English Catchup

The purpose of any advertisements or commercials is to sell whatever they are trying to sell, be it a consumer good or service. In order to achieve this sole purpose, companies and enterprises will not hesitate to persuade, impose or even deceive the audience of the values and truth about their products. Some of them even go to the extreme of exploiting the stereotypes held in some people’s heads about other people or nations. A typical means of deception and exploitation is to take advantage of mass media. This is what a Chinese student has learned from the Audi car advertisement on ITV Meridian.

This short paper will look at the fore-mentioned Audi advert, its structure and working mechanism. To be specific, the paper will try to focus on the following two questions: 1). How is the advert structured, both visually and verbally? 2). How does the advert try to persuade the audience to buy the car?

Before getting into details, it has to be admitted that it is a great pity that the writer has not been able to view the beginning seconds of the advertisement, though he has tried every means possible to get a copy of it. The reason why the particular advert is still worked on is that the advert struck the writer as a cultural shock in the sense that mass media work in such a way in helping people understand and misunderstand other people and other nations. Such practice can only result in more misunderstanding between people from different countries and more negative and irrational stereotypes about other people and other nations we do not really understand.

2. A descriptive account of the advertisement

The advert is, supposedly, set in some newly rising township area along the southern-eastern coast in China. The actual location is hard to decide, and there is nothing typically Chinese except the make-ups of the people in the advert and the policemen’s Cantonese which is difficult to understand even to some native Cantonese speaker, (the writer asked two Cantonese speakers and both of them could not make out of what they are saying there). The geographical locale can be anywhere in Britain or any other places. The time period in the advert is also difficult to tell. The dress style of the only close-up of the lady seems to suggest that this is something happening in the long past, but the actual verbal message says “China is changing fast”, which indicates it is in the present. So, broadly speaking, the visual depiction of the advert could be somewhere along the southern-eastern coast in China where rapid changes are experienced. The advert (without the very beginning) is about thirty seconds long and it can be divided into four sections.

In order to find out how the advert begins, the writer asked ten people who said that they had watched it. Interestingly enough, two of them insisted that it begins with a voice-over like “this is based on a true event”; one said that there is not such a sentence; and the other seven could not remember how it begins at all. Anyway, the first section the writer has been able to see goes on in an ragged and worn-out fishing boat. The close-ups of the policemen kicking and shouting and the rapid cuts from shots to shots tell the audience that the police are examining the boat and that something suspicious may be going on. Their rude manner and quickly finishing the examination suggest that they are working for mere formality. This section ends with the police captain summoning up his crew and driving the police ship away.

The camera then cuts to an old man at the steering wheel of the fishing boat. The close-up of the man shows that he is wearing a white vest with bare arms. He looks at the camera cunningly and maliciously, not without conspiracy. This shot is followed by a full close-up of his hands on the steering wheel. Presumably, he starts the boat and begins a voyage. The camera then cuts back and forth from the boat heading forward on the water and something wrapped and dragged behind the boat, underneath the water. The second section ends with the boat pulling in to a small dock land where several people are waiting and the camera fades out.

With the last shot in the previous section starts the narration: “China is changing fast…”. The camera fades in to a place like a workshop (on the wall it says Zhi Zao Chang <in Chinese>) where a “Chinese” lady, in an old Chinese dress style, turns her head slowly towards the camera and looks into it. The way she is looking at the camera suggests that she may be part of the conspiracy. Then for the very first time, with the unzipping of the “package” now placed in the workshop, discloses itself the conspiracy: it is a smuggled car! The camera then shows a head-and-should picture of a man, presumably, the director of the smuggle and the owner of the car, who is already one step ahead of his fellow men. The narration that accompanies this section is as follows:
“Communism means consumerism, fueling people’s desire for advanced consumer goods. Some, however, are already one step ahead.”

The final section continues with a black screen with two lines of caption and the Audi logo in it.

The narration in the final section is: “Vorsprung durch Technic as they whisper in China”.

3. An analysis of the advertisement

Sean Brierley (1998), in analysing the techniques used in advertising and marketing, points out that in a time of media explosion, the “biggest problem” (p. 46) of advertising is how to grab the audience’s attention. He also indicates that in order to achieve this purpose, “unusual, amazing and entertaining advertising in used to attract the reader and fight against the advertising clutter” (p. 47). The Audi advert may be one of these “unusual, amazing” examples.

Judith Williamson (1978) insists that advertisements must consider two things: the properties of the product and the possible relationship between these properties of the product and the potential buyer. She says,
“Advertisements must take into account not only the inherent qualities and attributes of the products they are trying to sell, but also the way in which they can make those properties mean something to us. In other words, advertisement have to translate statements from the world of things… into a form that means something in terms of people”
The present advert is broadcast in England and the majority of the audience are certainly not Chinese people. Then, how does an advertisement, which says nothing explicitly about the “inherent” qualities and attributes of the car and nor anything about how it can affect the life of an English man who buys it, work in persuading English people to buy it? How is this meaning of things transferred to the target audience? What is the secret of the advertisement?

It seems that the secret lies in people’s (mis)understanding of China and Chinese people. This (mis)understanding has long been established, reinforced and fossilised into people’s knowledge through similar practices of the devouring mass media. Whenever China or anything connected with China is mentioned, the first but not necessarily correct reaction in people’s mind is: poverty, “red” communist party, cheap manual labour, Tiananmen Square ’89, etc. etc. because these are all that people have been told about China by the overwhelming mass media: news, films, advertisements and what-so-ever. There is almost a fixed formula of reasoning and persuasion taking place in people’s heads. The formula of this particular advert may run like this:
“I am going to buy the car because the Chinese are already buying it. They are so poor and……and even go to the extreme of smuggling the car into their country. I can’t let them be ahead of me.”
For those people who decide to buy the car immediately after watching the advertisement (if there are such people), this seems to be the only possible psychological calculation. There could be no other sounder explanation. Hence, the advert succeeds only by taking advantage of the stereotypes already existing in people’s heads. Let us look at the advert more closely.

