Advertising and Social Change

Overview

Advertising plays a critical role in the ways that contemporary communities shape values and beliefs, how community members form aspirations, and how communities change their cultural norms to meet modern society. Through the use of imagery, slogans, video, and music, advertisers design campaigns that seek to interest, shock, educate, and inform their consumers. While these campaigns are often primarily designed to sell a product, they also play a critical role in shaping societal norms and changing society. These changes can be positive or negative and often prompt public deliberation about both the product being sold and the advertising campaign being used.

Advertisements can be traced back to the oldest human communities. Examples have been found in Egyptian ruins, in the ashes of Pompeii, and in Mayan cities. Study of modern advertisements begins with words and images printed on paper. These advertisements had to be printed on paper, often as part of a newspaper or a print advertisement that could be posted in a community setting. Because paper, ink, and the labor of printing were all expensive, advertisers were determined to make the best use of a small space. Although these advertisements were not as eye catching as those seen in the twenty-first century, they still inspired and recorded social change. For example, early advertisements for automobiles provided pictographic evidence for what cars could be used for, how passengers should sit and act while in a car, and which social classes could both desire and afford a car. This type of information, often encoded in a single image, was particularly important when selling cars to people and communities who had never owned, or possibly even see a car. When the object for sale is so new that the consumer had not yet encountered one in person, then the advertisement needs to provide as much information as possible to ensure that the object was seen as both desirable and obtainable. This narrative, told through both words and images helps to shape the sale and consumption of new items. In the example of automobiles, advertisements helped to make cars seem desirable, which then resulted in many sales and rapid changes to the ways that people socialized, moved between locations, and organized their lives.

Additional changes to advertising have occurred with the development of new printing technologies as well as other communicative media such as the radio and television and later the Internet. Advertisements made over the radio require a highly detailed or catchy form of narration. Because they cannot rely on images, radio advertisements must give cues as to who is speaking or being discussed through physical depictions, the use of accents, reference to social norms, or small musical clips. Yet, the lack of images did not impede radio advertisements from effecting social change. Radio is a particularly attractive technology for poorer communities and nations, and one of the fastest ways to send information to communities that do not have cable or Internet connection. In a study comparing anti-smoking advertisements, researchers found that the radio advertisement was just as successful, and perhaps more successful, than the television advertisement (Durkin & Wakefield, 2009).

When advertisers began to focus on television, they were able to use more complex narratives that joined words, images, and sounds to produce a short, idealized image of the world. One of the most iconic television advertisements that inspired or reflected social change are the "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" advertisement from 1971. This Coca-Cola advertisement reflected and inspired social change as it displayed singers from multiple races singing together on top of a hilltop. At the time that this commercial was created, the United States had been in the Vietnam War for sixteen years, and anti-war sentiments were spreading. The Coca-Cola advertisement did not explicitly call for the end of the war, but it did send a message of peace and harmony, which many consumers could identify with. In this way, the Coca-Cola advertisement supported and furthered social change. Since this advertising success, Coca-Cola has continued to create advertisements that support or try to prompt social change. Some of these have been successful while others demonstrate the difficulty of a company trying to act in a global market. For example, Taylor (2000) has studied the ways that Coca-Cola worked to reestablish its role as a moral and ethical company after some of its products caused children in Belgium to become ill.

The emergence of the Internet, social media, and instant messaging platforms again radically changed the ways that advertisements can effect and respond to social change. Now advertisements can immediately respond to social situations, an ability that allows them to reflect and continue social changes. However, advertisers can also tailor their productions to specific, targeted audiences. This means that a company can seem to support a cause, but only to consumers who also, already support that same cause. The previously referenced Coca-Cola advertisement was played for a wide audience and therefore specifically designed for a broad reach. Yet online advertisements can have a narrow focus, limiting their reach and perhaps their affect on social change (Mangold, 2009).

While many of the examples presented have been positive, negative social change has also occurred through advertisement as vulnerable populations, such as children are encouraged to participate in unhealthy acts. For example, advertisements have been used to advertise sugary foods to children, causing poor eating habits that can lead to life threatening diseases. Advertisements have also played a role in encouraging consumers to take up unhealthy habits, such as smoking tobacco. Many of the companies that encouraged these poor health behaviors are producing advertisements attempting to correct either the behavior or the public perception of their corporation. For example, Vallone and colleagues (2016) have studied the ways that the Truth Initiative works to encourage young people to quit smoking cigarettes, or to never smoke cigarettes in the first place. This project is a form of advertising for social change that acts as a public service; it does not sell a specific good, but instead advertises a specific, healthy lifestyle decision.

