In this special guest blog, MNet intern and University of Ottawa Communications MA candidate Anton van Hamel looks at how pop stars' images are tailored to different audiences.

Which of these girls looks older? 

 How about these two?

What about these two? 

These photos are actually the same two girls, albeit styled to give very distinct impressions. The top row shows Niatia Kirkland (AKA Lil Mama) on the left and Robyn Fenty (AKA Rihanna) on the right. With both dressed in a partially pulled-down hoodie, neither looks much older than the other.

The middle row photos are both of Lil Mama and the bottom row are both of Rihanna. In the middle row, we see Lil Mama in two very different guises. On the left her clothes and pose play up an urban, youthful image: her body is turned away from us but her eyes defiantly stare directly at the viewer, she wears unsubtle, chunky gold jewelry, affects a “don’t care” hairstyle by putting up her hair in a messy ponytail with a sweatband, and shows off a b-girl look with her DIY shoulderless sweater. This photo delivers a very different message from the one on the right, where her apparel and body language have been crafted to emphasise maturity. In this shot Lil Mama’s shoulders are square with our gaze but her eyes are looking elsewhere, projecting a disinterested, adult confidence. She thrusts one hip out, drawing attention to her silhouette which was previously hidden under her baggy “b-girl” outfit. She’s traded her flashy bling for an understated but much more opulent diamond choker and bracelet -- providing in the two shots both youthful and adult variations on the theme of conspicuous consumption. Lastly, her hairstyle is cut short and noticeably coiffed compared to the more youthful pose. With just a change of wardrobe and attitude she appears to gain ten years.

In the last pair of photos, Rihanna undergoes the same treatments to come off as a girl and a woman. In this case the major cues are facial expressions, additionally enhanced by attire. On the left, she inclines her head just a tiny bit, beckoning the viewer closer. Her eyes are narrowed a little to make her gaze smolder, accented by the heavy use of black eye-liner. To appeal to our sense of touch, she curls her fingers gingerly around a turtleneck sweater, simultaneously brushing her cheek with her fingers and her chin with the collar. Her lips are held in a purposefully ambiguous not-smile, not-frown, which invites the viewer to project their own reading onto the expression. To top it off, she wears her hair very short to emphasize the delicate, almond shape of her face. Compare this to the more girlish portrait at right, where she sports a sunny smile and looks square into the camera with eyes wide open. She’s still styled to be pretty here, but in a much less seductive way. This shot is more similar to a yearbook portrait than a professional photo shoot.

Although images are not a language per se, they do follow rules to reliably produce a particular impression. When considering the role of each sign in an image, there are no hard and fast rules that specific signs always mean the same thing. The French scholar Roland Barthes famously described the flexible nature of connotations of signs in images, with changes in meaning dependant on their position in relation to all the other signs in an image. In the examples above, Lil Mama deploys a bit of androgyny with her b-girl clothes to look more tomboyish and emphasize her youthfulness, while Rihanna’s androgynous hairstyle is an integral part of her grown-up look. The connotations of androgyny change depending on the other signs that go with it in these images, to the point where androgyny is actually being used to play up femininity.

People who make their living producing images, such as photographers, stylists, publicists, directors and pop idols, learn how to use those signs to convey the impression they want to make. Although teen girls who are trying to send a signal to their circle of friends and pop music producers who are trying to send a signal to an audience of millions are working on different scales, the principle is very much the same. Depending on your audience, you need to tailor the signals you send out very carefully. Even your age can have a certain amount of wiggle room when dressed in the right signs.

No one walks around with their age stamped clearly on their body, but it is usually possible to guess how old someone is by paying attention to the signs they use. In the still photographs above, the producer of each image is making a statement about whether the person you are looking at is a ‘girl’ or a ‘woman’ by using clothes, jewelry, facial expression and body language.  For the sake of a fairer comparison, what if we look at a music video for each artist that has been released in the same year? Both videos were chart toppers, both were included in Rolling Stone’s top 100 songs of 2007, and both were nominated for awards (“Lip Gloss” won MTV’s monster single of the year, while “Umbrella” won the Grammy for best rap/sung collaboration) so their level of impact is comparable. More importantly, since they both appeared in the same year, differences in the signals they send aren’t due to differences in changing tastes and fashion. As far as what was ‘in’ at the time, both record companies had access to the same palate to dress up the star of each video. Despite that, the end results are purposefully pretty distinct.

