Final Creative Project: Awe in Advertising

Here's the link to the playlist:

Awe in Advertising

So many ads. So little time.

This is the story of how my paper came to be. I had a really hard time figuring out what I wanted to write my paper about. The things that I was interested in didn't seem like they could be worked into a full-sized paper. It wasn't until we had to do our curating assignment that I really started to figure out that I wanted to write about awe in advertising. I started to notice a pattern in my gathering. I was drawn to the videos that were about humans. Basic human truths. Some of the things I picked up for that assignment were advertisements. At that point, I decided to see what I could do with ads.

I started researching and reading up on advertising. I went to Professor McKinlay in the communications department to ask him about my idea. Honestly, I didn't know very much about advertising, and so most of my work in the beginning was getting a handle on the subject. At that point, I gave my first creative prototype to the class in the form of a Powerpoint presentation.

My ideas continued to evolve with input from my classmates and Dr. Burton. I think it was +Amber who gave me the idea to look at spectacle and the making of awe in movies by recommending this TED talk to me. And +Shelly introduced me to the type of commercials that elicit awe through shocking images like the meth commercials. +Amber's post on propaganda helped me move into historical examples of eliciting awe from an audience, and Dr. Burton lent me a few books about the subject of propaganda and persusasion.

At that point I researched, wrote, and watched far too many hours of commercials trying to find the right ones for my paper. It was harder than I thought to find ads that fit within the categories I'd set up for myself. For instance, the length of commercials I was looking at originally were too long for most television spots. Maybe they were made for online-only viewing. But I picked a few that I thought worked well enough for a paper. And finding my venue really helped me move forward to the point where I could put out a finished product.

My creative project is still coming together, but it will be done by Saturday. I will probably just show those four ads that I used in my paper and the clips of me explaining some things via a youtube playlist.

It's been a great experience reaching outside of my comfort zone in this paper. I learned a lot about a subject that I probably would never have looked at. More valuable than that has been the experience of working as a team with my classmates as we all critiqued one another's work and made research suggestions. It was a good exercise, and it has been fun to see how everyone's papers and projects have evolved from the beginning of the class.

Final Draft: Awe in Advertising

Here it is!

Awe in Advertising

Advertising venue information

1. Venue Research and Reading Report
   In preparation for writing my paper, I skimmed over these articles from the journal: "Classic Campaigns - “You Know When You’ve Been Tango’d” The Orange Man Commercial," "There Are No Ugly Women, Only Lazy Ones": Taiwanese Women's Social Comparison with Mediated Beauty Images," "Dance in Advertising: The Silent Persuader," and "Reading Grotesque Images in Advertising: a Re-inquiry."
2. Venue Title and Sponsoring Organization
   The title for the journal is "Advertising and Society Review." It is published by the Advertising Educational Foundation.
3. Call for Papers and Dates (for submission, and for event/publication) I couldn't find a submission deadline. The submissions guidelines simply ask for papers to be emailed to the editor of the journal, so I'm guessing they take submissions year-round. It is published quarterly online.
4. The link to the page: Advertising and Society Review
5. Topic
   This magazine "is the first scholarly journal devoted entirely to advertising and its relationship to society, culture, history, and the economy." I've looked over the other articles on the website, and it seems like my topic fits within this description.
6. Length
   There isn't a specified length, but it looks like most articles fall between 5,000 and 9,000 words. I'll shoot for about 5,000.
7. Formatting
   The paper needs to be in a word document and formatted according to The Chicago Manual of Style's humanities style. The articles generally have over 20 or 30 sources each, which might be more than I'm using, but oh well. The submission guidelines ask that video material is submitted as MPEG files.
8. Tone & Rhetorical Approach
   The articles are generally formal and don't mention the author or the author's perspective. However, a few of the articles include anecdotes to introduce the topic or illustrate a point.
9. Social Media
   I couldn't find them on twitter, google+, or facebook. I also couldn't find any hashtags about them.

Audiences for Awe and Advertising

Social Proof:

• Professor McKinlay in the communications department. I brought my ideas to him when I began writing my paper, so he already knows a little about the direction I'm trying to go in. It would be good to get feedback from someone who knows much more about advertising than I do.
• BYU ad lab. Same reason as the one above. They could let me know where I have weaknesses in my paper and creative project.
• Google+ community: The Art of Advertising. "Advertising can be magical, creating emotion and conveying information in a single image or a few seconds of video. This community is dedicated to sharing, discussing and appreciating the art of advertising. Professionals and fans alike are encouraged to share the ads they love, and chime in on why these ads are great."

