowl has a different meaning then it used to when it first began.  In the early years of the Super Bowl it just meant watching two of the best football teams competing in one game to find out who is the better team.  Today the Super Bowl means much more than that.  The Super Bowl is now a cultural event and no longer just a sporting event because of all the advertising before and during the game.  The Super Bowl is so well known for the commercials that get played during it that people get so excited just to watch the commercials.  This cultural event gains hundreds of millions of viewers and because so many people are watching it, it is a great advertising opportunity for companies.  There are so many commercials before the Super Bowl talking about it and the half time show, and there is so much hype leading up to it.  It costs 4 million dollars for a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl.  Companies are willing to pay top dollar for one of these commercial slots because they know that there is a large amount of viewers that comes with it.  In an article called “Yes, A Super Bowl Ad Really Is Worth $4 Million” stated that “Several studies have proven that 50% of the Super Bowl audience tunes in just to watch the ads.  Commercials are often considered interruptions to the entertainment we love. But Super Bowl ads are different, instead of being intruders, they are like the “must have” guests that keep a party rockin’.”  I’m personally one of these people who just watch the Super Bowl for the commercials because I find them very entertaining.  With that being said you can tell that the advertising companies spend a lot of time trying to grab hold of your attention for their commercials being played and it works.  

http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2014/01/29/yes-a-super-bowl-ad-really-is-

Letter to the future

Dear, future grandchild 

By definition consumerism is “a social and economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.”  The consumer culture is our society that is trying to grab hold our attention for advertising and selling products.  The advertisers will use many different techniques to get your attention, some techniques are slogans and sex appeal.  Marketing agencies use these techniques to manipulate people into buying their products.  They blind you with eye pleasing advertisements like commercials and billboards.  They don’t tell you the negative affects of buying their products for example, processed food, or that their products are planned obsolescence meaning made for the trash.  My advice to you is to keep your eyes open and see past the marketing agencies.  Don’t conform to society.  Just because everyone has this one product and it is advertised so well that doesn’t mean it’s the best product of its kind.  In the future I’m assuming our technology will be much more advanced so that means media will be around you even more.  You are influenced by the media everywhere to conform and you think it won’t conform you, but by thinking that you actually conform even more.  

Sex In Advertising

Its no secret that sex sells.  Today sex and sexual material is everywhere in mass media and there is no way to avoid it.  Advertisers put sex in their advertising to capture the attention of  the many people who are drawn to the word in itself.  When viewers read sex in the media they're usually looking for either beautiful women or handsome men which serves as bait to lure in consumers.  Take, for example, the sports illustrated swimsuit edition calendar.  Every year this calendar extra sells millions of copies.  But what is it that is so appealing to readers?  It is simply the sex appeal.  Men in their teens and early twenties are the predominant demographic that the calendar caters to.  With no writing and high resolution color photographs of scantily clad women, the calendar has very little to offer, except for visual pleasure.  On January 8th, Adweek.com posted an articled called “Hefty Is Now Sexing Up Garbage Men.”  The article is about the recent commercial for hefty ultimate bags.  As stated in the article, the commercial is about “super sexy garbage men in tight shirts that drop all sorts of weird innuendos that make zero sense when discussing garbage bags.”  One of the garbage men say "And that gripping drawstring? So tight.” As the housewife behind him is making awkward expressions of arousal.  This commercial grabs the attention of women because they use attractive muscular men even though the commercial is an attempt to sell “unsexy” products.

This example is not limited to just the sports illustrated calendar and the hefty commercial, it is expressed in media everywhere. This type of advertising is most commonly used to grab hold the attention of men, but is still used for women too.  As you can see attractive men are used to get attention of women, and attractive women are used to get attention of men.  There are some people who feel uncomfortable to sex in advertising, but it still has proven to be a topic of very high interest, bringing in all sorts of viewers for its various reasons.

Reporting for Digital Citizen this is Darianne Cardino