Virtuoso circular reasoning
We all noticed advertising via: A professor's three unacademic reasons why commercial is the best (or at least most professional) of all forms of communication.
Column Advertising is all about us: A professor's three unacademic reasons why commercial is the best (or at least most professional) of all forms of communication.Advertising is best. At least that's what they say. And all advertising is the best, at least the product it advertises. And not just anyone says this, but a celebrity. We are therefore dealing with a circle whose participants confirm each other's excellence and thus to a certain extent form a self-congratulatory community. This "circular prestige pattern" is vividly described by a US communication scientist using a whiskey advertisement: "A distinguished gentleman congratulates a whiskey that, through the mouth of its manufacturer, congratulates the distinguished gentleman on being of such distinction that he may bear witness to the distinction of this whiskey...". In slightly less distinguished terms: some celebrity is bought by a brandy to publicly praise its excellence, and the distiller in turn praises the excellence of the paid celebrity. So why is advertising the best? Firstly, because it knows how to market goods and people in an advertising network.
On the other hand, advertising is best because it is more beautiful or at least more digestible than anything else in the media world. Just compare the trailers of programs with the programs themselves. How much more action there is in the former! Surprises and effects galore, which in the programs then enter the screen only hesitantly and in single file. With regard to series that also want to have humor, cabaret artist Werner Schneider says: "Why don't we broadcast the announcements, they're much better?". And when it comes to the relationship between advertising in the media and the world outside it, the Canadian communication philosopher Marshall McLuhan rhymed quite rightly decades ago: "Hell in the headlines, heaven in the ads."
The third reason why advertising is the best: because it is the most expensive! The most expensive commodity has long since become attention, and advertisers are now even vying for it in the quietest of places (WW 01/03). Finding attention even for less exciting products, wherever it may be hidden, or even tickling it awake and preventing it from falling asleep again: all this requires more thorough audience and even factual research and more imagination than any news or background journalism. After all, the special qualities of even the most banal everyday products first have to be discovered by advertisers themselves - often painstakingly enough - and then the potential customers have to be found out and finally their hoped-for receptiveness to the advertised product stimulated with creative design. Which editorial team can afford such an effort? That's why advertising is better than journalism.
Of course, it remains a mystery why, with so much effort, skill and
However, despite the fact that the public still has doubts about the cultural value of the entire event. In any case, skepticism is repeatedly voiced outside the advertising circles. And yet without the lubricating oil of advertising, the media industry is becoming less and less successful. Questions are therefore pressing
the recruited (specialist celebrity) columnists, which he will try to answer next time. Above all, and again and again: What is it about advertising that makes it so special?
> Ulrich Saxer was a professor of journalism at the University of Zurich until 1996 and then full professor of communication sociology in Lugano. He has held an honorary professorship at the University of Vienna since 2001.
On the other hand, advertising is best because it is more beautiful or at least more digestible than anything else in the media world. Just compare the trailers of programs with the programs themselves. How much more action there is in the former! Surprises and effects galore, which in the programs then enter the screen only hesitantly and in single file. With regard to series that also want to have humor, cabaret artist Werner Schneider says: "Why don't we broadcast the announcements, they're much better?". And when it comes to the relationship between advertising in the media and the world outside it, the Canadian communication philosopher Marshall McLuhan rhymed quite rightly decades ago: "Hell in the headlines, heaven in the ads."
The third reason why advertising is the best: because it is the most expensive! The most expensive commodity has long since become attention, and advertisers are now even vying for it in the quietest of places (WW 01/03). Finding attention even for less exciting products, wherever it may be hidden, or even tickling it awake and preventing it from falling asleep again: all this requires more thorough audience and even factual research and more imagination than any news or background journalism. After all, the special qualities of even the most banal everyday products first have to be discovered by advertisers themselves - often painstakingly enough - and then the potential customers have to be found out and finally their hoped-for receptiveness to the advertised product stimulated with creative design. Which editorial team can afford such an effort? That's why advertising is better than journalism.
Of course, it remains a mystery why, with so much effort, skill and
However, despite the fact that the public still has doubts about the cultural value of the entire event. In any case, skepticism is repeatedly voiced outside the advertising circles. And yet without the lubricating oil of advertising, the media industry is becoming less and less successful. Questions are therefore pressing
the recruited (specialist celebrity) columnists, which he will try to answer next time. Above all, and again and again: What is it about advertising that makes it so special?
> Ulrich Saxer was a professor of journalism at the University of Zurich until 1996 and then full professor of communication sociology in Lugano. He has held an honorary professorship at the University of Vienna since 2001.
