Advertising Rant

Yesterday evening at around 6pm I was doing what the majority of the nation do at that time on a Saturday evening, I was watching ITV. I absolutely love watching “The Chase” but what I hate is advert breaks that are longer than the snippets of the show in between them. Yesterday evening was slightly different as I don’t recall there being a break in “The Chase” at all, I have no idea why … perhaps ITV want to me more like BBC? perhaps the pre-recorded show was longer than intended so they cut breaks so the schedule ran smoothly? I don’t really care to be honest, I just want to rant about advertising in general. 

It’s rather sad to think of how much of your life you have spent watching adverts, probably hours on end where you could have been doing something much more productive with your time such as reading a book or taking your four legged fury friend for a walk. Instead we just sit there watching a series of clips of “sexy” people advertising toasters (and other products) which they probably really don’t own. The level of celebrity influence is beyond despicable these days. X Factor rejects One Direction advertise Nintendo products, children then want said Nintendo products because One Direction apparently like to use such Nintendo products. Surprisingly  this effect isn’t just apparent in the young and naive, we’ve all bought something because of celebrity influence at some point, whether that’s perfume, football boots or food from Iceland, their slogan is “Party like a Celeb” after all. It’s rather stereotypical to say “oh, well sex sells and that’s what sells products best” … this is actually my point, a negative point. All people who feature in adverts are stereotypically attractive, the kind of people who “normal” people would like to be similar to. We’re all more foolish than we thought as we then go out and buy these products in order to gain a similar life style.

You’re probably all sitting there thinking that I’m a bit nuts. You probably think that I’ve just demonstrated that the whole point of advertising is to sell a product and these are the best methods to use. Yes, I’ve researched the history of advertising and know quite a bit about media influence. If you know anything about advertising at all then you’ll know about a man called Walter Dil Scott who experimented with subliminal advertising in the 1950s. This is when advertising started to change into the type of advertising today, this is where advertising became based on influencing behaviour. Before Walter Dil Scott’s experimentation advertising was merely just posters with a picture of a product and a bit of information explaining what its purpose was, where you could get it from and how much it would cost. After subliminal advertising on TV and in cinemas was made illegal the advertising industry had to think of other ways to influence people and remain powerful in order to keep capitalism the way it had boomed. This sadly was celebrity influence and the “sex sells” approach. 

I think it’s about time that I gave some examples of ways in which companies manage to influence, perhaps stories where changes have been made in order to make a product seem more appealing. A perfect example would be the recent Marks & Spencer Christmas advert. The advert features this years X Factor finalists singing “When you Wish upon A Star”, each time a contestant leaves the show (weekly) the advert is updated by removing the reject out of the video. What’s even worse is that I think this was sparked off by bad boy Frankie Cocozza being thrown out of the show for partying hard and taking cocaine. As you can imagine, Frankie got bad press and many newspapers reported that Cocozza spent the £3,000 that Marks & Spencer paid him to feature in their Christmas advert. Shortly after the bad press Marks & Spencer removed Cocozza from their advert, obviously because they didn’t want someone who got bad press to be advertising their wonderful Christmas food, keeping Cocozza in the advert would mean that partying cocaine addicts adopt the Marks & Spencer lifestyle and that would be completely the wrong image for Marks wouldn’t it?

So what happens when attractive or famous people aren’t ideal for advertising a certain product or service? for example beauty products that make you look ten years younger, or medications and vitamin supplements. Well, this is where “research” and mathematical explanations come into play. I’m not going to rant on about this too much, a chap called Ben Goldacre wrote a book called “Bad Science” that has various chapters about how the media use and report research, I do recommend reading it but this is completely beyond my point. What I’m trying to say here is that companies try to make their adverts seem sciency by reporting findings from their research which was actually badly run and it’s even a known fact that skin cream companies have invented chemical names to make it look like their cream has different active ingredients to all other creams out there. If you have more than two brain cells you will realise that active ingredients in all skin moisturisers are the same and if you moisturised everyday for 10 years you would look younger than people who didn’t anyway. You can also get the gist of how bad the research is by actually reading the small print at the bottom of the screen, it will say something like “when comparing all of our nationwide stores to a very small corner shop in Grimbsy” or “50.2% of participants agreed, n=2”. It seems that a sciency type presentation influences people to buy products where health is concerned. As I said, I could write about this particular topic all day but I’ll spare you the detail, it’s merely a rant about advertising not a lesson in scientific method.