Lip Gloss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eqMeapv2J8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBfHwUxHIk

Umbrella http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBfHwUxHIk

Although Rihanna only looks older relative to Lil Mama, she is definitely more precocious and seductive in this video. The amount of skin she shows off is only a small part of that image; to maximize the effect, every other aspect has to follow in lockstep with that idea. The dance routine Rihanna performs in the middle with her umbrella is a good example. The ginger, dainty steps and slow dips and rises are more in the spirit of burlesque than R n’ B. Similarly, the monochrome palate of the entire video draws attention away from colour to allow the audience to linger more on the tactile, textural aspect of the footage. The glossy pleather, rainslicked surfaces, and even close-ups on Rihanna’s skin painted silver are all meant to appeal to the sense of touch and fit a more sexed up image.

Contrast that impression to the one Lil Mama chooses for the Lip Gloss video. The exposition with her own mother at the opening sets her up as a high-school student and daughter, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The clothes she wears are not particularly feminine (jeans, sweat socks, sweaters) and not at all ‘mature’; they emphasize an unpretentious, youthful look. This extends to the rest of the video, whose entire palate brims with electric, primary colours. There is no subtlety of flavour, just the visual equivalent of eating a fistful of candy. Certain stock characters which appear in the background like the nerd and the principal are played up to a cartoonish effect; a parody of high-school life but which emphasize the kid setting and tone nonetheless.

Interestingly enough, when these videos were made, Rihanna was only a year older than Lil Mama, yet because each video tugs the performer so hard in one direction, the margin appears much wider. Lil Mama’s youthfulness is keyed up while Rihanna’s precociousness is amplified. That difference between ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ is only one tip of a multi-pronged image the producers have crafted to attract their target audiences. What kind of audience do you think the producers for each performer want to reach via these images? The album titles work as a pretty concise statement.

Whether a performer projects a younger or older persona is not necessarily fixed, of course. Former Disney princess Miley Cyrus recently transition from a squeaky clean pop starlet image to a much more precocious, mature persona. The Atlantic commented on how Cyrus, made famous by her kid-friendly alter-ego Hannah-Montana, is ferociously breaking from her former image to establish herself as a less tame, more adult artist. To that end the producers of her “Can’t Be Tamed” video have carefully borrowed from and alluded to the styles and sounds of previous starlets who have made the transition, notably Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. As mentioned in an earlier MNet post, musical taste is deeply enmeshed with identity, particularly for young people. From a marketing perspective, this observation echoes the fact that consumers establish brand loyalties very early in life, making the youth audience a valuable target group for developing lifelong customers. The transformation from teen starlet to grown-up sex-bomb is driven by economics: performers need to enlarge their audience to reach adults and maintain the loyalty of the original, maturing fan base. Whereas in decades past Cyrus fans might have outgrown the starlet and graduated to a more adult performer (perhaps one supported by the same record label,) the reigning logic now is to maximize consumer loyalty to the star-as-brand and “adultify” her to keep up with the evolving taste of her original fans. This process has very little to do with the starlet’s actual age, but rather through carefully selected and manufactured signs which connote the change.

Deconstructing this sort of image after the fact is a fun exercise, but trying your own hand at production is even more interesting. Once you’ve been faced with the same kind of decisions producers make, you can appreciate just how carefully crafted images are. With so much money at stake, producers have very little room for error, so each and every detail counts. The US-based Media Education Lab has designed just such an activity for youth to create a virtual starlet and manage all the little aspects of her look, message, and music. From the splash screen, click the music studio button and then pop music producer. The same site also offers a variety of other games addressing commercial media aimed at girl consumers.

http://www.mypopstudio.com/

For Teachers:

• Pop Star Producer gives students a great deal of freedom to combine different lyrics, clothes, and effects. Have students compare and contrast how the exact same sign (a hairstyle, a line of lyrics, etc) in two starlets can be used as part of different overall impressions. How does the connotation of that one sign change when presented alongside several others?

• After students have created their starlets, extend the exercise by having them explain which audience each starlet is meant to reach, referring both to individual signs and the combined, overall impression.

• An increasingly popular strategy for producers of culture is to make their products more resilient by having more than one fan base built-in. For a real challenge, assign students to create a starlet in Pop Star Producer who can simultaneously reach two different audiences (such as children and adults, or hip hop fans and techno fans). Get students to explain how their starlet strikes a balance between attracting two audiences without alienating either one.

New York's Gramercy Park is a curious institution: two acres of fenced-in greenspace that is accessible only to those who own the houses surrounding the park. (Non-residents must either stay at the Gramercy Park Hotel or join the Players Club or National Arts Club if they want to visit, and each of these institutions has a limited number of park keys.) Private parks like it are the exception, of course, not the rule: since the days of Frederick Law Olmsted, who campaigned for and designed city parks across North America (Central Park, in New York, and Montreal's Mount Royal Park among them) we have come to expect most of our recreational spaces to be public. Cities and neighbourhoods are routinely rated on both the quantity and quality of their parks, and any suggestion that these services should be cut back always receives violent reactions from taxpayers; playgrounds, too, are public by default.

