Class 7 Social Science Understanding Advertising Exam Notes

Class 7 Social Science Understanding Advertising Exam Notes. Please refer to the examination notes which you can use for preparing and revising for exams. These notes will help you to revise the concepts quickly and get good marks.

Covers the following Topics:

1.Introduction

2.Building Brands and Brand Values

3.Advantages Of Advertisement

4.How Are Advertisements Created

5.Advertisements Also Fail How And Why

6.Social Advertising

7.Luring the Consumers

8.Advertising And Democracy

9.Introduction

 (i) Advertisement is a promotional tool. It is used to promote ideas, goods and services. Its purpose is to appeal to a particular audience called customer by the advertiser.

(ii) An advertisement is usually done through various media such as, magazines, journals, newspapers, television, radio, hoardings, posters and banners.

(iii) The technique of advertisement is chosen according to the need of the people, suitable for the product and within the limitation of the budget.

(iv) The purpose is to reach the public as fast as possible and communicate information about the product so that the consumer may be persuaded to buy that particular object, good service or product.

(v) Advertisement can reach more people, a bigger audience, a wider market, living in different parts of the world. An advertisement is possible only through a selected media which are of different kinds.

(vi) In the process of selecting an appropriate media, certain factors have to be considered such as :

1.The size of the audience

2.The reach of the media

3.The target market for a product

4.The cost of advertisement

5.The volume of sales

Types of media in advertisement

Advertisement is done through using print as well as electronic media.

        Print Media                  Electronic Media

         Newspaper                    Television

         Magazine                       Radio

         Journals                        Internet

         Newsletter                     E-mail

Newspaper

There are dailies in regional languages like Anand Bazar Patrika in Bengali, Dinamani in Tamil and Malayala

Manorama in Malayalam.

English newspapers like The Hindu, the Times of India and the Stateman, etc. are some of the print media used in advertisement.

Magazine

Advertisements in magazines reach only targeted audiences. They do not have a mass reach and are not published daily.

Radio

Radio is in use for many years. It reaches maximum audience. Radio has an advantage which other media does not have; we can listen to the radio while travelling in a bus, car or autorickshaw. The cost of a radio advertisement is less but the disadvantage is that it has only an audio impact without a visual impact.

Television

Television is one of the best modes of reaching the public. It has audio-visual effect and helps in dramatization. Television caters to almost all age groups especially the children who get excited at the visual and audio impact during the commercial break of TV programmes.

However, even television has its own demerits. The cost of advertisement on television is high. It is based on the time duration. When the duration is 10 seconds, the cost also goes high Due to high cost, the advertisement is released for a short span of time hence, people tend to forget the message.

Commercial Advertisements

(1) The word commercial itself indicates that the purpose is for earning profit. (2) Its aim is to satisfy the financial interest of the sponsor.

(3) The commercial advertisements are also done vide banners, hoardings, bus stand shelters, stage shows and railway platforms.

(4) The advertisement also focuses on a branded product.

(5) People always look for a branded product whenever they go to a shop for buying a soap or tooth paste. (6) They look for a brand of a company.

(7) Advertisement helps in popularizing a particular brand

→ BUILDING BRANDS AND BRAND VALUES

(i) Have you even heard of the word brand ? Advertising is all about building brands. At a very basic level branding means stamping a product with a particular name or sign. This is done in order to differentiate it from other products in the market.

(ii) Branding actually came from cattle grazing. Cattle of different owners grazed together in ranches and they often got mixed up. The owners thought of a solution. They started marking their cattle with the owner's sign by using a heated iron. This was called 'branding'.

(iii) Daals or pulses are usually sold loose in the market. We usually know daals by their different types like masoor ki daal, urad ki daal, etc. These names are not brand names. When a company takes masoor ki daal and puts it into a packet, it will need to give the daal a special name. It needs to do this so that we don't confuse the daal in that particular packet with the daal that is sold loose. They decide on a name like

'Top Taste Daal'. This naming of the product is called 'branding'.

(iv) Similarly in the case of the soap, there are many soaps in the market today. In bigger towns and cities, we no longer just say soap but rather refer to them using the different names of companies that make them. Given the many soaps in the market, the company will have to give the soap a different and special name. By doing this they create another brand of soap.

(v) Just naming the product may not make us buy it. The manufactures that made of the soap and the daal still have to convince us that their soap and daal are better than the other available in the market. This is where advertising comes in. It plays a crucial role in trying to convince us to buy the product that is advertised.

(vi) The task of creating a brand does not stop at giving the product a special name. For example, just when

'Top Taste Daal' begins to be sold, another company decides to also sell daals in a packet and calls this 'Best Taste Daal'. So, now there are two branded daals in the market. Both the companies are keen that you buy their daals.

(vii) The consumer is confused because you really cannot tell the difference between 'Top Taste Daal' and 'Best Taste Daal'. The manufacturer has to give the consumer a reason to prefer a particular brand of daal. Just naming a daal does not help sell it. So, advertisers begin claiming certain special values for their brand. In this way, the try to differentiate it from other similar products. Look below at how the two daals try and do this.

(viii) From the advertisements, you can now see that the two daals are saying different things. 'Top Taste Daal' is appealing to our social tradition of treating guests extremely well. 'Best Taste Daal' is appealing to our concern for our children's health and that they eat things that are good for them. Values such as treating our guests well and making sure our children get nutritious food are used by brands to create brand values. These brand values are conveyed through the use of visuals and words to given us an overall image that appears to us.