The advert is very clever in grabbing the audience’s attention. The reader is kept in suspense all the way though until the end of the third section when the “package” is unzipped and the voice-over about China begins. The audience may have guessed that there is something secret in the boat but it is unlikely for them to ascertain what is exactly going on there until the very moment. Even the last shot in the final section, the sharp contrast between the “already-one-step-ahead” somebody who drives this Vorsprung-durch-technic Audi and the whispering common “poor” people who have to go with the open, noisy truck, still seizes the audience’s attention and people can not help asking how this rich man becomes so rich in the first place. His way of getting the car into this place may also be an indication of his doubtful wealth. The final verbal announcement of “Vorsprung durch technic” may suddenly awaken the reader that owning the car means that I am one step ahead of others, and it is a privilege. The reader may be seduced to make a decision, even an improper one, to buy the car disregard of his/her economic situation.

Stereotypes play an important role in facilitating people to understand and misunderstand other people and other nations. As pointed out by Satin Malik (1998), “stereotypes, in themselves, are not necessarily offensive or harmful, but the interests they can serve and the context in which they an be used have the potential to be precisely that” (p.311). in reality, most of stereotypes are used in a harmful and offensive way. The following list of definitions can well show the general tendency of the usage of stereotypes. A stereotype is defined as:
“a judgement or opinion formed beforehand or without due examination”;
___ Chambers English Dictionary 1988
“the prior negative judgement of the members of a race or religion or the occupants of any other significant social role, held in disregard of the facts that contradict it”;
___ Jones, J. M. 1972:61
“an over-generalisation about the behaviour or other characteristics of members of particular groups. Ethnic and racial stereotypes can be positive and negative, although they are more frequently negative”;
___ Cashmore, E. E. 1988:296
“the negative attitude, emotion or behaviour towards members of a group on account of their membership of that group”.
___ Brown, Rupert 1995:14
A common feature of these definitions is the “negative”, irrational characteristic in stereotypes, especially when they are used in actual contexts. Although, in theory, stereotypes are not necessarily negative, the stereotypes which prevail in mass media and which beset “so many societies in the world today and which so urgently requires our understanding is the negative variety: the wary, fearful, suspicious, derogatory, hostile or ultimately murderous treatment of one group of people by another” (Brown, 1995:7). Likewise, what the Audi advert works upon and reinforces is the derogatory treatment of the stereotypes of China. In other words, the advert succeeds in persuading only those people who hold the similar ideas about China and Chinese people and treat them in that particular manner.

The fact that seven out of ten people asked about the beginning of the advert could not recall what the beginning is like, incidentally, shows that people do not always remember everything in an advert. Perhaps people seem to recall the general idea or story or message which resonates with the already existing ideas or information about the particular subject(s), or object(s), in this case, the (mis)representations of China in their heads. In analysing the language of television advertising, Geis (1982) emphasises the importance of hidden message behind the television narration. He maintains: “a central principle of the theory of how people understand language is that we interpret what is said in the light of what the speaker might have said but did not” (p. 42). What is not said in the present advert already exists in the target audience’s heads and the only condition for these hidden messages to work is the visual and verbal stimuli which can trigger off the information in the readers’ bank of information. Although even people with little knowledge will agree that the definition of “communism” in the advertisement is not a truthful depiction, they are still easily and readily manipulated and manoeuvred and seduced into the decision of buying the car.

Ironically, it is difficult to ascertain whether or not the advertising agency knew the fact that there has been this joint venture between the German company and China for more than fifteen years, and China has been producing the Audi car for that long. The writer can not see any point in making up this so-called “true event” of smuggling. The writer can not help wondering if the advertising agency would have made the same advertisement at all if they had expected that Rolls Royce would be bought by the German company.

“Many of the criticisms fired at advertising are in fact criticisms of consumerism: the ‘spend, spend, spend’ philosophy of capitalism” (Myers 1986:129). It is interesting that the Audi advert asserts that “communism means consumerism”. Can the audience infer that there is not much difference between communism and capitalism in this respect? As Williamson (1978) puts it, “advertisements are selling us something else besides consumer goods: in providing us with a structure in which we and those goods are interchangeable, they are selling us ourselves” (p.13). By entering the world of a particular advertisement, gathering the scattered elements rather like a crossword puzzle, the audience identify with their own voice, and find their beliefs and ideas expressed, hence already halfway to buying it.

When can we see advertisements and indeed any forms of mass media clear of any stereotypes about other nations exploited in negative, derogative ways? Is advertising really like what Myers (1986) describes as
“sophisticated black magic, twentieth century Voodoo that appeals to our most base and animal desires for status, wealth and sex appeal”?

Bibliography

Brierley, Sean 1998. “Advertising and marketing: advertising and the new media environment”. In Adam Briggs and Paul Cobley (Eds), The media: An Introduction. Essex: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd. (p. 39-51)
Brown, Rupert 1995. Prejudice: Its Social Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell
Cashmore, E.E. 1988. A Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations
Geis, M. L. 1982. The Language of Television Advertising. Academic Press
Jones, J. M. 1972. Prejudice and Racism. Reading, MASS: Addison-Wesley
Malik, Sarita 1998. “Race and Ethnicity”. In Adam Briggs and Paul Cobley (Eds), The media: An Introduction. Essex: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd. (p. 308-321)
Myers, Kathy 1986. Understrains: the Sense and Seduction of Advertising. London: Comedia Publishing Group
Williamson, Judith 1978. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyers

Comments & suggestions welcome!