The near-universality of public parks and playgrounds in our physical spaces makes it all the more striking that the online world contains almost no spaces that are genuinely public. Instead, it is made up almost entirely of spaces that are either overtly or covertly commercial. The latter of these we might term “pseudo-public” spaces, where there is a disconnect between users' perceptions of them as public and their actual private nature.

Before continuing, it would be good to make a clear definition of what is meant by the term public space. To begin with, we might say that a public space is a public service: it does not have to justify its existence by any means other than providing citizens with a place to be. Its status as a public service means that its continued existence is guaranteed: if you move into a neighbourhood with parks and playgrounds, you can expect that they will not be paved over. (The notion of a public service blurs somewhat when we look at services that are considered essential but may be provided by private entities, such as power or telephone service; in these cases, while the government is not providing the service, it does guarantee through regulation that the service will not be discontinued.) Another essential element of public spaces is that they are by default accessible to all: their use is a right that can only be taken away due to misbehaviour, not a privilege that must be bought or earned, and using them involves no special contractual obligations. This also means that people using public spaces do not have to give up any of their other rights, most notably freedom of expression. Finally, it is worth pointing out that public spaces are, by definition, public and not private, and therefore normally free of advertising or other commercial content.

With this definition in hand we can see that few of the online spaces perceived by their users as public are anything of the sort. Perhaps the best example would be Facebook, a site which bills itself as a community and is generally treated as such by its users. It's not hard to see why: it is free to use, and like its competitors it very much feels like “my space” -- users can customize their profiles, organize their own groups and communities and select or even create their own apps (third-party programs that do a variety of things such as games, quizzes and so on.) Facebook has become a focus for civic participation, and users frequently behave as though it were itself a democracy (such as when changes to the Terms of Service were protested in 2009.)

Despite its appearance, though, Facebook is in no way a public space. To begin with, it is owned by a corporation, that is not government regulated, and while there is no direct fee for participating, users pay through being exposed to ads (in the same way that we pay for television.) Moreover, its continued existence is not guaranteed: aside from its contracts with advertisers, there is nothing preventing Facebook from going permanently offline tomorrow. Similarly, to participate in Facebook one must agree to its Terms of Service, which involve giving up rights to privacy, intellectual property, and freedom of expression – and which allow Facebook to terminate a user's account at any time for essentially any reason. (Those terms are also subject to being unilaterally changed by Facebook.) Finally, its dependence on advertising for revenue means that when conflicts arise advertisers will always win out

When viewed through this lens, it becomes clear that nearly everything online that looks like a public space, from Facebook to Hotmail to Google to YouTube, does not meet any reasonable definition of the term. (Perhaps the only exceptions are those sites operated by public broadcasters, such as the CBC or PBS, and donation-funded non-profit organizations such as Wikipedia.) Children's online spaces are, if anything, even less public. MNet's 2005 survey Young Canadians In A Wired World found that the vast majority of sites popular among youth were heavily commercialized, and in the years since that survey was released advertisers have become even more skilful at integrating commercial content into kids' online experiences; for instance, the virtual worlds BarbieGirls and Nicktropolis include brand-related references in the pre-programmed phrases available in their “safe chat” mechanisms.

Considering how attached we are to our offline public spaces, how is it that the absence of public space online has received so little attention? One reason is no doubt due to the ad hoc nature of the Internet: there are no zoning restrictions, not city plans, no directly elected authorities to whom we might appeal. As well, the Internet -- at least once it spread beyond the halls of academe -- has always been commercial: unlike the European and American traditions of a village commons or town square, there is no history of genuinely free space on the Internet. Likely the most significant reason, though, is that so much of the Internet seems free. As noted above, there are few online services for which one pays directly anymore; instead, we pay largely without knowing it, with our attention and our personal data as the currency. Facebook, again, is a good example of what we might call a “commercial commons”: though it is a for-profit enterprise it goes to great lengths to seem like a public space. Google, too, feels like a public service, if not a public space, but it too is beholden to a variety of commercial interests; so too are webmail services such as Hotmail and Gmail.

We get the Internet we deserve, of course, and it's reasonable to say that if no genuinely public equivalents to these sites exist it's because we don't really want them to -- after all, we have a choice to agree to their Terms of Service, which define a space that is unambiguously private.  But the fact that these sites create such a successful illusion of being public spaces or services means that people are all that much more likely to be unaware of the implications of their commercial nature. People rightly object if Canada Post changes the services it offers (as when they made the move to “super-boxes” in rural communities), but they may not be aware that Microsoft is under no obligation to continue providing “free” webmail access through Hotmail.