This rant has only sparked up because advertising breaks on TV and radio are becoming a lot more frequent, the recent product placement update really doesn’t help either. Free software such as Spotify bombard users with 3 adverts after listening to one or two songs. Companies use social networking websites as a means of advertising when we’re using media that is supposedly alternative. Webpages are plastered with adverts. It just seems difficult to escape corporate advertising. I challenge you to live a normal day but avoid advertisement of any kind … I bet that isn’t even possible.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s rather sad that we live in a society where the majority of us buy products without looking into its actual purpose, quality and features. We assume that products are of good quality because the company’s advertising strategy is powerful, i.e. they get someone who is really attractive and/or famous to advertise them and broadcast their advertisements where people are most likely to see them frequently. I’m the type of person who sees product packaging as an advertisement too, so just remember that it’s what’s inside the packaging that counts. 

Media Ethics and Standards

If you know me pretty well then you probably realise how much I rant on about media standards and how much they seem to mean to me. I figure that this would be an easy rant to start with. I could probably write for hours about this issue, meaning that I’ll probably be annoyed with this attempt of explaining my views and I’ll most likely write about this issue a number of times as the enquiry goes by. 

For starters, those of you who say “oh no not this again” every time the hacking scandal or recent standards panic is mentioned are simply ignorant, if you could be bothered doing your research into the topic you would realise how poor media standards currently are and how the media are essentially taking basic human rights away from people. 

In my opinion the most fundamental of ethical standards are basic human rights, all human ethical guidelines are based on the human rights act. I think most of us are forgetting that privacy is part of the human rights act and that celebrities are human too (I know it’s hard to believe sometimes). To start off simple, think of it this way: you set out to have a peaceful day but your phone has been bugged by journalists, your friend leaves you a voicemail telling you that they can’t make the coffee meeting today but the journalist listens to your message, transcribes it and then deletes it. You get out of your car in town and some camera men start following you. You go to the coffee shop where you meet a friend of the opposite sex who is merely just a friend, you both wonder why the other person’s partner hasn’t turned up to the coffee meeting. A few days later you’re browsing the internet and find an article that claims your friend who couldn’t make it to the coffee shop had an argument with you via voicemail because their partner had cheated with you, the article then provides snaps of you and the person of the opposite sex sitting close to each other in the coffee bar and then claims that shortly after the photos were taken you passionately kissed. This isn’t the first time an article has been published that told lies about you. Take time to reflect, how would you feel if you were in this situation? I’d feel as though I’d had my privacy taken away from me and I’d also feel deceived and awfully upset. 

If you would react similar then we’re finally on the same page. What I’m trying to get across is that celebrities are human too, so surely they have human rights! privacy and not being deceived are the most basic of human rights and needs. I find it kind of funny how the majority of the public weren’t bothered about the phone hacking scandal when it just effected celebrities such as David Beckham but as soon as it involved Milly Dowler the world were really disgusted. Part of me thinks that this could be because of the tragedy but a bigger part of me thinks that this is because the Dowler’s are a normal family, i.e. not celebrities. People tend to dehumanise celebrities, I’m not saying that you should pretty much worship them, but you should consider them as being human beings. 

So, why does the media (journalism in particular) allow such poor standards? This is where having a degree in psychology would help me to explain. You’re probably expecting a behavioural explanation of what’s going on but in fact my explanation comes from an ethical perspective. Last year I wrote an essay that was partly about the media and ethical standards, at the time I was actually interested and appalled by the phone hacking scandal and doing the research for the essay helped me to build up a clear overview of media ethical standards in general. I’m not sure whether you’re aware of this but every profession that involves working with people (and animals) has its own set of ethical standards based on the human (or animal) rights act. This is to ensure that people and animals are treated fairly. The standards are based on the same set of principles but applied to the particular profession (for example: psychology, sociology, health, biological, political and general research). These professions have governing bodies which all people of the profession must be members of in order to practice. By signing up to the governing body you are agreeing to follow the compulsory ethical guidelines, failure to do so could lead to losing your job and no longer being able to practice your profession. 

What I found odd was that when I was researching journalism ethical standards (in order to compare them to psychology ones) I found that journalists do not have a compulsory professional governing body. What I found was that in the UK there is a governing body for journalism (called the National Union of Journalists, [NUJ]) but it’s completely optional to join the professional body. What’s worst still is that they do have ethical standards but they are so ambiguous, it’s basically a list of excuses that could be used if someone said that you weren’t practicing journalism ethically. I’m not going to give any example here, if you’re really interested then go to the NUJ website and read the guidelines for yourself, they’ll either disgust you or make you laugh, or maybe both! I blame the lack of a compulsory governing body for the shaky standards and practice in journalism. 

