Thesis: Advertising has different effects on consumers, it changes their
prospective on what is, and what is not, worth buying, what they buy and when they
buy it.
1. How advertisers target a certain background or area for their product, and how
they get your attention.
2. What advertisers use to get you to buy their product, such as symbols or
slogans.
3. Description of five key points of their strategies; what makes advertisers
good or bad.
Crawford ii
4. What people used before nylons; what advertising did for the new Nylon
product.
5. What advertising did for a new type of car; how people reacted to the early
advertising. Why the original idea was changed and how that effected the desire
for one of these cars.
6. What advertising did to get rid of left over war goods. How the people
reacted to the stars when they were confronted by the idea of using what they do.
How the company went about changing their product, and how it changed. What
inventions made the transition easier.
7. What makes advertising effective for public relations; direct advertising;
public relations themes; advertising to consumers.
8. Criticisms of advertising; who the advertisement appeals to, is it biased,
conflicting claims, is it vulgar.
Crawford iii
9. How advertising developed; what the first one was doing; what lured people to
doing it; and what advertising people do.
"Advertising has developed and supported great industries, bulwarked-"or increased-
"entire economies, and changed a sufficient number of human habits" (Wood 3). Like that
paragraph says, advertising effects people in what they do and how they do it. It has
effected the Kleenex company, the Nylon manufacturers and a company of a new type of car,
the Tucker Corporation, from the 1940's. Advertising has changed due to these people by
their ways of making people notice their product. Preston Tucker advertised his new car
early, and received many replies on what the car was about; the Nylon company advertised
a day in which their product would start selling and the country ran out of stockings to
sell; and the Kleenex company used advertising to decide which of two products they
should sell. Advertising has different effects on consumers, it changes their
perspective on what is, or is not, worth buying; what they buy, when they buy it and how
much are bought. Advertising "symbolizes and concentrates in its image all that is
considered good and bad in present day commercial and industrial capitalism in America."
(Bensman 9).
When advertisers plan their strategies for the sale of a certain product, they look at
who would use the item. If the product was make-up, the type of person that would use it
would most likely be a woman, around the age of thirteen and up. The advertisers would
then find an ideal looking woman to model for ads to show the makeup on a person and try
to get women to use it. The way that the advertisers describe the model will also get
your attention; they might say that she is not really beautiful until she puts on the
makeup, or something along those lines. Advertising is an effective method of public
relations communication for several reasons. It is economical, making it possible to
carry out a public relations message to a large number of readers at a relatively low
cost per reader. It can be highly selective and concentrated on a particular segment of
the public such as stockholders, suppliers, or opinion leaders. Intensive community
coverage may be secured through the use of local newspapers, radio, or television
advertising. Which will provide enough space to tell a complete story and inform and
educate people. The advertiser can control the timing and space given a public relations
message by buying a certain amount of time on the air, or space in a specific article or
paper (Canfield 493). Advertisers grab your attention with funny, or serious, statements
and pictures. They aim at getting you to at least look at their article to see a picture
or name of the product they are trying to get you to purchase.
Sometimes advertisers use just the product itself trying to get you to notice it, and
maybe if you see it in the store you will know what it is. "Other advertisers have had
to seek out the symbols, characters, brands and slogans with which they identify and
advertise their product" (Wood 270). The slogans are aimed at being "catchy" so that you
will remember them, and keep repeating, so you can remember it, and buy it. Advertising
can then be a type of telephone effect, you say it in front of someone else they hear it
remember it and start saying it themselves, then they say it to someone else and they
remember it, and so on. So word of mouth was a reliable source, as well as the
newspapers, radio, and television. "Vocal advertisement came first; visual second,"(Wood
23).
There are five creative strategies that advertisers use:
1. Objective (what advertisers should do).
2. Target Audience (who is your consumer).
3. Key consumer benefit (why the consumer should buy you product).
4. Support (reason to believe in that benefit).
5. Tone and Manner (a statement of the product "personality"). (Kenneth, Roman &
Mass 3)
With number one the agency that represents a product will see what kind of an angle with
which to come forward to the public. What they decide will effect how their ad will go
with the public. They do not want to offend anyone, but they want to get people's
attention. With number two the agency will see who the product will be affecting. If it
is for men, they will do a commercial that will catch men's attention. With number three
they will try to convince the consumer that they need this item, and cannot live without
it. Number four will support that claim, and number five will give a catchy phrase that
will help the consumer remember the name of the product, so that when that person is at
the store they will remember that they wanted it and hopefully they will buy it.
An example of how advertising has worked comes from the late 1930's when nylon was
first produced, and the making of the nylon stocking, by DuPont, sent a wave of delight
throughout the world. Silk stockings were used before, and according to Frances
Picchioni, "They snagged very easily and made me very frustrated." "Test wearers, of the
new nylons were quoted as saying the garments endured 'unbelievable hours of
performance.'"(Panati 346). They were passing in strength and elasticity of the
previously known textile fibers. DuPont started advertising early about the "miracle
yarn" and the stockings that were made from it. They advertised a day that DuPont would
start the sale of the nylon stockings, and they called it "NYLON Day"-May 15, 1940, which
is when the stockings were to be first sold. The stores had to make their own stockings
to be sold and were given a certain amount of yarn and were told to follow the directions
exactly and not to sell until the fifteenth of May. When the day came, stores ran out
quickly and the DuPont company could not make enough for all the people that wanted one
and by the end of that year the company had sold three million dozen stockings (Panati
346) (Encyclopedia).
