Ad blog.

• lypophrenia: a feeling of sadness seemingly without a cause. 
• drapetomania: an overwhelming urge to runaway. 
• escapism: a mental desire to retreat from unpleasant realities through fantasy. 
• wanderlust: a desire to travel, to understand one’s very existence. 
• dysania: the state of finding it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. 
• metathesiophobia: fear of change 

After watching the IPA talk by Andy Fowler (Executive Creative Director at Brothers and Sisters), ‘Putting Brands in People’s Hands’, it is obvious that times are moving fast, and Advertising is doing a fairly good job with keeping up. The case study he shows juxtaposes Baudrillard’s theory completely. Their Adidas, ‘Messi’s coming to town’ campaign, where the famous footballer flew in unannounced to various football grounds in London, boasts of statistics within three hours such as, 230,000 Facebook feeds, 368,000 tweets, 3.5 million young football fans tuning in, 41% of the UK being aware, 93% of media covering the story and 25 countries in the world being reached.

One of the points that i found most interesting from the talk is that the bridge between TV and online media is being formed thanks to social media (this links to what I am doing my symposium and mini dissertation on). TV is not dead and is in fact still one of the strongest advertising platforms, but the line between different forms of advertising is blurring, meaning that agencies have to change the way they are doing things.

Hebdige believes we are never actually the author, we just use, reproduce and manipulate what already exists.

“Appearances can no longer be said to mask, conceal, distort or falsify reality… ‘I’ is nothing more than a fictive entity.” 

Baudrillard argues that today there is no such thing as reality. Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs, and how they relate to what is existing or happening at the same time. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality.

Simulacra - in the era of television - are copies of things that no longer have an original (or never had one to begin with).

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - PRECESSION OF SIMULACRA - it is the map that engenders the territory….(Baudrillard, 1994, p. 1)

Advertising assists in constituting signs and codes that appear to represent social reality - in actuality, they represent an autonomous realm of hyperreality that has relatively little to do with the ‘real’ as we have come to define it.

Jean Baudrillard points to a reversal of the relation between representation and reality where the media are coming to constitute a (hyper)reality, a media reality which seems “more real than real” (Kellner, 1991). The distinction between the real and the representation collapses and dissolves away. All that truly can be said to be left is the simulacra itself.

Hyperreality is exploited in advertising for almost everything, using a pseudo-world to enable people to be the characters they wish to be. Advertising sells the public through strong, desirable images, and many consumers buy into the brand’s point of view and products. If the consumer wants to be seen as a sex icon, he or she should buy the most expensive jeans as worn or designed by his or her favorite celebrity. Although the clothing itself has limited actual value, they symbolize a state of being that some consumers want.