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Running Head: FUTURE TRENDS

Future Trends in Advertising

Irene Myers Lavant

MKT/447

ADVERTISING AND CREATIVE STRATEGY

March 26th, 2012

WILLIAM RIECKEN
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Advertisements bombard consumers throughout the entire day of every day.

Whether it is a billboard, television commercial, magazine ad, or pop-up banner on the

Internet, advertisements touch the lives of consumers and influence the buying

behaviors. Advertisers set a mood with their messages that feed into the yearnings of

the consumer. If decadence feeds into the yearnings of the consumer, the

advertisement depicts decadence. If fun feeds into the yearnings of the consumer, the

advertisement depicts fun. If a sense of urgency presents itself on a subject, the

advertisement pushes a sense of urgency. In essence, the needs and wants of the

consumers who influence the message and the delivery of that message. Therefore,

advertisements influence consumers and vice versa.

Humor and Fun-based Advertising

One of the latest trends in advertising involves using humor and fun. The trends

in advertising today take solemn subject material and mixing it with humor and fun-

based advertising. Many advertising campaigns were a reflection of the times people

lived in. For example, many companies used “war advertising” techniques during the

time of World Wars I and II. Coca-Cola ads showed scenes of confident, happy people,

including soldiers, enjoying a drink of Coca-Cola and encouraged the home team to buy

war bonds (Golden Age Radio, n.d.). Coca-Cola successfully used the bandwagon

technique, by depicting its product as the winning choice, using symbols of happiness

and victory. “Bandwagon is one of the most common techniques in both wartime and

peacetime and plays an important part in modern advertising. Bandwagon is an appeal

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to the subject to follow the crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well.

Bandwagon propaganda is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is

the winning side, because more people have joined it” (Dorje, 2001). Coca-Cola’s

wartime ads are also an example of assertion. The wartime ads used positive, energetic

images to make a statement to consumers about the atmosphere of that era, although

not necessarily a true depiction of reality.

Currently, the technique of assertion shows in ads that use humor and fun to

counter the signs of the times. The country faces issues of a poor economy, political

division, higher crime, higher unemployment rates, and a war overseas. Using humor

appeals to consumers because consumers yearn to take the mood as a realistic part of

their lives. According to author Carl Dorje (2001), marketers believe that consumers,

“should simply agree to the statement without searching for additional information or

reasoning. Assertions, although usually simple to spot, are often dangerous forms of

propaganda because they often include falsehoods or lies" (Assertion). Therefore, the

recent trends in advertising sell consumers products or services with the promise of an

improved life, although this is not necessarily a fact.

In addition, humor helps to make consumers pay attention to a product otherwise

boring or mainly ignored. One example of using humor for gaining attention involves a

recent advertising campaign by Farmer’s Insurance. In the Farmer’s Insurance

advertisement, the agents attend various classes that teach them how to be better

insurance agents. The ads involve the agents, in hilarious situations, experiencing the

many bloopers that cause consumers to need a good insurance policy. Consumers

watching the commercial tend to pay attention without considering that the hilarious
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situation is devastating in real life. However, when the consumer decides to purchase

insurance, Farmer’s Insurance is a name that comes to mind because of the company’s

attention-grabbing commercials and print ads. Other insurance companies using this

tactic include Geico, State Farm, and Aflac.

Social Media-based Advertising

The boom in the use of social networks makes advertisers eager to use these

networks for speaking with consumers. Marketers are using marketing and advertising

schemes in digital and interactive formats made for use on the Internet. The result is

advertisements in the form of pop-up banners, online surveys, and third party

advertisements on social media web pages. Many social media web pages serve the

purpose of giving information to the consumers about a product, communicating with

consumers to gain feedback, and offering customer service.

The bandwagon technique’s use is also prevalent in social media’s appeal. Many

consumers, and companies alike, feel that if they do not embrace social media, the

opportunity to connect with others passes. Those involved in bandwagon schemes feel

the need to follow what others are doing simply because others are doing it. By

following the pull of the social networks, businesses find a way to communicate with

wide open, willing, and available target audiences within the networks. In addition,

businesses know that their competition uses the social networks to speak to consumers.

Therefore, those businesses that shied away from using social networks find

themselves moving in that direction so that they compete for consumer’s attention and
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loyalty.

Examples of social media use include advertising on websites like Facebook,

Twitter, and Pinterest. YouTube and Vevo, both online video databases with social

networking formats, require consumers to watch an advertisement before he or she can

watch the video. These examples are only a fraction of the social media available on the

Internet. Marketers form advertisements that appear while consumers enjoy the

interactive websites. These web-ads cause consumers to find and frequent the social

network pages belonging to many of the participating businesses.

Testimonials in Advertising

Testimonials became a good form of propaganda because these endorsements

connect the consumer to the experiences of someone who used a certain product or

service. Therefore, the experience transfers and becomes connected to the consumer

who hears the testimony. Many times, these advertisements include a famous celebrity

or a respected authority who verifies the attributes of the product or service. An example

of testimonials is the new Activia yogurt advertisements that tell consumers that eating

Activia gives benefits to the digestive system. The advertisement features a female

celebrity and ordinary women, all who ate Activia for a week, giving testimonies about

how wonderful they feel. Another testimonial advertisement is for the Proactive Skin

Care System. The people in the advertisement show before and after photos of their

skin while telling consumers how Proactive cleared up their skin problems effectively.

