Advertising Smarts
The advertisements above are part of an advertising campaign by Levi’s, in promoting their Slim Jeans. I find that it is a very refreshing concept, and that it is very well done. It conveys perfectly well what Levi’s is trying to get across to the consumers, while being eye-catching at the same time. This advertisement is able to play on what the consumers already know, and it allows them to put together the information they already have and make sense of it.
For instance, instead of using svelte models, they simply use stick-people to emphasise on how slim their jeans are. Also, they show the stick-people in various positions and poses, showing that they won’t only fit you just right; they can make you look cool and impressionable too! They even portrayed the stick-people as having a good time dancing, as shown in the last two advertisements. The various poses also show that the jeans will be comfortable, too. Additionally, in order to show -that the stick-people are wearing Levi’s jeans, they added on their trademark “Red Tab” onto the legs of the stick-people. If consumers did not already know that their trademark is the Red Tab, putting it will only make it ineffective in pointing out to the consumers the brand of the jeans.
On the other hand, this advertising campaign may be aimed at too specific a market. An advertising campaign that is able to hit a more generic market would be one that is truly extraordinary.
However, this advertising campaign’s effectiveness lies in its ability to retain an impression on consumers’ minds. As the saying goes, “You only get one chance at a first impression.” This is due to how greatly first impressions can alter one’s perception of things. There may be external influences from family members, friends, or the media, but how one perceives things is most important. Therefore by using such an interesting and refreshing approach, Levi’s is able to give consumers a better impression of their product and their company. How consumers perceive the advertisement is how they perceive Levi’s. Therefore, they will see them as a trendy and fashionable company that understands what it is that the consumers want.
On the whole, I would deem this advertising campaign as a successful one. By marketing slim jeans, Levi’s is still able to reach out to large market; the younger generation that will follow fashionable trends more. By promoting their product through the use of such refreshing advertisements that appeal more to young people, they will garner more attention from that very crowd they want. Also, by advertising their product with such an original concept, they will be able to form a better impression on consumers. Thus, I would say that the whole campaign is very effective.
An Evil in Disguise
The Internet must be one of the greatest inventions of all time. It makes communication a lot easier, allowing people from opposite ends of the world to send texted e-mails to one another, make phone calls online, or even hold video conferences. People can also find anything they want online, be it entertainment, leisure, the latest headline news, friends, or soul mates! While this may seem entirely advantageous, it isn’t. The rise of a new “world” – or the Internet – brings about more risks, especially in communicating.
Take for instance the case of Megan Meier. She was a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide because of a boy she got to know on MySpace, a popular social networking website. She had Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and battled depression, and for years had tried to lose weight because she thought she was overweight, so she was a particularly vulnerable girl. Though she had never met Josh in person, she had seen his pictures and thought he was attractive. It also made her happy that he thought she was pretty. For six weeks, they got along very well, until Josh one day decided to end the friendship because he had heard that she was “not very nice to her friends.” Megan was distraught upon hearing that, and when Josh started saying mean things to her, she got more and more upset. According to her father, the final message Megan saw was, “Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.” Overwrought, Megan hung herself in her closet that very day.
Such an incident makes one wonder: Why was it that what this boy said to her had such an impact on her? Also, why did she even befriend him in the first place? These are the results because of the impact Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has on our society.
In real life, we wouldn’t ordinarily befriend a stranger we pass by on a street. We are guarded and more aware of the “baddies” that lurk about everywhere. When online, however, we let our guards down and allow almost anybody to become our “friend”. This is because this CMC has caused a dramatic shift in the basic definition of self. It allows people to create an alter ego in the virtual world; someone whom they have never revealed to others. In Megan’s situation, she was probably able to find acceptance that she could not get because of her physical characteristics in the real world online. Having Josh accept her so willingly appealed to her greatly, and it made Josh seem like a great friend. Thus she slowly trusted him more and more, but the more she trusted him, the more potential there was for disappointment. When Josh wanted to end their friendship, he ended up making her feel wrecked, because she had trusted him so much, and thought that he liked her for who she was. Apparently, he only liked the other her – the one he knew online.
However, to make matters worse, Josh never even existed. A month later, Megan’s parents found out that he was a fictitious character made up by their adult neighbours across the street, just to get back at Megan. She had fallen out with their daughter years ago, and the parents thought of getting even with her by getting Megan to feel like she was liked by a boy and letting everyone know this was a false MySpace and have everyone laugh at her. The reason why Megan fell for the whole “prank” was because CMC offers anonymity, and this allows a person to be anybody they want to be online. Just by putting up a believably fitting profile and pictures, a pair of adults became a 16-year-old boy named Josh online. It probably wasn’t their intention for Megan to kill herself, but their harshness drove her to over edge. As a result, they successfully duped a 14-year-old girl, but inevitably caused her death.
