In the book, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising, Juliann Sivulka charts the timeline of advertising and the industry’s reflective and influential capabilities within American life. Chapter 8, “1975-1990 From Positioning to Image Building”, details the rise of advertising agencies and changes in the US economy as a result, paying close attention to how demands of the agencies by clients changed. Sivulka explains the term positioning through the lens of various actors in the industry at the time while showing how positioning choices differed based on what the product did and who would consume it. A Pepsi campaign is used as an example of a specific type of competitive positioning in which the company conducted blind taste tests that concluded consumers enjoy Pepsi more than Coca-Cola. They used this strategy to create content marketing against their competitor while Coca-Cola did the same back. I find this particular example in history interesting as similar advertising strategies persist today but through different and additional outlets. This article includes a series of examples in which campaigning against competition proves prominent while also providing insight into when certain strategies are appropriate and when they are not. One modern example of this form of positioning is the fast food chain Wendy’s creative and ruthless attacks on McDonalds via Twitter. As observed in Photo 1, Wendy’s tweeted an aggressive message denigrating McDonald’s for their use of frozen beef. In a viral response, an average twitter user added an edited GIF indicating Wendy dunking over Ronald McDonald to display dominance. Believe it or not, this social media interaction is a form of advertising in the modern age that still uses the competitive positioning of the advertising age Sivulka speaks to in Chapter 8. It is interesting how advertising has changed so much to not only include social media, an interactive platform, as a way to advertise but the strategy also uses the average media user to contribute to the brands advertising goals. The lay person that reacted to the Wendy’s tweet actually helps the brands messaging by circulating through twitter culture a GIF indicating Wendy’s dominance over McDonalds.
Photo #1 : Source
Chapter 9 in Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes, focuses on the world of advertising as it has stood more recently as well projections for the future of the industry. She notes how all the changes that happened to the world prior to now have influenced the economy, culture and politics of society while inadvertently changing the way people engage with commerce. With that perspective in mind, Sivulka dives into how globalization and technology has changed the advertising landscaping and also makes a point to discuss the role of women in advertising. This particular piece was interesting to me as it explained how certain products like beer and cleaning materials have dramatically changed marketing tactics towards women with the intention that the women mindset was changing to take on less men-dependent personalities and identifying as consumers of traditionally men products. Although the shifts are prevalent to an extent, I think that the reverse stereotyping of that ideal still remains today. This article explains how the representation within the population of content creator and within the actual content is a persistent problem today with significant aspects failing women. Similarly, Sivulka notes that advertising is still behind the times in regards to race. Racist ads stereotyping certain ethnicities plagued the 90’s and still find their place on occasion today. For example, a recent PopChips advertisement featured Ashton Kutcher as an Indian with brown face. I think how this differs from the racist advertising Sivulka notes from the 90’s is now the use of white people to take on the forms or attitudes, or in other words, culturally appropriate, non-white races. In general, an analysis of the history of advertising with eras that mold to the features of the time, has proven to possess the power to shape what we think, feel, and want while we engage in consumerism.
Photo #2: Source