Comunication between the manufacturer and the costumer is the key factor to be successfull in the world of business. Throughout the years the message has changed in shapes and travelled in many ways, from the paper to the radio, from television to the internet. People know about the products that are for sale thanks to advertising, commercials that are aired to millions and millions of people around the globe, the message is essential and it must be clear and easy to understand.
This is how it works:
A company wants to let people know that their products are good and fair priced. The same company asks an advertising agency to help them spread the word via all possible channels (tv, radio, internet, etc.). The advertising agency will create an image along with a theme (song usually) that needs to be catchy and easy to remember, maybe a jingle.
The advertising agency takes their creation and moves it towards the channels the company wants to promote their product. Tv station, radio station, and websites generates revenues paid from the company that wants to let people know of their product, the bigger the spread of the message the wider the range of future costumer that may buy the promoted product.
In the 20th century advertising turned from essential to stalking. The need to inform people about a certain product is not essential anymore, what is essential is the fad around it, the hype and the "cool" factor that comes with. You can see it for yourself. Check fashion magazines, they are just a big catalogue of printed ads, many of them barely focus on promoting the product essentially; intstead they enfasize on the "side dish" that comes with: body parts exposed, seduction, almost sex, quasi-pornography. Beer commercials with girl in bikini, the relationship between a bottle of beer and a woman is linked by a hidden message that is letting you know that if you buy their beer you can get those girls.
The harshest advertising is the one that targets teenagers and also that period before the teen years. Advertising gone wild is what happens when this type of age-range is at stake. Since it is also an age where the brain can understand and can absorb very well, advertising companies made it clear that wherever teenagers are going so will they. Think about the theaters where masses of young boys and girls pay to see a movie that has an average of 10 minutes of non-stop advertising before the beginning of the flick. Yes, they are paying to see commercials of products that they will eventually buy. It sounds like a scam! Well, it is in a certain way because the very same companies that are complaining about financial losses due to piracy and p2p activities, at the very same time are recovering their profits via advertising on the very same flim.
But commercials in theaters already existed before the internet and file sharing, we were staring at soft-drink and cool running shoes ads over ten years ago. So what does this looks like? It looks like that people may be fed up to pay to watch commercial before a movie that might even be a crappy one. It happened to me when I went to watch The Mist with some friends, almost 10 minutes of ads that were the prequel to a poor and stale film. I felt complaining and wanted my money back, but it was late in the evening and the only person in charge at the theater was the kid who cheked our tickets and sold soda.
In February 2003 a lawsuit against two cinema companies was made because their show times were starting later than claimed. This due to the presence of commercials, "...a breach of contract..." someone stated.Viewers have the right to know when and how much commercial is on the screen, since you are paying the full price of the movie ticket to watch it you should be warned of its presence.
In 2004 the volume of theaters advertising increased to 23%, for the value of $438 millions in the US, according to the Cinema Advertising Council. Advertising for a company is pretty cheap, the general rate is around $30 per screen per week for a 15 seconds commercial which will run once during the pre-feature program. The rate for government and non-profit organizations is $18.00 per screen per week. This for the period of one month, thus even for the small business owner advertising via a theater is affordable.
Piracy comes when a movie (for example) is being recorded with a camera in a theater and copied thousands of times for lucrative purposes when sold on the black market, then there is the p2p which is a sharing process of people that just make a copy without any lucrative final purpose. To the major producing companies the two cases listed above are the same. Unfortunately random cases where private citizens are charged and dragged into trials do happen, they can face thousands of dollars in fines that cannot afford to pay. So why are small individuals paying for the lucrative black market that has been around even before the birth of commercial internet? Simple, because these kinds of citizens are easy to spot and to scare.
Probably these underground networks are born to protest the fact that a simple movie shouldn't be charged with the full price of a ticket where advertising are continously run; and the fact that major motion picture companies ignore this does't mean that it will go away!
more info:
digital lifescapes, by David H. Deans
New York Times
Commercial Alert
