Nothing is as compelling in the creative industry as the beauty and discipline of advertising. With it, products and updates on a market, and news about industries that matter, even advocacies and “community announcements” are propagated with words, using any printed, electronic, or digital media, that holds a message to a point of value.
But advertising the way
it’s meant has always been there to “serve”, be it good news, a piece of information, or a well-intended fact from which
the public can benefit from.
In recent years, along
with the rise of online media, there came a slowing down of good news trumpeters.
Instead, advertising became more pronounced and rather exploitative. What came is a return to “boldness” in the
way advertising is packaged.
For example, some online
ads, do not merely promote and sell vantage points for new products. Some ads deviate
from acceptable standards for advertising, previously disallowed by governing
bodies.
A sweep read at the many
frequent ads on display online these days can expose oneself to ads that hound
customers with a charade of bodies and curves, closeups, and “show-all” product
photos that aim to sensationalize and get attention with their own style of
advertising.
The real fault in some
ads? These exploit women and models, in
such uncompromising postures enough for one to mind not the product but the
model in photos. It is not just the
curves and the skin peek that are shown
in some non-mainstream, advertising, with a message loud and bold that it’s
okay to flaunt.
Say in a product that
must be talked about in a hush most cautious tone, the ad is graphically stated without much caution for decency and vulgarity by some advertisers and online
sellers. These are blatantly common in online media and commercial sites.
Another kind of
advertising that this writer would like to posit, is a seemingly innocent streamer
in the community. However, the display
of tarpaulin although fraught with respect for the rights of those who have
fallen from grace in a community, is also well-meant and intended, to let the
public know about an erring individual.
Vagueness is not in the ideals of this kind of advertising which must be
best called- mud advertising, the way it throws mud on the integrity of a person.
It is advertising if it is posted using
a medium that is commonly used for advertising like what a tarpaulin is
commonly used for. And if it is situated
along prominent areas where there is expected foot traffic. Moreso, tarpaulin
advertising goes beyond a personal announcement and falls on the level of
advertising if the message is posted more than once or twice, or with a
schedule definitive of intention to get as much viewership or exposure.
Can
we consider negative news reporting as a form of advertising when it involves
not just a personality but a person with business interests in the community?
This is an ethical question that must be weighed by media providers which deliver
the news, anyhow they can serve it for the public to partake of.
The thing with
advertising these days, there has been an erasure of lines from advertising to the content, and the substance of news articles that are packaged as branded content. Because
straightforward advertising could turn
off a lot of readers and sway them to stop the ad button once an ad interferes
with their preferences, advertisers have
found it inevitable to repackage their products on media, and make them content-appropriate or “content-embedded”.
What this writer also means
to put forward in the open is that sometimes news and advertising have been
interloped to a point of fault. The disparity
before is very pronounced. In later years, the shift in pleasing the numbers
of followers has become a norm in changing the look of advertising, making these
almost seamless with news and content at the forefront, while advertising seems
to be at the helm of strategy.
We go back to tarpaulin
advertising that carries a controversial announcement, advertisers can take caution
not to overuse their intention to do good for others by using advertising as a
ploy. Or make an outcast out of an individual concern so as to diminish another’s
integrity in the face of the greater community.
Mud advertising be it in
the form of below-the-line advertising must not be a standard to address a
competition, resolve a problem or warn about an issue that needs to be resolved
with compassion and dignity.
Also, negative
advertising must not be a gateway to other kinds of advertising that can
disintegrate regular standards of media normalcy so as to accept substandard advertising.
The helpless must not
count on negative advertising that gives indignity or embolden others to follow suit, even if it is only meant for posterity, to add on new followers, or bring sympathy, and even sides for the unnoticed.
