Advertising: Persuasive Techniques

1) What does John Berger suggest about advertising in ‘Ways of Seeing’?

John Berger in his seminal book Ways of Seeing (1972). Advertising offers us an improved version of ourselves, whether we are male or female.

2) What is it psychologists refer to as referencing? Which persuasive techniques could you link this idea to?

We refer, either knowingly or subconsciously, to lifestyles represented to us (through the media or in real life) that we find attractive. We create a vision of ourselves living this idealised lifestyle, and then behave in ways that help us to realise this vision. This could be linked to cynical manipulation. 

3) How was Marmite discovered?

German scientist Justus von Liebig discovered that brewer’s yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten. Marmite takes its name from the clay French stock-pot used for reducing foods into stews.

4) Who owns the Marmite brand now?

The product’s popularity prompted the Sanitarium Health Food Company to obtain sole rights to distribute the product in New Zealand and Australia in 1908. By 1990, Marmite Limited had become a subsidiary of Bovril Limited, which became Best Foods Inc. in 1998, and merged with Unilever in 2000; Marmite is now a trademark owned by Unilever.

5) How has Marmite marketing used intertextuality? Which of the persuasive techniques we’ve learned can this be linked to?

Marmite uses post-modernism to market their product. A common tendency in postmodern advertising is to refer to other media products. Marmite’s 2003 ad featuring Zippy from the children’s television programme Rainbow is a good example. In 2007 an 18-month, £3m campaign featured the 1970s cartoon character Paddington Bear. These adverts continued the ‘love it or hate it’ theme, but also incorporated nostalgic elements that appeal to the family member with responsibility for getting the grocery shopping done. Paddington Bear is shown trading his well-known marmalade sandwiches for Marmite sandwiches. He is shown enjoying the taste, while others are repelled by it. The ads are designed to encourage more people to use the spread in sandwiches – less popular than Marmite on toast. ‘Paddington has eaten marmalade sandwiches for 50 years. If he can change his habit, so can anyone,’ said Cheryl Calverley, Marmite marketing manager, on BBC News.

6) What is the difference between popular culture and high culture? How does Marmite play on this?

Royal Warrants of Appointment are acknowledgements to those companies that provide goods or services to the British royal family; since 1840, this approval has been used to promote products, with a warrant entitling them to use the strapline ‘By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen’ alongside the royal crest. Unilever has spoofed this approach, with the Ma’amite series of advertisements, typifying the irreverent nature of their product – breadsticks form a crown and the Queen’s corgi dogs replace the lion and unicorn. The motto ‘One either loves it or hates it’ is a delightful comic conjoining of the familiar product slogan and the Queen’s idiosyncratic speech.

7) Why does Marmite position the audience as ‘enlightened, superior, knowing insiders’?

Postmodern audiences arguably understand that they are being manipulated by marketing. They understand the conventions that are being deployed and satirised. Postmodern consumers are simultaneously aware that they are being exploited, yet also prepared to play the game – if it brings them a sense of superiority and social cache. Postmodern consumers get the joke and, in doing so, they themselves may become promotional agents of the product through word-of mouth.

8) What examples does the writer provide of why Marmite advertising is a good example of postmodernism?

The answer lies in its adoption of the ideas and tropes of postmodernism. From the 1970s, Marmite was promoted as a family product, passed from generation to generation. The marketing phrase ‘The growing up spread you never grow out of’ underlined the company’s 1978 campaign. The television advertisement detailed a mother’s family history through a sequence of still photographs; one showed her father serving in World War II to give the product a sense of continuity across generations.