Brand Values and Social Values

(i) Advertisements are an important part of our social and cultural life today. We watch advertisements, discuss them and often judge people according to the brand products the use.

(ii) Given that advertisements are such a powerful source of influence in our lives, we need to be able to understand the ways in which they work.

(iii) Often several of our cricket heroes and our favourite film stars also try and sell products to us through advertisements. We may feel tempted to buy these products because persons whom we consider our heroes tell us that they are worth buying. In addition, advertisements often show us images of the lifestyles of rich people and seldom show us the reality of peoples lives that we see around us.

(iv) Advertisements play a big role in our lives. We not only buy products based on them, but often, having certain brand products influences the ways in which we think about ourselves, our friends and our family. It is, therefore, important to know how advertising works and understand what it does before we choose to buy the products that advertisements sell. We need to be able to critically understand why they use particular images, the personal emotion that they are appealing to and the ways in which this affects how we think about ourselves when we use the product or are not able to buy it.

(v) The telecast rate for a 30 second advertisement on a major TV channel is

Rs. 1.65 lakh. The cost of bringing out a quarter page colour advertisement in a leading newspaper is Rs. 8.36 lakh.

→ ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISEMENT

(1) Advertisement influences our lifestyle.

(2) We change our taste, style and preferences after seeing an advertisement.

(3) Most of the things we buy, eat and drink are decided after seeing the advertisement. (4) Advertisement helps in promoting the qualities of a product.

(5) It also tries to help customers to understand the differentiation of the product which helps in giving recognition for a product.

(6) Advertisement appeals to our emotions. It inspires and influences us in many ways.

→ HOW ARE ADERTISEMENTS CREATED

(1) Advertisement copies are created by agencies.

(2) The agency consists of people with creative ideas and other effective methods to launch the new products. (3) This team first develops an propaganda for a new product.

(4) They give a name to the product, then create visuals to bring out the features of the product after which they choose the target people.

(5) The product is tested on them followed by a feed back.

(6) Once they find the test successful then they choose the media through which advertisement is launched.

→ ADVERTISEMENTS ALSO FAIL HOW AND WHY

Advertisement is the easiest and most economical means of tapping the wide market, but all advertisements may not be successful. It may fail because of the following reasons :

1. Lack of consistent advertising policy
2. Making exaggerated claims which make people lose confidence c. Unimpressive appeals
3. Wrong layout of advertisement designs e. Selecting wrong medium
4. It indirectly increases the price of the product by adding the cost of advertisement.

→ SOCIAL ADVERTISING

Social advertising is done when no financial gains are expected by the firm. This is meant for educating the public and to create awareness e.g. advertisement regarding energy Saving, Nature conservation, Pollution, Public Health and National Integrity, etc. This is a powerful tool capable of reaching and motivating the people. Celebrities also participate in social causes and government at times uses media to educate public. In the democratic countries like India where we have multi parties, Political advertisement is done by political parties to highlight their programmes and agendas and it is otherwise called Manifesto.

 → LURING THE CONSUMERS

Advertisements also encourage consumerism. It makes people forget the reality and fall prey to both positive and negative sides of advertising. We should always check and find out more about the product before we buy it.

To protect the interest of consumer's government enacted the law called the Consumer Protection Act in This act provides protection to the consumers interest through consumer courts at district, state and national levels.

We have around 500 district consumer courts in India. The government has also created the awareness on the rights of consumers which are as follows :

1. Right to safety
2. Right to be informed c. Right to choice
3. Right to be heard
4. Right to seek redressal

Consumers can be protected only when they are aware.

→ ADVERTISING AND DEMOCRACY

(i) There are various ways in which advertising links to issues of equality in a democratic society.

(ii) Advertising a product costs a lot of money. Usually, crores of rupees are spent advertisement a brand.

Producing and showing advertisements in the media is very expensive. Because there are so many advertisements in the market today, companies have to show the advertisement again and again to have it stick in people's minds.

(iii) What this often means is that only large companies can advertise. If you own a small business you will not have the money to show your product on TV or national newspapers and magazines So, persons who sell papad, pickles, sweets and jams that they have made at home are not considered as fashionable as brand products. They often have to sell their products in weekly markets and neighbourhood shops that you will read about in the following unit.

(iv) It also makes us believe that things that are packaged and have a brand name are far better than things that do not come in packets. We forget that the quality of a product has little to do with the packaging that it comes in. This shift to packaged products negatively affects the sales of several small businesses forcing people out of their livlihoods.

(v) In a democracy in which all people are equal and should be able to lead a life of dignity, advertising tends to promote a certain lack of respect for the poor. They are not faces we most often see in advertisements and so we tend to dismiss their lives as worthless.

(vi) Advertising, because it appeals to personal emotions also tends to make people who cannot afford certain brands feel bad. They feel that they are unable to give their loved ones the best care that brand products appear to offer.

(vii) Advertising by focusing on the lives of the rich and famous helps us forget about issues of poverty, discrimination and dignity, all of which are central to the functioning of equality in a democracy. More than just selling us products, advertisements tell us how we should live our lives, what we should aspire and dream for, how we should express our love, what it means to be smart, successful and beautiful. As citizens of a democratic society, it is important for us to be aware of the strong influence that advertising has on our lives.

(viii) By critically understanding what advertisements do, we can make better decisions about whether we wish to buy a product or not.

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