I think that the core solution to the problem is to actually create a compulsory governing body for media standards. I’m not saying that the ethical standards should be as strict as social sciences and health (for example never revealing a name to protect confidentiality), what I’m saying is that the standards should be more structured and objective. For example, with the issue of consent, if a journalist is merely observing an event and then writing an article on it, it is ok to just ahead and write without permission, however if the journalist talks to anyone then they should sign a consent form and be provided with contact details incase they want to be withdrew from being mentioned in the article. Confidentiality should be respected, if people want to remain anonymous they have every right to. With the issue of deception, all forms of deception should be prohibited, this includes misrepresentation of the truth in the media and also deception by means of hacking or other forms of spying. 

The idea behind membership of the professional body is that it will be compulsory in order to practice any form of journalism. It should take the same format as the British Psychological Society (BPS) where members pay membership fees but get monthly magazines about how to improve standards and recent news in the field, this will help to encourage journalists to engage in ethical practice, keep up to date with the field of journalism and also feel a sense of community. If journalists break any of the ethical standards the serious precautions will be taken and this may result in the journalist never being able to practice again depending on the seriousness of the offence. 

This may seem like it’s taking the fun out of the media and their celebrity gossip rumours and photographs of them looking at their worst (I forgot to mention that consent forms are required for photograph publication also), but you should think back to the paragraph where I asked you to imagine if it were you. I do realise that some celebrities are determined to be all over the media, no matter why, where and when but not all celebrities are the same … as not all human beings are the same. Technically my fictitious ethical standards are giving celebrities (and the public I guess) the option to have bad press if they want to and also protecting celebrities and the public from having bad press if they don’t want it. 

Remember that this is just my idea, nothing is set in place and nothing will probably come of it but I just felt like getting my opinions across. I hope you enjoyed the read, please contribute if you have any further ideas of an opinion of your own on the issue.

Thanks

- Jodie 

Insomnia, Robot Unicorns, Yearly Thank-Yous and Maybe Some Other Stuff

So, here I am at almost 1am writing a blog entry that probably won't be commented or even read by anyone that I actually know. I don't sleep too well, I guess I've never slept too well so it's nothing to cry about. But here I am anyway, I'm going to write a master piece or a half decent blog entry!

When it gets late and I can't sleep/have nobody to chat to I find myself playing Robot Unicorn attack repeatedly until I get bored or my overall score starts getting much lower than it should be. It's an awesome game, but I should find an alternative game or something else to do (writing seems like a good idea). My high score is so high that I feel that my Facebook friends fear playing the game because their score is always compared to mine ... I'm not being big-headed here by the way ;-).

As I've demonstrated already, blog entries that I write at stupid o' clock are nothing but whiny, unstructured and about the most random topics. I'm the type of person who just goes off on one with my train of thought when I have nothing else to occupy me. I should really use this blog to rant about things that are worth while or talk about what I've been up to during the day. As I feel quite content today and have nothing sensible to rant about, I've decided that I'm going to tell you about my day. 

So, today I've been Christmas shopping again and failed to finish buying gifts for family and friends, instead I've treated myself. I treated myself to Mark Watson's DVD (which I'm hoping to save until Christmas), a fancy bar of soap that I don't really want to open as the packaging is so pretty and present like, and more body butter that I've already started using. I've also been to Starbucks today and had an eggnog latte and a cinnamon swirl. I do actually feel quite festive now, despite still having a few gifts to buy and then wrapping!

After shopping I pretty much spent time in my bedroom feeling a bit sorry for myself as I do have a very sore throat and a cold. Instead of whining on Facebook I decided to watch a film. I watched "A Scanner Darkly", it was a really interesting film but sadly I couldn't watch the last 20 minutes of it as I watched it for free online and the website wouldn't allow me to watch the last part! What do you expect for free huh? Overrunning the tale, I really like the concept of the suites which change your appearance every second or so (I forgot what they're called). I'd love to own a suit like that, just for a day. Can you imagine the sort of things you could get away with, being anonymous and all that =P.

