The Instrument: Advertisement

Advertisement is a corporate instrument. I came to this conclusion while reading my fellow classmate's blog, The Power of Promotion, which describes the influence and implications of media-driven advertisement and other promotional tactics. Now, everybody knows about advertisements. We see advertisements everywhere; in her post, my classmate describes how the vast majority of information that a person receives on any given day from the media has been tailored to sell them something, a characteristic of our massive consumerist culture. However, the majority of the population merely consumes advertisements and fails to question how the advertisement is being played, how the advertisement has been crafted and designed to make the consumer believe that their product is the best of them all.

It is this aspect of advertisements that led me to believe that they were a form of instrumentation. In my previous post, I defined an instrument as any tool that could be used to express an idea, with the quality of the instrument depending on the possible depth of expression. Advertisements fit this definition to a point. You can complain about the negative aspects of a consumerist society all you like, but you cannot deny the fact that advertisements are expertly constructed in order to portray a favorable image or idea, almost like a work of art.

So, what are the "sounds" of the advertisement? There are many. Since advertisements come in a variety of forms, ranging from commercials to billboards, they could utilize a variety of appeals to attract the average consumer. However, the most common of these is the visual appeal, and this has been the case since the invention of advertisements.

This is a print advertisement for Newport cigarettes from 1947. This advertisement shows the product being smoked by an attractive and seemingly carefree man, sailing the waters with a beautiful blue sky and woman by his side. In this case, the visual appeal is the entirety of the image itself. The advertisement suggests that by smoking Newport cigarettes, the consumer can be like these beautiful, cigarette-touting individuals. Every visual component of this advertisement, from the attractive appearance of the people to the aesthetically pleasing color contrast of the blue sky and the man's stylish red shirt, was intentionally and instrumentally placed in the ad for this very purpose. 

Now here is a more recent example of the aesthetics of advertisements. In this advertisement, corporate giant McDonalds is promoting the availability of free wi-fi in many of their restaurants throughout the world. To highlight this service, this advertisement simply shows an arrangement of one of McDonald's most popular products, the french fry, in the shape of the symbol for wi-fi. There isn't anything particularly dazzling about this advertisement, but its simplicity is a part of its appeal. The simplicity of the french fries against the solid red backdrop of the advertisement is incredibly pleasing on the eye. 

Advertisements are so abundant and prevalent in our lives that we often feel bombarded by them and neglect the potential artistic value that they possess. Yes, there are many irrelevant advertisements that do no more than flaunt their products in a meaningless way, but there also many that are intricately designed to create and project a powerful image. Advertisements are a form of instrumentation that goes largely unnoticed in our lives, a manner of expression that deserve more recognition.