More importantly, we have to face the fact that not everyone who uses these services is an adult. Facebook allows users to agree to its Terms of Service at thirteen -- five years before someone can legally agree to a contract, in most countries -- and that policy is little-enforced:  a quarter of youth under twelve in the UK have social networking profiles. Moreover, many sites aimed explicitly at children, from Neopets to Club Penguin, make similar efforts to create a sense of being public spaces and communities. If Gramercy Park had been the model for our municipal parks -- if we had to pay to let our children use them, whether directly in money, indirectly through advertising or data collection, or a mixture of both -- would we stand for it? Or would we demand that our governments provide true public spaces where all our children could play?

Further reading

To explore these issues further, you can take a look at our sister site Be Web Aware for more information on:

Social networking sites

Virtual worlds

Online advertising

For information on how to talk to youth about public space issues, check out the recent book Watch This Space (to which I contributed)

It's been widely said that attention is the currency of the 21st Century. In an age where media occupy an increasingly central role in our lives, the need to have that media focused on you becomes intense. For no-one is this more true than for children and teens, who now expect to be connected twenty-four hours a day and for whom the Internet and cell phones are essential parts of their social lives. An interesting Facebook page, amusing Tweets, outrageous YouTube videos, even shocking photos sent by cell phone -- most of us are aware of the ways that young people seek their peers' attention. In today's media environment, is it still possible to teach young people the value of privacy? What, indeed, does the idea of privacy even mean to today's children and teens?

With support from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Media Awareness Network has completed a thorough review and updating of its popular professional development resource Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing to better reflect today's media environment. While fears of online predators have turned out to be largely overblown, parents and educators need to be aware that there is a powerful and organized force that is trying, and succeeding, to compromise children's privacy: online marketers.

Few adults are aware of just how commercialized kids' online environments are. According to MNet's study Young Canadians in a Wired World, ninety-five percent of young Internet users' favourite sites contain commercial content. In many cases these sites blend advertising and entertainment in ways that would be unimaginable in other media. Embedded with images of logos and mascots, these sites use video, downloadable content and free games to build up exposure to branded material and inspire consumer loyalty. Knowing that kids' Internet time is largely unsupervised, they take advantage of children's inability to discern advertising from non-commercial content. MNet’s research shows that two-thirds of children surveyed who played advergames -- online games which contain branded content and serve as advertising for youth-marketed products -- did not recognize them as advertising.

The privacy concerns of these online environments arise from the data collection techniques that are used. These are found not just in overtly commercial sites such as Candystand but also popular children's sites such as Neopets. In nearly all sites aimed at youth, children must register to gain access to the full content -- giving up personal information they would certainly not tell a stranger offline. Moreover, many of these sites give incentives (such as the "Neopoints" needed to purchase items on Neopets) for completing surveys on such topics as one's favourite candy, breakfast cereal and so on. The result, for the sites' owners, is a wealth of valuable consumer data that can be used to shape marketing decisions, in the case of the overtly commercial sites, or sold to marketers for the same purpose by the others.

What should concern parents and educators is not that the information being collected by these sites is especially sensitive -- no-one can identify or track you by your preference for Hershey over Cadbury chocolate bars -- but that these information-gathering techniques train children to give up personal information without thinking about it. If they are accustomed to trading their privacy for what they want as children -- access to games and other online content or "Neopoints" to customize their online houses -- then they will likely do the same to buy the attention of their peers as teens. Of course, this can lead to unwelcome attention as well -- either at the time, in the form of embarrassment or humiliation when material meant to be private goes public, or later, when material is viewed by unexpected audiences such as employers or university admissions officers.

So does the term "privacy" even mean anything for today's youth? In fact it still does -- ask any teen if she'd want her mother as a Facebook friend and you'll learn that. What's changed is that we can no longer view privacy as an absolute: instead it has become a negotiation, in which information is traded in exchange for other things.

What parents and educators need to do is teach children and teens privacy management, the skill of making conscious and wise choices about what information to give out and why. Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing, part of MNet's Web Awareness Workshop Series, gives educators a detailed rundown of the privacy concerns facing youth today and provides strategies and resources for dealing with them. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has also sponsored a two-part lesson series, available for free download from both the MNet and OPC Web sites, that teaches students in Grades 7 to 12 how to balance maintaining their privacy with leading an active online life.

Resources

Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing, part of MNet's Web Awareness Workshop Series, explores current strategies for marketing to kids and the ways in which children's privacy may be compromised online. The workshop underlines how important it is for kids to know when they are being informed, entertained or marketed to online and also to understand how their personal information may be used. To see if your school, board or ministry has already licensed the Web Awareness Workshop Series, view our list of current licensees.