I realised today that 2012 is approaching us. 2011 was a pretty strange year for me. I guess I had a tough time at university (but not where grades are concerned), I also graduated from university and realised how hard it can actually be to reach your goals. I went through a period of depression and other problems. It wasn't easy, but I'm getting there now. I really hope that 2012 will be a better year for me, rather than just hoping, I'm going to make 2012 a better year. However, I do have a few people that I'd like to thank for things they did for me in 2011. so here in no particular order are a list of names and a short message/explanation for each of them. 

James Watson

We've been friends for a long time but in 2011 I realised that we actually have similar problems and insecurities. This made our friendship much closer and I feel that we trust and understand each other a lot more now than we used to. He's managed to keep me happy by meeting me regularly for shopping and meals. Thanks for your support James. 

Alexandria Meacham

It's been a hard year for Alex too, we've both had major problems this year and I do agree that at times we've just clashed and not seen eye-to-eye but this is because we've both had our own problems to suffer with and attempt to sort out. I would like to thank Alex for being so patient with me and listening to what I have to say, I really appreciate it. 

Dr Chris Fullwood

This is possibly going to be the hardest message to write, especially publicly. I realise that from time to time over the past year I have been a complete cow and I've really not considered his feelings at all. I've treated him with a certain amount of disrespect but this is largely due to problems that I've had which I've not explained inside out and kind of exhausted. I would just like to thank Chris for being so understanding of me over the past year or so, I really appreciate it. 

I probably have a lot more people to thank for things that they've done in 2011, for example my mom, various members of academic staff from university and a few friends from university who didn't believe the childish rumours and literally fought my corner until the end. I'll probably write another blog entry soon to thank others, but sadly that's it now as I'm starting to feel tired. It seems that writing helps me to sleep.

Take care,

Jodie

Today is The Day

That I'm trying Starbucks Eggnog Latte ^_^. 

Happy Jodie...

Top 10 Hottest Male Celebs

You've probably gathered that I'm not big on mainstream celebs. I always find that polls for sexiest male celebs hosted my magazine don't reflect my opinion, I usually stare at the results and think to myself "who the hell are these men" or "Oh no not Johnny Depp and Beckham again". So, for this reason I've decided to do a top 10 count down of the most attractive male celebs in my opinion. Here goes:

10. Matt Johnson:

09. Joshua Wilkinson:

08. Brandon Flowers:

07. Ed Sheeran:

06. Tom Lister:

05. Johhny Flynn:

04. Chris Fountain:

03. Charlie Clements:

02. Gary Barlow:

01. Rufus Hound:

Hello to One and All

I realise that I haven't blogged here for absolutely ages, in fact my last post on here was simply copied and pasted from my Tumblr account. At the moment I feel the need to just write and write so I've opted to do this here. To be frank, people on Tumblr would moan if I wrote a long blog entry whereas people on here either enjoy reading or never actually come across my blog anyway. 

It's been a strange few months adapting to my after-uni life but I'm finally getting into the swing of things! I still remain unemployed but I am getting used to the applying for jobs malarky and have also started to volunteer as a helpline support worker for a mental health charity. I'm quite enjoying the voluntary work I do, not only am I helping those in need but it also breaks my own week up and gives me something to do and new people to talk to. I'm starting to feel more and more content with unemployment, I know I'll get to where I want to someday soon. The job market is pretty lame at the moment and I do realise that I'm not the only person who doesn't have a job. It was so depressing at first but now I feel ok with it all and I suppose my new positive attitude helps when applying for jobs anyway, I'm the kind of person who reflects my mood through my writing!

So, apart from job hunting and volunteering I haven't been up to a fat lot. I guess I've been cooking and baking quite a bit more. Earlier on I made a pizza with marmite-mushrooms, 3 types of peppers and cheese on it, it tasted pretty lush, so I'll be making it again soon. 

Today is the 1st of December which means the run up to Christmas! This year I actually feel excited about Christmas and I have no idea why because I have less money than I had last year. I think it's just the idea of spending time with family & friends and good food. I remember being spoilt as a child, Christmas was pretty much about presents, now I really appreciate the company, the food and the thoughtful gifts. I started to feel proper Christmassy this afternoon when I went into town with my mom to get some frozen food ready for Christmas and just have a general browse around the shops. I bought two Christmas CDs, one with songs by Frank Sinatra on it and one with classical Christmas music on it. I now have a wide range on Christmas music, I made a playlist on iTunes earlier and I have over 100 Christmas songs which is great at the moment but I have the feeling that I'll get annoyed when Christmas tunes are selected on iTunes shuffle in May!

I've decided that I am going to update this blog more regularly from now on, so watch this space!

- Jodie