These two examples of advertising concern the consumer suffering with digestive

issues or skin problems. Febreze even features a testimonial-type advertisement in

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which blind-folded subjects encounter messy situations but where they also smell

Febreze freshness. The reaction to the smell of the Febreze, despite the messy area,

serves as a testimony of how powerfully Febreze works to neutralize odors. By having

random, blind-folded people serve as the testimony givers, Febreze’s effectiveness

seems to gain credibility with consumers. These testimonies speak to those consumers

wanting a fresh environment.

Advertising in 10 Years

In 10 years, consumer influence guides advertising much like today. Because

people find themselves with less time, future marketers need to meet consumers’ sense

of urgency and short attention span. Advertisements need to be attention-getting,

interactive, and more important, quick. Integration of all the available advertising

methods used today can prove to be the answer for the future. In the future of

advertising, small businesses will market themselves on global scales like never before.

The Internet has truly made the world flat. Whereas businesses could only dream to do

interstate and intercontinental business, the Internet opened up the world to small

business owners.

Using online marketing tools, many small business owners may choose to do

this for themselves. The reason for this is saving money, and because of lacking trust.

According to writer John Winsor (2012), “Advertising is all about relationships, and at

the heart of the client/agency relationship is trust. That trust has been eroded by a lack

of transparency and, often, resistance to change” (The Model Is Broken). The marketing

agencies that survive this shift in attitudes are those that adapt before losing valuable
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relationships. Agencies need to prove to business that their business strategy, creative

direction, and planning goes far beyond drop and drag or copy and paste formats.

In the future, companies will continue to use celebrity endorsements because

they prove to be effective. Because celebrity credibility and reputation is important to the

celebrity, these people will only support and appear for authentic, quality brands.

Advertisers will also invest heavily in the images in ads. Consumers find themselves

attracted to the visually appealing images. The advertisement message and the image

are blended to become part of the reader’s experience (Suster, 2012).

The flipside of the coin is that in the future, consumers may want less product

ads. Therefore, personalization of ads is a concept that gives consumers

advertisements based on their own personal data. Many sites, like Amazon and

Facebook, already generate ads based on consumer interests and behaviors. Catering

to consumers in this way means profiling users. With concerns about invasions of

privacy by Amazon and Facebook, the concept of a private data profile is something

that could give consumers the option to plug in information to the companies of his or

her choice.

Effects of Trends on Marketing Mix and Advertising Strategy

The integrated marketing mix needs to change to meet advertising of the future.

As products become more technologically advanced, so must the advertising and

marketing mix. The placement (or positioning) of the product is the concern of

marketers because as elements surrounding the product become more technologically

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advanced, the advertising campaign needs to be more advanced as well. Advertising

products in the future warrant more technologically advanced methods, such as the use

of digital communications through social media. In addition, advertisers must take the

company message to smart phones, hand-held devices, tablets, and other digital

devices. The message also needs to meet technology like satellite radio, online radio,

and even cars with speech capabilities. The use of a greater technology holds the

potential to affect price and distribution of the product. The use of greater technology

means that the organization may spend more. The result is that the organization passes

higher prices down to the consumer. A digitally delivered message is more efficient,

however.

The effect on advertising strategy lies in that marketers must form campaigns

that meet the needs of future consumers, but that also go far beyond with the next 10

years in mind. The strategy needs to include sensibilities about consumers’ lack focus

on advertisements, lack of time, and as always, wants or needs. A faster paced life for

the consumer means that the advertiser needs a face paced advertising strategy. Part

of that strategy means forming advertisements with the ability to capture people’s

attention, which explains the prevalence of quirky, fun advertisements in today’s media.

The biggest element of a change in advertising strategy involves a change in

organizational thinking and advertising approaches.

Conclusion

Advertising methods follow trends that guide the message of the advertisement and the
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delivery of that message. These trends include changes in consumer opinions and

tastes, the introduction of new technologies, the advancement of globalized views, and

the increased use of social media. The explosion of social media websites is

responsible for an exodus of consumers who are moving further away from traditional

media to the Internet. This means that where the people go, so must businesses.

Marketers followed suit. By integrating traditional advertising methods with all the digital

methods of current days, marketers help businesses to build brand awareness without

consumer awareness of the changes. Many businesses have already integrated

successfully. Many upgrade as the technology grows and adapts, while other

businesses begin to catch up.

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References

Golden Age Radio. (n.d.). Golden Age Advertising. Retrieved on March 24, 2012 from
http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/LookAround/advertspot_cocacola5.htm

Dorje, C. (2001). Propaganda Techniques. Retrieved on March 25, 2012 from

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/proptech.htm

Winsor, J. (2012). The Future of Advertising. Retrieved March 26, 2012 from
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2010/id20100712_542186.htm

Suster, M. (2012). The Future of Advertising Will Be Integrated. Retrieved on March 24,
2012 from http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/29/the-future-of-advertising-will-be-integrated/