Privacy and Internet Life, a lesson for Grades 7 to 8 which teaches students how to protect their personal information on social networking sites such as Facebook, and The Privacy Dilemma, a lesson for Grades 9 to 12 which asks students to consider and discuss the trade-offs we all make on a daily basis between maintaining our privacy and gaining access to information services.

MNet's Media Issues page on Information Privacy contains background information on the ways information privacy is compromised online, Canadian and American privacy legislation, voluntary privacy codes in industry and how online marketers target children.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner recently launched a youth-oriented Web site titled myprivacy.mychoice.mylife which includes information on building a secure online identity, tips on protecting your privacy online and a blog on privacy issues.

There’s an old urban legend called “the water engine,” which tells of the discovery of a way to turn water into fuel. There are variations to the story – sometimes it’s tap water, sometimes sea water; in recent versions it’s specified the fuel is nonpolluting – but the ending is always the same: the invention is suppressed by the oil companies, either by buying the invention and burying it or by forcing the inventor into ruin and suicide. One reason the legend has persisted so long – it’s been recorded as early as the 1950s, and probably dates to the first time someone grumbled about the cost of filling up his car – is because it confirms something we already believe, which is that the oil companies are evil and would rather murder a man and doom the world than sacrifice a dime of profit.

Today, of course, we know better: instead of suppressing the invention, oil companies would promise to develop it – sometime soon. (Remember the ad that ends with a single drop of water falling from a car’s tailpipe?) Now the name of the game, whether ads are selling cars, computers, paper towels or electricity, is to promote your product as being environmentally friendly, if not now then in the near future. Just like the water engine, though, many of these claims evaporate on close inspection. 

The exaggeration of environmental claims is common enough to have a name, “greenwashing,” and to have provoked a backlash (The Guardian even has a column devoted to exposing it.) Few countries have specific regulations about what can be called “green,” but specific claims can be investigated; the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority received more than 500 complaints about environmental claims in ads in 2007. No product category is immune to the green appeal, from cars to household cleanser and even green bullets. Some of these claims are laughably thin – a Japanese SUV that’s advertised as being from the home of the Kyoto Accords – while some are harder to judge, such as claims by Procter and Gamble that washing dishes in a dishwasher uses less energy than washing them by hand. Green can be more grey in cases where the environmentally friendly option is simply less bad for the environment than its competitors, such as water that comes in glass bottles instead of plastic. (Those glass bottles, incidentally, don’t generally get refilled or recycled as bottles; instead they’re crushed for a variety of industrial uses.)

For high-end items, green is often more of a fashion statement than a genuine environmental commitment. Bamboo, for instance, is frequently touted as a green alternative to wood – it grows much more quickly, being a grass, and can be used to make paper or for many of wood’s other functions – but has found its most visible role as a veneer applied to high-tech items such as computers and stereos. It’s a visible (and stylish) way to say “I’m concerned about the environment” that recycled toilet paper just can’t match.

The biggest green fashion, of course, is for hybrid cars: automakers have retired their humble-but-honest gas-sippers and replaced them with design-conscious status symbols. Though you might brag about the mileage you get from one of these cars, they’re priced high enough that you’d have to be constantly driving to actually save money with them. Now automakers are scrambling to produce the next season’s fashion, which will make hybrids look old and dull, the all-electric hydrogen car. This is the car mentioned at the beginning of this article, which will have no emissions other than water, and be the quintessential green car – except  that the electricity it runs on has to come from somewhere, and in North America that somewhere is most often a coal-fired plant. If it’s not, it’s likely to be a nuclear plant or else a hydroelectric dam, which the James Bay Cree can tell you is not necessarily environmentally friendly. The electric car is really a tool for pushing the environmental costs of driving out of sight and, automakers hope, out of mind.

There’s no question that consumers are keen to buy green: a recent study shows that over three-quarters of consumers identified themselves as “green,” 71 per cent of those surveyed said they were interested in buying a more environmentally friendly car, and just over half had made a purchase they identified as green in the previous six months. The disparity between those numbers – half again as many people said they made environmentally sound purchases as actually did it – suggests that for many people green may be no more than skin deep. Many people, it would seem, are happy to greenwash themselves.

For those who are serious about making a difference through their purchases, though, it can be tough to tell which green claims are legitimate. It’s worth trying: in our consumer society, what we buy has more influence on the world around us than nearly anything else we do. (Depending on where you live, it may count more than your vote.)

As with all advertising claims, the best defense is critical thinking and an understanding of how ads work. Fred Pearce, in the Guardian’s “Greenwashing” column, suggests a number of warning signs to watch for: vague claims, use of “nature” imagery in packaging, and profiles of scientists on staff working on green projects. For teachers, MNet lessons such as Advertising All Around Us, Creating a Marketing Frenzy, Hype!, Scientific Detectives and the Marketing to Teens series offer a way to teach their students to view ads and advertising claims skeptically.

