Advertising: Introduction to advertising blog tasks

Read ‘Marketing Marmite in the Postmodern age’ in MM54  (p62). You may also want to re-watch the Marmite Gene Project advert.

Answer the following questions on your blog:

1) How does the Marmite Gene Project advert use narrative? Apply some narrative theories here.

• The Marmite Gene Project advert uses narrative to play into the idea that it is a controversial product, utilising Levi-Strauss' binary opposition through the slogan 'You love it or you hate it' to push the identity of the brand in the cultural zeitgeist and also in this case as an action code to prompt audiences to go to Marmite's website and take part in a study with a Gene Test Kit. 

2) What persuasive techniques are used by the Marmite advert?

• slogan of "love it or hate it"
• emotional appeal by tying Marmite back to the consumers' identity.

3) Focusing specifically on the Media Magazine article, what does John Berger suggest about advertising in ‘Ways of Seeing’?

• John Berger suggested that "All publicity works on anxiety". Advertising aims to make audiences dissatisfied with their present lives and promotes the idea that they can buy products in order to better their lives.

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

• We refer to lifestyles presented to us through the media or real life that we find attractive. We create a vision of ourselves living in this idealised lifestyle causing us to behave in ways to help us actualise that vision.

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

• 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.

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

• Popular culture is everything to do with regular society and how the average person consumes while high culture is to do with the much more high brow aristocratic feelings and mannerisms and marmite plays on this by 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’ 

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

• It can be argued that postmodern audiences understand that they are being manipulated by marketing as they understand the conventions that are being used and satirised. Postmodern consumers are simultaneously aware that they are being exploited yet are also prepared to play the game. 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?

• Postmodern advertising, like the postmodern humour of programmes like Life Is Short, may transgress boundaries of taste in order to make audiences question notions of what is real and of value in society and so in the advertisements this is shown through the #Marmite neglect, Marmite’s 2003 ad featuring Zippy from the children’s television programme Rainbow, Unilever’s campaigns admit that not everyone will want to buy their product. Companies normally try to maximise their potential consumer-audiences, so to admit that this is a targeted niche product might seem to be against conventional advertising wisdom.