So as you can see, though the advances of communication technology are a huge advantage to our fast-paced society, they can also bring about a lot of undesirable outcomes. Access and interaction between people and databases all over the world is now made a lot easier, but if people choose to abuse it, then it seems that we are probably better off without such benefits. Regardless, the only way we can guard ourselves from such dangers is to be more aware of what we do online, and who we get to know online. After all, we can’t expect the virtual world to be that much different from the real one, can we?
Reference (article):
http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2007/11/10/news/sj2tn20071110-1111stc_pokin_1.ii1.txt
Barriers of Intercultural Communication
Culture, which can be defined as, “The totality of socially transmitted behaviour patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought,” is learned and shared within social groups and is transmitted by non-genetic means. While it usually brings people together and identifies them as belonging to the same group, it can also lead to discrimination against people who are not part of the group. Such discrimination is a result of our different beliefs and values, and they lead to barriers in intercultural communication.
In this post, I have used cartoons to illustrate some examples of the intercultural communication, such as stereotypes, assumption of similarity, prejudices, and ethnocentrism.
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This cartoon depicts stereotyping, which is to give a conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion or image. They tend to lead to generalisations about a group of people. For instance, that all Asian people have slitty eyes, women are terrible drivers, and that blondes are dumb. These stereotypes may be true to a certain extent, but they are not entirely true. In the above cartoon, the stereotype that is being expressed is that all guys like cars, or more specifically, new cars. While this is true to some men, it isn’t to all. Stereotypes are barriers to communication because they colour the perceptions of people. They usually lead to one to treating people in a biased manner, and can thus lead to hurt or anger when people interact.
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The above cartoon depicts both assumption of similarity and prejudice. Assumption of similarity is a refusal to see true differences where they exist. Assuming that everyone is the same may reduce awkwardness when communicating, but it may also make one appear insensitive. By claiming that he is “colourblind”, the manager in the cartoon is implying that he does not see any difference between him and “Johnson”, his employee. As I see it, Johnson is supposed to depict an African-American, whereas the manager is not. So let’s say that Johnson wants to apply for leave on account of a Kwanzaa, a week-long festival celebrated primarily in the USA that honours African-American heritage. If the manager really is “colourblind”, he wouldn’t approve of the leave, simply because his own culture does not recognise such a festival. Furthermore, he claims to be colourblind, but then still calls him “black” in the following sentence. Such ignorance would only strain the relations between them even more, because differences do exist between people of different cultures, and overlooking them may seem rude. In this scenario, the manager expresses intolerance and disrespect for his employee’s culture.
In the second sentence, the manager says that Johnson is “black and invisible”. This expresses prejudice, which is a negative social attitude held by members of one group toward members of another group. By calling him black, he indicates that he is aware that Johnson is of a different culture, and by adding on that Johnson is invisible, the manager expresses dislike for him simply because of that. The manager sees Johnson as part of another group of people, that of “blacks”, and sees them as inferior to him. This indicates that the manager dislikes Johnson simply because he is black.
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The cartoon above depicts ethnocentrism; the belief that one’s culture is superior to all others, and the tendency to judge all cultures by one’s own criteria. Since almost every religion either consists of a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny, or an institution to express belief in a divine power, the believers feel that the knowledge they have is supreme. They believe that their set of values is the best, and that their beliefs and teachings are the “right” ones. The cause of this “my-religion-teaches-the-truth” concept is that religion is based largely on one’s faith. There are no definite rules or laws that govern them; it is up to the follower to believe and live by the laws of the religion. It is also not like Science or Mathematics, which offers definite answers to questions. For thousands of years people have been searching for answers as to whether there is a “supreme being” watching over the people on Earth, and there are many conjectures, but no one can be certain who is right. Thus, it is easy for different religious groups to perceive their religion as the “correct” one.
These barriers to intercultural communication exist in today’s society because of the many different cultures that exist. Though they hinder communication, they will persist for as long as man walks the surface of this earth. For people to overcome their prejudices and biases of other cultures, everybody has to be of the same culture, and that is impossible. Only by being more tolerant of other cultures and knowing more about them will we be able to overcome barriers in intercultural communication.