Further Insights

Contemporary corporations often discuss advertisements for social change within the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This theory is used to discuss the ways that corporations fit into a larger society, the responsibilities that they have to that society, and the ways that they can or should effect change. Some corporations view CSR as meaning that they should fund school programs and scholarships. Others assist their employees in reaching individual goals. Yet others view advertising as part of CSR and seek to have informative advertisements that also enforce positive societal goals and values (Gaither, Austin & Schulz, 2018). Examples of CSR initiatives that focus on public facing advertisement include the 2017 Nike commercial "What Are Girls Made Of" in which a young girl sings a classical song alone on a stage. She begins with the traditional lyrics: "made of flowers and rings, made of gossip and of marmalade. This is what our girls are made of." Then a figure skater appears and the lyrics change to "made of iron, and of striving of self-dedication, and of battles. This is what our girls are made of." The commercial then continues to feature Russian athletes alongside lyrics that highlight women and girls' strengths. In this commercial, Nike of course sells athletic goods, but it also signals and reflects a social change in which more sports are acceptable to girls and women, but they also signal an international movement toward women's athletics. Similar commercials were filmed for American and Turkish audiences highlighting women's sports and athletic participation. Similarly, the "Like a Girl" advertisements run by the American corporation Always, in 2014, asked women and men in their late teens and early twenties to imitate what it means to run, fight, and throw like a girl. Then the advertisement asked younger girls to show what it means to do the same actions. The advertisement was designed to show how girls' confidence drops between the ages of ten and eleven. Researchers such as Åkestam, Rosengren, and Dahlen (2017) have argued that these types of advertisements, which show girls and women in diverse social and work settings, have a positive effect on consumer opinion of corporations and their products.

An older, but very prominent example of corporations working toward social change is the United Colors of Benetton advertisements. These advertisements have addressed racism, homophobia, political change, and sexism through the use of provocative images. These advertisements, such as the 2011 campaign titled "unHate," are designed to prompt discussion. This was done through the production of images that showed world leaders, who were known to oppose each other, kissing. For example, American President Barack Obama was shown kissing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The image was effective as it showed leaders overcoming hate, and it garnered attention because it was an action that could never actually occur. The connection between selling clothing and creating a billboard of kissing presidents is minimal. However, through the use of eye-catching images, United Colors of Benetton captured public attention in a direct and memorable way, a way that an advertisement for a sweater or pair of pants would not accomplish. Giroux and Robbins write that such shocking images are one of the most effective ways of advertising and selling goods (2015). These images work so well because they first allow individuals to identify with a larger social and cultural change or project. And then they give an easy way, such as buying a sweater from United Colors of Benetton.

Issues

While many of the examples in this essay are positive, there are some negative effects of advertising as well. For example, researchers are keenly interested in the affect of advertising on children and young people. Some researchers have compared images and advertisements targeting young girls in magazines that target preteen girls and in those targeting teenaged girls. The magazines for teens have more gendered and sexualized images, resulting in a different type of body modeling and social information display from those for preteens. Daniels, Layh, and Porzelius (2016) have asked if these advertisements are designed to change the behavior of young girls at a critical time in their lives, moving them toward specific behaviors. Advertisements such as the "Like a Girl" campaign have been designed to counter negative messages by encouraging girls around 10 and 11, at the time that they move from preteen to teenage media, to have positive body images and continue participating in sporting activities.

Advertisements have also been linked to changes in eating habits and behaviors. Advertisements for fast food and sugary drinks have been linked to numerous negative effects, such as childhood obesity. While these advertisements are now less common, for decades they were used to encourage children to desire and ask for unhealthy foods. This social change was negative as it caused children to reject healthy foods in favor of those that made them ill. Some researchers, such as Kelly et al. (2016), have argued that it is viewing these types of advertisements, as opposed to viewing television in general, which has resulted in childhood nutrition problems. Similarly, cigarette advertisements long promoted smoking to young people by, for example, placing ads designed to appeal to youth in magazines with a young readership. This effect has recently been reversed with anti-smoking advertisements that are designed to make smoking less desirable. Dunlop, Cotter, and Perez (2014) have argued that these advertisements work well because they highlight the social effects of smoking, not just on the smoker but also on his or her society and community. The advertisements imply that smokers are selfish for smoking. Anti-smoking advertisements with higher emotional content were the most effective in convincing smokers either to quit or to at least reconsider their use of tobacco. In a 2020 article for the Harvard Business Review, research fellow Myriam Sidibe explains how a beer brand in South Africa drove social change by making a connection between men's heavy drinking and violence against women.

Bibliography

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