There are also a number of online resources available for the concerned consumer. The Competition Bureau and Canadian Standards Association has released an industry guide to making accurate environmental claims while the US Federal Trade Commission has prepared a report, “Sorting Out ‘Green’ Advertising Claims,” that clearly explains what different claims mean. Two Web sites, GoodGuide and Green Wikia, provide more information about specific claims and products. GoodGuide is a research-based site which studies and reviews products that make environmental claims, while Green Wikia is a collaborative “Wiki” project that aims to do the same thing. Both sites are free to use, and users can access GoodGuide’s data through mobile devices by texting a product’s UPC code.

With our own election coming soon, a new crop of Canadian political ads have been launched, and most of them are available online. Efforts to re-brand Stephen Harper have included spots where he, clad in a friendly sweater vest, talks about his love of family; the Liberals, meanwhile, created an uplifting, Reaganesque ad to sell their “Green Shift” policy.

The hottest media story in the past week has been the instantly infamous New Yorker cover portraying Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as terrorists. Though the Obama campaign has been measured in its response, media outlets – and particularly bloggers – have been vocal in their disapproval. Some have suggested that the cover crosses the line from satire into hate speech, while others accuse The New Yorker of giving ‘aid and comfort to the enemy’ by visually depicting the smears and misconceptions that have been aimed at the candidate.

As the adage puts it, sex sells, and even such venerable institutions as Newsweek have used it in such covers as June 1989’s “Hurrah for the Bra” (no picture, sorry). For editors, though, sex is a problematic way of creating controversy: too little and there’s no story, too much and your cover won’t be displayed. One solution has been to use images that are relatively tame in terms of exposure but controversial due to context. The classic example of this is Vanity Fair’s August 1991 cover featuring Demi Moore naked and pregnant. Despite the relative tameness of the cover image – it is less revealing than the average Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover – it led to widespread debate and, in some cases, outrage; in many places the magazine was covered or even pulled from shelves. The issue was not that Moore was naked but that she was pregnant: a sexualized “glamour shot” of a mother-to-be proved to be too much for some readers to bear.

Most magazine editors tread warily when dealing with religion, an inherently controversial topic. For those courting controversy, though, it is invaluable. One of the most infamous Time covers is the one at left, both for the message and the format. In an unusual move for Time  – which made its reputation presenting photojournalism – there is no image, only text. The text itself, red on a black background, is also unique. Most arresting, though, is the question it poses: Is God Dead? Writers like Richard Dawkins can still be provocative by raising similar questions today; in 1966 it was considered incendiary. Testament to the power of this cover is the fact that nobody remembers what the cover story was actually about: the Death of God movement, a loose group of theologians who were grappling in different ways with the apparent absence of God from the modern world. While the movement was quickly forgotten the cover was not, being widely referred to in such pop culture artefacts as the movie Rosemary’s Baby.

In the United States, of course, race is guaranteed to be the most controversial topic (as The New Yorker’s editor has no doubt learned). Race alone, though (except racial caricature), isn’t enough to cause a stir. But when it is combined with one of the other controversial issues, such as religion (as seen at left, in the April 1968 issue of Esquire titled “The Passion of Muhammad Ali,” where the boxer is portrayed as Saint Sebastian, riddled with arrows) or sex (as in the April 2008 cover of Vogue showing LeBron James clutching white model Gisele Bundchen in a King Kong-like pose,) race seems to act as an accelerant: what might be mildly controversial becomes very controversial.

 

  

 

 

 

 This may be where The New Yorker went wrong: underestimating just how much the messages about race, religion, patriotism and terrorism would add up to. There was no question they knew the cover would be controversial – as editor David Remnick told the Huffington Post, “What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's – both Obamas' – past, and their politics.” They likely did not guess just how controversial it would be, expecting it to draw the same amount of attention as some of Barry Blitt’s earlier satirical covers (the magazine has put a gallery of covers on its Web page, which you can see here.) Unlike the other covers, though – such as the one above satirizing George W. Bush’s relationship with Vice President Cheney – the cover combines controversial topics: besides the picture of Osama Bin Laden it brings religion into the picture by depicting Obama in a costume associated with the Taliban, and the issue of race is underscored by Michelle Obama’s Black Panther costume and the fist-bump greeting the two share.

That fist-bump points to the other reason why the cover’s controversy may have exceeded expectations: it was based on a news hook that did not remain news for long enough. Unlike in the issue at left, where readers could be expected to remember both U.S. Senator Larry Craig’s arrest for “foot touching” in a men’s room and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York, the Obama cover was based on something that faded quickly: Fox News host E.D. Hill’s referring to the fist-bump gesture – properly called, according to word maven William Saffire, a “dap” – as a “terrorist fist jab.” If that story had remained in the news it might have been clearer that it was Fox News, and other media outlets of a similar political bent, that were the targets of the cover’s satire.

