writer Alana Adams illusrator Nazanin Kazi
If you haven’t realized by now advertising is a huge business that affects almost everyone. When advertising works well and reaches the right target audience it can make us buy things that we normally wouldn’t. Even when it doesn’t work well, it still seems to gain attention i.e. Snuggie, and the infamous Head-On amongst others. Regardless advertising is a way for big companies to send a large amount of people a single message. It is not always about buying. In some cases like PETA advertising is used to get people to live a certain way. For the most part advertising is used to get people to purchase new products. Why is advertising effective? We see advertising everyday. We see it while watching television, riding the train, listening to the radio, even when flipping through the menu at the Cheesecake Factory. Ads are a hard thing to miss, especially when watching television. Television is all about advertising. Companies work hard to make sure that you see their latest message, and that it resonates with you. ZenithOptimedia estimates that worldwide companies spend more than $400 billion dollars on advertising. Companies spend a lot of that money on commercials because they know that is an easy way to reach their audience while at home. As of late many people have stopped watching their favorite shows on their televisions and have resorted to watching them online to evade commecrcials. Even by trying to avoid commercials on television and watch shows online you will 8
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still run into them. Now YouTube and other sites are cluttered with 15 second, 30 seconds, and even longer commercials that you must watch in order to see your intended video. Advertising is becoming more and more effective each day. For a long time it was a one-way means of communication from company to consumer but that has changed. Most companies now are making use of social media, as it is a free way to help advertise. We are starting to see Twitter and Facebook accounts from companies where they are finally directly communicating with their consumers. When dealing with a small company it is an almost instantaneous way to
and Fitch ads. Abercrombie and Fitch is a perfect example of how sex sells. Walk into any one of their stores and within a couple seconds of entering, you realize it is not an average shopping experience. There are pictures of half naked, and completely naked men and women hanging on the wall. Their perfume is released through machines every couple of minutes, and house music is always blaring. During the summer of 2011 they actually had a song on their playlist that had a hook declaring, “I’m horny, horny, horny, horny.” If they aren’t a prime example of sex selling I don’t know what is. In February of 2011, The Wall Street Jour-
reach out to a company, for bigger companies you can still reach out to them but it might take a little more time for them to respond. This also works as a good way to show people how much they care about your satisfaction.
nal reported that Abercrombie and Fitch’s “net sales jumped 23 percent to $1.15 billion, following last year's 4.6 percent drop.” Even during the recession they seem to be making a significant amount of money.
When people see how they respond to certain situations, if done right it can earn them more credibility and trust. Social media is beneficial to both companies and consumers.
The famous retailer continuines to project an image of young, elite, sexy people. For the 2011 holiday season they were one of the stores to open at midnight; however they were among the very few, or only, to have men standing in their front room’s with their shirts off. I can say from personal accounts many young girls, and their mothers came into the store once they saw the men standing in the front sans the usual plaid.
Everyone has heard the saying that “sex sells.” You can see it everywhere, in commercials, on billboards and posters. Sometimes it's subliminal messages found in Coca-Cola ads and sometimes it is blatant in Abercrombie
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