Advertising: Persuasive techniques

Advertising: Persuasive techniques blog task

Create a new blog post called 'Advertising: Persuasive techniques'. Read ‘Marketing Marmite in the Postmodern age’ in MM54  (p62). You'll find our Media Magazine archive here.

Answer the following questions on your blog:

1) What does John Berger suggest about advertising in ‘Ways of Seeing’?
John Berger suggests that 'all publicity works on anxiety'.

2) What is it psychologists refer to as referencing? Which persuasive techniques could you link this idea to?
Psychologists in the field call this referencing. We refer, either knowingly or subconsciously, to lifestyles represented to us that we find attractive.

3) How was Marmite discovered?
Marmite was discovered in the late 19th century 'when German scientist Justus von Liebig discovered that brewer’s yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten'.

4) Who owns the Marmite brand now?
Marmite is 'trademark owned by Unilever'.

5) How has Marmite marketing used intertextuality? Which of the persuasive techniques we’ve learned can this be linked to?

A common tendency in postmodern advertising is to refer to other media products. These adverts continued the ‘love it or hate it’ theme, but also incorporated nostalgic elements that appeal to the family member with responsibility for getting the grocery shopping done. 'Paddington Bear' is shown trading his well-known marmalade sandwiches for Marmite sandwiches. He is shown enjoying the taste, while others are repelled by it.

6) What is the difference between popular culture and high culture? How does Marmite play on this?

Royal Warrants of Appointment are acknowledgements to those companies that provide goods or services to the British royal family; since 1840, this approval has been used to promote products, with a warrant entitling them to use the strapline ‘By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen’ alongside the royal crest.

7) Why does Marmite position the audience as ‘enlightened, superior, knowing insiders’?

Postmodern audience understand what the media is trying to do they understand the joke which makes them 'enlightened, superior, knowing insiders'. They themselves may become promotional

agents of the product through word-of mouth.

8) What examples does the writer provide of why Marmite advertising is a good example of postmodernism?

'Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which reality and fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. Postmodern advertising plays with this notion, too. The #Marmiteneglect campaign is rooted in the ‘reality’ that jars of Marmite often remain unused in the backs of cupboards'.