• Do you think the New Yorker cover went too far in courting controversy? Why or why not?
• Do you think most people who see the cover will recognize it as satire? Why or why not?
• How do you think that this controversy will affect The New Yorker’s sales? Why?
• Compare the Obama cover to the two other New Yorker covers pictured above. Do you think Obama has been treated any differently from the subjects of the other covers? Why or why not?
• How do you think this controversy will affect the Obama campaign? Why?
•  Why do you think covers involving pregnancy and motherhood are so much more controversial than those that simply involve sex?
•  There are few recent examples of magazine covers that use religion to cause controversy. Why do you think that is?
•  Why do you think race is the most controversial topic of the three? Do you think that would hold true for magazines published in Canada? Why or why not?

What do you think might be the advantages and disadvantages of viral marketing? Are there products or services for which it might be more or less useful? Why?

Do you think the “Obay” campaign is likely to be a successful one? Why or why not?

Why do you think Colleges Ontario might have chosen to use a viral approach for this campaign?

Do you think that it is appropriate to have advertising that hides its true nature? Should advertising have to identify what it is? Why or why not?

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's New York Times Magazine includes its annual look at people who have died in the last year. One most people may not have heard of is Edward Boyd, who was responsible for marketing Pepsi to African Americans in the 1950s. He pushed for the use of professionals and ordinary African American families in ads, as opposed to just athletes and entertainers. It's an early example of how important media representation is to our identity: as the article's author, Rob Walker, puts it, "Perhaps the world depicted in advertising, then and now, was a fantasy, but part of Boyd’s thinking seems to be that it’s a fantasy that black consumers wanted to be part of — and would respond to. "

You can read the whole article here. Also in the same issue, obituaries of the inventor of the remote control and the first of the Phone Phreaks.

While critics of product placement in movies may joke that some films are so brand-heavy that the products are treated like characters, in the summer blockbuster movie Transformers, the products are the characters. The film features General Motors vehicles as the heroic Autobots, who receive as much screen time as any of the actors in the film, providing GM with one of the biggest product-placement opportunities ever for an automotive company.  

The use of GM vehicles in Transformers is just one example of the pervasive marketing practice of placing brand-name products in films, music videos and television shows. A good resource on product placement is the Brand Hype (www.brandhype.org) Web site which features articles and an extensive database of product placement examples. The site also offers a 37 minute documentary video Behind the Screens: Hollywood Goes Hypercommercial which tracks the rise in the movie industry of product placements, merchandising deals and tie-ins with fast food chains. For educators, there’s a downloadable companion study/teaching guide.

• Contact the TV station in question and address your concern with them.
  
• You should also send your comments to Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, and the Advertising Standards Canada using the complaint forms on their Web sites.
  
• Have the following information available when voicing your concern: 
          - the station on which it was aired 
          - the date and approximate time it was aired 
          - the name of the product    
          - why you think the advertisement is
             inappropriate or offensive.

• Contact the magazine or newspaper in question and the company that owns the publication.
  
• For Canadian publications, you should also contact Advertising Standards Canada, using the complaints form on their Web site. If you send a letter, you should enclose a copy of the offending advertisement.

• Is there an ad you would like to comment on? Share your comments with us.

• Prior to its release in 2006, Snakes on a Plane became a hot topic online for movie enthusiasts. Web sites, script excerpts and user-created sound bites popped up online to celebrate the film’s camp value alluded to in the film’s title. Capitalizing on the buzz, New Line Cinema added five days of re-shoots to incorporate fan suggestions. Among the additions was an expletive-rich catch phrase inspired from a user-created audio trailer and homemade song which was part of an online contest for the film.
   
• An online contest was also used to promote the upcoming 2007 summer release of Transformers. Dreamworks challenged people to submit dialogue for the popular character known as Optimum Prime. Visitors to the movie’s Web site then voted for the best phrase. Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimum Prime, recorded the top-10 winning entries. The top three entries where made into ringtones while the winning entry will be used in the film.
   
• In January 2007, the Vancouver-based film company Lionsgate, teamed up with the popular online teen community Habbo to establish virtual focus group testing. Habbo hosted ten animated shorts, based on the Habbo world. The short clips, nicknamed “Habbosodes” were created in a variety of formats by professional animation companies. The more than 70 million members of the Web site had the opportunity to cast their vote on whether or not Lionsgate should extend one of them into a feature length movie.

• At age 31, Beckham’s soccer skills may already be fading. He has only started in seven of the 25 matches for his last team, Real Madrid. Why do you think the Galaxy is more interested in investing in Beckham than perhaps bringing in a younger star?
   