Paper Venues:

I finally picked a journal that I want to submit my paper to! It's called Advertising & Social Review. It's an online journal that takes a multidisciplinary approach to trends in advertising and how those trends relate to society, culture, history, and the economy. Because it's published online, I'm allowed to embed commercials directly in my paper (which is perfect). The journal seems to be flexible on the submission length, but most of the articles I've seen fall between 5,000 and 9,000 words. I'll shoot for about 5,000.

Paper Outline for Awe in Advertising

I'm a little slow in getting this up, but it should give a better idea of where I'm going with this paper.

• Introduction: I plan to spend a little time describing a few of the commercials that have exhibited awe in its different forms. (Possible commercials: Samsung Bridge of Life, P&G Best Job, Zero Fatalities Twist). I will discuss the fact that great advertising is often characterized by the same terms that works of awe are characterized by. 

• Sources: 
• The Advertising Concept Book by Pete Barry.
• Longinus's On the Sublime

• Terminology Discussion: What do I mean by "awe"? What kind of advertising would try to elicit this emotion from the audience? 

• Sources: 
• Emotion in Advertising by Agres et. al.

• When and Why Advertisers use awe. Bring up the points of Transactional v. Brandbuilding Ads. Discuss Creative Brief.
• How is it done? Discuss specifics like shock and awe.
• Audience: Connection to Propaganda, Jung?, Barry's acronym SLIP IT (smile, laugh, informs, provokes, think)
• Theatrical Timing: ...
• Effects: ...
• How it goes wrong. Discuss mistakes that advertisers make in commercials generally and awe-commercials specifically. (Bring up Coca Cola commercial?)

• Sources
• Longinus
• Emotion in Advertising by Agres et. al.

• How does it compare to other types of commercials in meeting objectives of persuading viewers and getting them to remember?
• Sources
• Emotion in Advertising by Agres et. al.
• Trends: Discuss effectiveness of the technique and whether it is something that is going to stick around in advertising.

• Adage

• Conclusion

The prototype

Here is the presentation I gave in class on Friday. It's still pretty rough, and it might be changing to a youtube playlist with videos of me talking interspersed throughout the list. Another option would be a voice-over presentation. I'm worried that it's not very interesting. There are also quite a few video clips and commercials that I would like to show, so maybe a youtube playlist would work better.

Here it is: Awe in Advertising

Thanks, guys!

Publishing Venues

Here are a few venues for publishing my awe in advertising research:

1. Center for Culture and Cultural Studies (CCCS) Conference. This looks very interesting. The conference is in Macedonia though, so I don't know how feasible this kind of conference submission is. It's worth looking into though. According to their website, "The aim of this conference revolves around a foundational impetus to shed greater light on all relevant aspects of media studies, including mass communication, media technology, the visual and the performing arts, TV, radio, WEB and print media, as well as other key components of media studies and mass communication."

2. Media, Culture & Society. This journal's focus is "on substantive topics and on critique and innovation in theory and method." It encompasses both research and discussion on current topics and technology in media. I think that it would encompass my work on awe in advertising.

3. Crosscurrents. This is a section within Media, Culture & Society. It deals primarily with discussing trends in media and direction for future research. 

4. Journal of Visual Culture. This journal crosses the boundaries of many different types of media, including television. I'm assuming that this includes advertising, but I'll have to look into it some more. It seems to be a venue where ideas and issues are discussed rather than hard data, which seems like a good match for my research.

5. Journal of Consumer Culture. According to their website, this journal is interested in "supporting and promoting the continuing expansion in interdisciplinary research focused on consumption and consumer culture, opening up debates and areas of exploration." Advertising deals directly with consumer culture. My research will show how awe is connected to that consumer culture, so this seems like a good fit.

6. Advertising and Society Review. This journal is devoted to "advertising and its relationship to society, culture, history, and the economy." I don't think my paper will necessarily be full of statistics, so any journal that requires hard data and research would be out of the scope of my work. I think this journal is a good match for my type of paper.