DuPont took a item that almost all women have and made them more durable and more
appealing by making this new textile, and made the interest stronger by making women
wait, dream, and fantasize about. Their doing this made their product more exciting and
more desirable. If the stockings were distasteful, women probably would have still bought
them, but the nylons were very nice and they did last a long time like they said. One
reason for that might be because of the fact that since they were scarce, women took
better care of their new nylon stockings, than they did the silk ones of the past. After
all, women had legs, and never before in history were they so publicly displayed and
admired as they were for these advertisements.
Another product that excited the world was a fancy new style of car. Preston Thomas
Tucker, the maker, put a two page article in the FIC magazine about his car idea and
within a week he received one hundred fifty thousand letters inquiring about his car and
how they could get them. He had new and improved safety devices, safety belts,
shatter-proof glass, and moving head lights. This is how he won over the people with
which he worked. New and improved cars were then able to be made, though it took him
quite a while to get the first one running. The advertising used to try to sell stock in
his company was original. They did it with the future in mind, and targeted men and
women coming home from the war that were interested in a new car. One of the slogans
used for the car was "The car of tomorrow today." The problem with his trying to sell
stock was that he lost the company to a high headed man, named Bennington, the president
of Plymouth Corporation, at the time. The Senate was in on it, and they all planned to
get the Tucker out of business. Problems came up, the car worked great, but there were
financial and legal troubles, and only fifty cars were ever made. (Tucker: The Man And
His Dream.)
During World War II Kimberly-Clark invented cellucotton, which was used as an air filter
in GI gas masks and as surgical bandage. When the war ended, they had a warehouse full
of these cellucotton sheets. So they looked at alternatives, and so occurred the birth
of the Sanitary Cold Cream Remover. The way that this company advertised was by using
Hollywood stars and Broadway dancers, saying that you could be like them. These were a
disposable substitute for the cloth facial towels, and a package of one hundred cost only
sixty-five cents. The manufacturers hired Helen Hayes, Gertrude Lawrence, and Ronald
Coleman to model in articles using these tissues, and American women were told that
Kleenex Kerchiefs were the "scientific way," as well as the glamorous way, to remove
rouge, foundation, powder, and lipstick. In five years their sales steadily increased.
Then mail came in saying their husbands were blowing their noses in their kerchiefs. So
the company became confused on what to do. They went to Peoria, Illinois and asked people
to redeem one of two coupons to receive either a free cold cream remover or a free box of
tissue, with which the new invention of Andrew Olson the pop-up tissue box was available
as well. With two advertisements, one for each, reading "We pay (a free box of tissues)
to remove cold cream," or "We pay to prove Kleenex is wonderful for handkerchiefs."
Sixty-one percent responded to the handkerchief ad (Panati 206). The advertising helped
in deciding what idea the company should follow, and what people liked.
What makes advertising effective in public relations? In public relations, the owner of
a company is trying to sell himself and his product to the people that are interested in
buying his product. The person that might want to purchase that item will want to trust
the person he or she might buy it from. If that person does not trust the dealer, or
business owner, the consumer might think twice about the item; though, these days no one
really cares who makes the product, just as long as it works. "Three functions of the
communication process are to inform, influence, and convince the public. Advertising
performs these same functions." (Emery, Ault, Agee 18).
What people were looking for in the advertising agencies were the head up over the other
products that were out in the market that was similar to what they were trying to sell,
so they would see if they could change there product in some way to make it easier to
sell. "...if such improvements would give one brand of beverage an advertising or
marketing advantage over its competitors, that would be a change worth considering."
(Petroski 207).
In conclusion, the advertisements of today are far more different, with the computer
technologies, it is becoming more and more expensive to get things advertised.
Television and radio are more expensive these days. With the different variations of
popular products people will just get the cheaper product. Getting your product on the
market is not as important as getting it there the cheapest as possible, because people
are just looking for bargains.
Works Cited
Bensman, Joseph. Dollars And Sense. New York: Schocken Books, 1983.
Canfield, Bettrand R. D.B.S. Public Relations: Principles, Cases, And Problems. 4th ed.
Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1964.
Emery, Ault, And Agee. Introduction To Mass Communications. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company, 1963.
Encyclopedia. Computer Software. Grolier Electronic Publishing, 1992.
Kenneth Roman and Jane Maas. How To Advertise. New York: St. Martins Press, 1976.
Panati, Charles. Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. New York: Perennial Library,
1987.
Petroski, Henry. The Evolution of Useful Things. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
1992.
Picchioni, Frances. Personal Interview. 30 November 1994
Tucker: The Man And His Dream. Dir. George Lucas. With Jeff Bridgers. Paramount, 1988.
Wood, James P. The Story of Advertising. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1958.
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