Assignment 1 - Tom Meehan

The endless possibilities of: Advertising and New Media

In today’s society advancements in technology are remodelling the way we grow, learn and interact with one another. Changes to the way we view and interpret media are also evolving. Henry Jenkins states that convergence is “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences.”[1] Convergence of media has had vast affects on the development of advertising and new media. As time progresses media convergence is becoming increasingly stronger and faster in its affect. The Internet, with social networking and sharing websites has allowed advertising and new media to flourish and created many new possibilities for reaching an audience and made the size of that audience tenfold.

When TV commercials emerged, they were a new, innovative form of advertising that had the ability to captivate an audience with their creativity. However this form of advertising was expensive and could only reach a limited audience. 

First Barbie commercial 1959

During some programs, for example the AFL and NRL grand finals in Australiam advertising reaches an extraordinarily large market, therefore due to the numbers it will reach and the rare occasion these events occur, the price of advertising will increase. In the United States their big event is the Super Bowl, reaching 90 million people. The halftime advertising has become so popular in recent times with big budget campaigns, that they attract an audience of their own, aside from the NFL game being played. 30 seconds of television time is worth $2.5 million.[2] However not only does the USA view these advertisements; these advertisements are now distributed worldwide, even the Australian news programs broadcast the advertisements. Furthermore, in recent times through the extreme growth of social media and the Internet, this meeting of traditional broadcasting and the Internet with the advertisements featured on Youtube among other websites, the audience has increased by millions.

Volkswagen Super Bowl commercial 2012

Advertising in cyber space has presented a whole new element to advertising never seen before. Internet advertising is far cheaper than traditional forms of advertising and has the ability to reach a far greater audience, worldwide. When advertising in today’s market, a company must look to new media to widen and capitalize on reaching their intended audience. Big companies use a combination of old and new media advertising to access their audience, offering a connection from their old media advertisements to their new media commercials, a TV commercial will instruct the viewer to go to a website or Facebook page. Some companies such as Coca-Cola even telling the viewer to search their ad campaign up on Youtube. Big companies in their early Internet campaign featured coupons in exchange for personal details so they could distribute more information (Keith 2012). Nowadays campaigns are far more complex, intended at capturing an audience through cleverly used techniques and expensive budget. These campaigns are known as a viral campaign and can be classified as part of a “viral revolution” (Keith 2012). A company hopes that their targeted audience share their advertising campaign through social networking sites such as Facebook. Jenkins spoke of the “circulation of media content – across different media systems, competing media economies, and national borders – depends heavily on consumers’ active participation” (Jenkins 2006). Companies make it easy for consumer participation by adding a “Share on Facebook” link to the advertisement. The Facebook “Like” button has also simplified the ease of something to “trend” or be promoted by the population.

The evolution of Internet advertising in recent years has also seen elaborate campaigns being based solely on the Internet, ignoring old media altogether. Hyperlinks is essentially the only way to navigate the Internet (Keith 2012), search engines such a Google have been described as “the single most important development for informational advertising since the time of the first paid newspaper advertisements or the telephone directory”[3]. The cheap exposure through new media has eclipsed the expensive old media campaigns in their success, old media now relying on new media for its success as the two converge.

Italian clothing company Diesel unveiled a clever online campaign in 2010 titled “Be stupid”. They took the idea that our whole life we’ve been told to “be smart”, yet if we really want to live we need to be stupid. Clever slogans encapsulated this initiative.

The campaign was seeking creative individuals to upload a video to Youtube of them doing something they “deem to be ‘stupid’”. One hundred successful applicants would have their video featured in a music video that would “not only” display the new collection being released by Diesel, but also including links to their personal websites and social networking profiles. 

This advertising promotion was clever on many different levels. While seeking out the individuals, the company was initiating exposure. With the many applicants around the world posting their videos with links to the company, Diesel, exposure further increased. After selecting the winners, and making the music video at a price far cheaper than a normal video as the videos had already been filmed at no cost, Diesel could then promote this online with help of those featured in video and reach an even wider audience. Referring to what Jenkins said about consumer participation in the circulation of media (Jenkins 2006), this is an example of an advertisement that depended on people involvement to create a cheap, innovative online campaign that did what it was intended to do.

Advertising and new media is one example of something affected by converging media. In 2012 the possibilities for reaching an audience are far greater than they were only a decade ago, and the possibilities continue to grow. With the internet and social networking, old media is now inextricably linked to this new technology for effective advertising.

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[1] Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide New York University Press

[2] Keith, S. (2012) Introduction to New Media Production, Lecture, Macquarie University

[3] Spurgeon, C. (2008) Advertising and New Media, Oron Routledge

Shah, A. (2012) Media and Advertising, Global Issues, visited 30 August 2012, http://www.globalissues.org/article/160/media-and-advertising

Diesel (2012) Diesel, visited 30 August 2012, www.diesel.com