The Collective Unconscious and Awe

The Theory

After our class discussion on Monday, I began thinking about how people who hope to create awe in others might be able to do so through an appeal to Jungian archetypes and the collective unconscious.

Jung defines the unconscious as

"everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious" (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 185).

He states that there is a personal unconscious, but also a deeper collective unconscious:

"In this 'deeper' stratum we also find the . . . archetypes . . . The instincts and archetypes together form the 'collective unconscious.' I call it 'collective' because, unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of regular occurrence" (p. 133).

Connecting and Exploring

My awe of the digital world stems from how it enables people to transcend boundaries, connect with other people, and explore their own identity. Some would argue that it is this trait of the digital world that is actually distancing us from one another. In many cases, online interaction between people does create problems. But the phenomenon of digital connection is two-sided. It is also amazing and worth looking at. Especially since it is so prevalent and necessary to so many people's lives and livelihoods--for better or for worse.

1. Phone and Chat Services

While I was in China, I was able to connect with my family in Utah using Skype, a free computer-based phone and messaging service. Not only was I able to call my friends and family on the other side of the world, but we could use our laptop camera to actually see one another. Skype isn't the only computer phone service out there. Tokbox is another a web-based chat and video service. It offers some really cool chat and video communities where you can talk to experts about everything from selecting the perfect golf ball to online appointments with medical specialists. One of these communities is all about connecting baseball fans to their favorite players through the "chatting cage."

"If you have a question, you should be able to look someone in the eye and ask it. Chatting Cage brings that opportunity to life for sports fans in a way they may never get to experience otherwise."– Brad Iversen, Edward Jones CMO

These services also allow businesses to connect through conference video chats that would never have been possible without digital technology. It's amazing to me.

Sanctuary in a Far-Off Place

I was sitting on my bed one evening in Zhongshan, China. The end-of-summer heat had driven me to a restless wakefulness even though it was getting late, and I was exhausted from a long day of teaching. My sole companion was an abridged version of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I’d been picking at it for a few weeks, and I was only halfway through. I probably would not have cracked it open that night if I had been able to fall asleep with the rest of the world. (Even in its abridged format, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is not exactly what I’d call light reading.)

It was during one of those long, dark hours that I read this scene:

No one had yet noticed, in the gallery of the royal statues sculptured immediately above the arches of the great door, a strange spectator, who until then had been watching all that had been going on with such absolute passiveness, a neck so intently stretched, a face so deformed, that, but for his clothing, half red and half purple, he might have been mistaken for one of those stone monsters through whose mouths the long gutters of the cathedral have disgorged the rains for six hundred years. . . . All at once, just as the hangman’s assistants were about to carry out Charmolue’s phlegmatic order, he straddled the balustrade of the gallery, gripped the rope with his feet, his knees, and his hands, and slid down the facade like a raindrop rolling down a pane of glass. With the speed of a cat that has leaped from a rooftop, he darted toward the two executioners, knocked them down with two enormous fists, picked up the gypsy with one hand, as a child does a doll, and with one bound was inside the church, holding the girl above his head, and crying with a loud voice, “Sanctuary!” . . . 

“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” repeated the crowd, and the clapping of ten thousand hands made Quasimodo’s one eye sparkle with pride and joy. . . . 

Quasimodo had stopped under the great door. His large feet seemed as solidly rooted to the floor of the church as the heavy Roman pillars. His great hairy head was sunk between his shoulders like that of a lion, which too has a mane, but no neck. He held the young girl, all palpitating, suspended in his calloused hands, like a piece of white drapery; but he carried her so carefully that he seemed afraid of bruising her or breaking her. It was as if he felt that she was something delicate, exquisite, and precious, made for hands other than his. . . . The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. . . . 

And then there was something touching about the protection offered by a creature so deformed to one so unfortunate—one condemned to death saved by Quasimodo. Here were the two extremes of physical and social wretchedness meeting and assisting each other. . . .
At last he made [an] . . . appearance atop the tower of the great bell. There he seemed to show proudly to the whole city her whom he had saved, and his thundering voice, that voice which was heard so rarely, and which he never heard, repeated three times with frenzy, even to the clouds, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” . . . 