• Can you think of other athletes who turned themselves into brands? For each one how would you describe their image? What words would you most commonly associate with them?
   
• Do you think an athlete’s integrity is compromised by endorsement contracts? Why or why not?

 
Extension Activity

• the products being endorsed
   
• the tone and message of each ad
   
• the amount of times you see each ad
   
• the time and place you encountered the ad (in the case of television note what channel and program it was advertised with)
   
• research and see if you can find the amount of money received by the athlete for their endorsement

• User-generated content is cheaper to produce. According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the average national 30-second spot in the U.S. costs $381,000.
   
• Contests for user-generated content increase the potential for viral marketing. Online videos that people find funny or unique are often shared via email. This is attractive for marketers because videos that advertise their product can be distributed at no cost.   
   
• User-generated content increases interaction with the product. Instead of 30 seconds of exposure from a traditional TV spot, participants in a contest could potentially spend hours focused on ways to promote the product.
   
• User-generated content is the hottest trend. Web sites such as YouTube and MySpace are among the most popular destinations online. So much so, that TIME magazine’s 2006 “Person of the Year” was “you”, as in all the people who contribute to user-generated media. 
   
• User-generated content increases volume of ideas. Doritos received over 1,000 entries for their contest. Some argue that a high volume grass roots approach can be a great way to harvest fresh ideas that will connect with the marketplace.  

• There are no guarantees on how the product will be portrayed. Users may choose to position the product in a way that could impact negatively on brand image.
   
• Lower production values; user-generated content is typically created for little money and may not be as polished as some companies want for their product.
   
• Users typically may be unfamiliar with advertising codes and broadcast standards. 
   
• Potential copyright and clearance issues; with user-generated content it is harder to ensure that all images and sounds are original or cleared for broadcast.

With the upcoming NHL All-star game and the NFL Super Bowl, as well as the recent announcement of David Beckham coming to a North American market, it is a great time to explore the topic of sports and advertising. Look for upcoming blog entries on the topic of ‘Sports and Advertising’ over the next two Thursdays.

 

Sid the Kid: The “new NHL” commercial superstar  

 

January 24^th marks the date of the 2007 NHL All-star game. The starting line-up for the game is selected by fans, and Pittsburgh Penguin Sidney Crosby led all votes to become the youngest player ever nominated to start. Crosby, anointed the next great one by Wayne Gretzky, is also on target to become the youngest scoring champion in league history.

 

The timing for a young superstar to emerge in the offensive oriented “new NHL” couldn’t be better—for both the league with its recent re-branding of a faster, more exciting game and those looking for commercial tie-ins—as Crosby is young, skilled and a hit with both fans and marketers. His list of endorsements includes Reebok, Sher-Wood, Telus, Upper Deck, Tim Horton’s Timbits Hockey and Pepsi (which includes Gatorade and Frito-Lay). His five-year deal with Reebok alone is worth $500,000 a year.

 
 

For Discussion

• Would you agree sports help young people develop positive values?
   
• What are some of the values we learn through sports?
   
• Like young people, advertisers also like sports. Can you think why?
   
• Think about the sports you watch on TV. What kinds of products do you see advertised?
   
• What traits make an athlete "highly marketable"?
   
• What sort of image does an athlete bring to products? Give examples of positive and negative sports images or sports figures. 

 

Deconstructing Tim Horton’s Commercial with Sidney Crosby

 

View Sidney Crosby’s Tim Horton's Timbit Hockey commercial and answer the following questions.

• What happens in the commercial? In what ways does it tell a story?
   
• Who do you think is the targeted audience for this commercial?
   
• What values are being promoted? How is this done? 
   
• What do you think is the message of the commercial? Do you think it successfully gets the message across?
   
• What technical elements does the commercial use to get its message across?
   
• How does this commercial appeal or not appeal to you?

Compare and contrast the Sidney Crosby commercial with Tim Horton’s other hockey themed commercial.

• Note how the commercials are the same or different by comparing the following:
  • Targeted audience
  • Messages
  • Values presented
  • Technical elements
  • Your overall reaction
     
• Companies take great care in developing their brand image—how people view and react to their company or product. How do these commercials create a brand image for Tim Horton’s? How would you define that image?
   
• How does a sports connection support this brand image?
   
• How does this brand image for Tim Horton’s compare with brand images of other companies in the fast food industry (i.e. McDonalds, Burger King)?

For lessons that further explore the topic of sports and advertising, visit the following links:

Favourite Sports and Athletes: Introduction to Sports Media
Sports Personalities in Magazine Advertising
"He Shoots, He Scores": Alcohol Advertising and Sports
Who's on First?  Alcohol Advertising and Sports - Lesson