“Noël! Noël!” screamed the crowd, and this immense acclamation was thundered to the opposite bank of the Seine. (344-46).

This chapter (Book VIII, Chapter 6) took me completely by surprise. It was beautiful, and I was swept up in the emotion of the scene. I even found myself crying “Santuary, Sanctuary!” with the crowd. But more than that, there was the description of Quasimodo and La Esmerelda. Hugo’s juxtaposition and intense (verging on erotic) description of two people who couldn’t be more different in appearance, but who were united in the extremity of their circumstances, was a profound image to me.

Now completely unable to sleep—the emotion of the book still pounding in my head—and curious, I decided to try to find the Disney interpretation this particular scene via YouTube. I had low expectations, only remembering bits and pieces from a childhood viewing of the film, but again, I was pleasantly surprised. The intense music and beautiful artwork of the film took the emotions of the book and expanded on them. I don’t know what it was—maybe it was the fact that it was late and I was therefore more susceptible to emotion, or the fact that the book had set me up for a feeling that the movie built on—but the combination of the book and movie pushed me into a state of speechlessness and awe. The hair on my arms stood up, and tears came to my eyes. To be honest, my reaction freaked me out a little.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have expected something like this to happen. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a Gothic novel. The Gothic genre is often characterized by its appeal to the sublime through a depiction of extremity of feeling, setting, the supernatural, or the spectacle. Add to that the terror of impending pain and death in the text (something Burke would insist on), and you have all the makings of a transcendent or sublime experience. This scene is entirely founded on spectacle—the penance of a witch was a public event intended to be witnessed and participated in by a large crowd (including the reader); Hugo describes the descent of Quasimodo and the rescue of La Esmerelda in nearly theatrical terms; and the juxtaposition of the two characters is intended to evoke a sense of profundity in the reader. Although Disney changed much of the original story, they kept Hugo’s spectacle intact. The music adds an element that pushes the viewer into a state of awe.

Sitting on my bed that night, I didn’t fully understand why I’d felt awe. Upon further reflection of the event and the way I felt, I now realize that I’d been manipulated by the classic tropes of Gothic literature and film. Even knowing this, I still hold that moment in high regard, and look back on it as a time when a confluence of media was able to touch me. Whether I was in Zhongshan or Paris that night, it didn’t matter. I’d felt what it was to declare “sanctuary” in front of a crowd of thousands, and it was sublime.

Many facets

Life in a Day

I referenced this movie in one of my wonder journal posts. For those who don't know what this movie is about, it is a compilation of film submissions from people all over the world--just doing the normal things they do in a day--all on the same day. They also answered a few questions about general subjects that people have to deal with.

I watched it while I was in China teaching English and thought it was fantastic. Actually, I might not have felt the same amount of wonder if I wasn't in China. Since I was already in a setting where I was experiencing a different version of life than the one I was used to living, I could relate better to the great variety of people and lives represented in the film.

I have always felt a sense of awe and wonder at the multi-faceted experience of humanity. It's one of the reasons why I decided to study English. I only have my one life with its limited perspective. But every book I read represents another person's life and experience. Every book is another facet of what it means to be human. This film represents so many facets in one place. It's amazing to me.

Dr. Burton raised the question of how much time we need to invest in something to experience this feeling of awe. I've thought a lot about it since hearing the question, and it wasn't until Paul's presentation on video games this morning that I was really convinced of my answer. I found Paul's presentation extremely interesting, but I don't think I felt the same awe that he did as he played the game. I'm not knocking on the idea that video games can inspire awe, or on Paul's presentation. I think that if I had invested the amount of time and emotional energy that he had as a player, I would've felt a similar sense of awe. I think any awe is preceded by either a context that supports the feelings of awe, or by an investment of time or emotion that leads to awe. And whether mere context can inspire awe, or if it is dependent on that investment is specific to the type of experience. If I watched Paul's presentation in a imax theater, maybe I would've felt more of the emotions I'd attribute to awe because (for me) some of the awe comes from the music and graphics. Not so with the Life in a Day film. I think the awe is dependent on knowing how much footage went into the making of the movie, partaking in the massive variety of experience represented, and viewing it through the lens presented in the film (as a tribute to humanity). To experience awe, the movie requires a bit of time. (And it probably doesn't hurt to watch it in a foreign country.)