I Love English Majors

By Steve Shaner

As an Assistant Professor of Mass Communication, I loved having English majors in my Harding University Advertising classes. Before starting as a professor in 2008, I never really understood why somebody would want to major in English for a career path, unless of course they were planning a career as an English teacher. In my naiveite, other than correcting my grammar, I just didn’t have the vision of what an English major could do for our culture and society as professional communicators.

I was so wrong! I learned quickly why English majors were such a treat and a blessing to other professors of various disciplines. As a communication professional I found that English majors usually had a better skill set for; listening or reading, processing what they heard or read, comprehending content and context, and then re-communicating, in speech or prose, what they just learned. That is a skill that many professional communicators and students alike simply don’t have.

Majoring in English at Harding University required a student to also declare or select a ‘minor’ in a different academic discipline. From time-to-time I had an English major walk into my Introduction to Advertising class, and I always wondered why?

To be sure, I welcomed them in with open arms. I wanted to spread the love of advertising and maybe even find some future advertising professionals. I was always excited to see what these English majors had to say as soon as my first writing assignment came back to me.

My Introduction to Advertising class required four short essays (500 words) to be written on a pre-assigned subject relating to the current landscape of advertising. I explained that this is an opinion column, so don’t be afraid to editorialize. Tell me what you really think. Write at least 500 words and no more than 600 words. Use good journalistic writing skills. I always finished the assignment instructions of this essay by explaining my Mantra of Good Communication Skills – “Read/Listen-Think-Write-Rinse & Repeat.”

As you might expect I got a wide variety of writing abilities, thought provoking opinions, and “just-get-me-through-this assignment-quickly” essays. I loved reading them! Doing so really put me in the minds of these young and budding communication professionals.

I’d like to show you two different essays written by the same student about 12 weeks apart. They were written in 2013 but they always stood out in my mind as such an amazing way of clearly articulating my Mantra of Good Communication Skills. I want to clearly state this are not my writings, but that of one of my former students. I won’t give you the students name, because even though I tried to find them for permission to post this, I simply couldn’t locate them. When and if I ever do, I will either edit this post to reflect the students name and credit, or take it down to agree with their wishes.

The first essay assignment was due four weeks into the class and was, “After reading the textbook assigned readings and listening to the class lectures, has your view of advertising’s social role changed? Make a list of arguments in favor of advertising and contrast it with a list of arguments against advertising.”

Sinking the Hook

I don’t watch much TV, so when I do, most of the ads I see I’m seeing for the first time. And like movie trailers, which are always so engaging the first time you see them, but become grating after two viewings, these fresh ads are often riveting. They really are the shortest of short films. Nothing makes me feel like a more sophisticated consumer then picking apart the hooks of an ad as it tries to sink them in. But after reading the first chapter of our text, I realize that I am far from the only one to recognize the power advertising wields in our society. Anyone interested in communication should look to ads first as a direct line into the public consciousness. And with this power in the hands of those with a specific agenda – selling a product – it is inevitable that it is used admirably and dubiously in equal measures.

As mentioned in the book, advertisers will be never of their own accord draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable manipulation of the consumer. As recently as 1990, the government has been compelled to pass legislation limiting what can be advertised on children’s television. The younger audience is highly impressionable to repetitive suggestion, that investigation revealed – much more so than a skeptical adult audience. It took intervention on the highest level to get the advertisers to act responsibly toward this audience with no defenses and little discrimination. And though I do believe all responsibility for what a child views ultimately falls on the parent, it is in everyone’s interest, even short-sighted advertiser’s, to treat their consumers (and future consumers) fairly.

The benefits of our advertisement-soaked culture are palpable, too. With the incredible proliferation of culture, to have anything which reaches a truly all-inclusive audience is rare. The Internet is littered with niches and sub-niches. Advertising, by virtue of its ability to reach a simultaneous audience of millions on television and a gradual audience of (potentially) tens of millions online, bridges all these niches more effectively than anything else. Despite how commonly it is viewed as superficial, advertising unites communities at all levels. A wildly popular book, or game, or movie, might have been viewed by half or even three quarters of a given group of people, but the most popular advertisements at the moment will have been viewed by nearly everyone in that group.

Although it may be justified, it’s just not practical to blame advertisements for doing what they set out to do well, even if it irks our morals. The solution to an epidemic of cooks chopping of their fingers is not duller knives; it’s better cooks. As a Christian, I believe strongly in free will, but I also believe that it is a personal responsibility to preserve that freedom from external influence, whether that influence is false doctrine or a clever deodorant ad. And considering the gems that the freedom of the medium has produced, I hope that we are never compelled to limit any further what an ad can or cannot do.

The second essay posted here was assigned as part of the final exam and asks, “Does our modern media create our culture and thus lead us, or does it simple reflect our culture from where we are already situated?

Passing the Blame: Advertising and Culture

Since the advent of mass media with the newspaper centuries ago, the public has had to deal with the reality of advertising. It has only become more pervasive since that humble beginning, expanding into new mediums – radio, film, television – and entwining itself so tightly to each of them that sometimes it can be hard to tell the content from the advertisement. We’re reached a bizarre saturation point, a point where watching the Super Bowl for the commercials is so common as to be cliché. Anyone you ask would say that there are too many advertisements on TV right now, but it doesn’t keep anyone from watching. New generations are raised under a barrage of flashing images and sounds telling them what they need. It must have an effect. This has been happening for decades, though. Over and over again, the generation raised under that barrage has grown up to create that barrage themselves.

Advertisers are people too, exposed to and influenced by ads just like the rest of us. So how does it work? In the push and pull between advertising and culture, who is doing the pushing?

It’s easiest and most comfortable to lay all our problems at the feet of the media. They are the source for the vast majority of the information we receive day to day, so it follows that we blame media sources if we don’t like the information we’re hearing. This extends beyond the content that those sources create and into the advertisements they host. When an ad seems to be selling a product based on sex appeal, or promotes a certain kind of lifestyle, those of us who don’t approve of those things have ourselves a nice, long sigh and lament the state of modern America. But the crucial thing, the thing we don’t know, is if that ad is selling the product. It’s not selling it to us, certainly, but what about its target audience? If that risqué ad does, in fact, convince to them to buy that product, then our lamentations are perhaps justified. But what if, as is so often the case, it doesn’t? What if those immoral heathens are just as ambivalent as we are? Well, then we’ve assumed the question. A dirty ad only represents a dirty culture if the culture accepts it. Most ads aren’t very effective – there’s just too many for more than a handful to stand out. That dark and steamy lingerie ad doesn’t say a thing about the state of female self-image in America if not a single woman buys the lingerie because of it.

As hard as ads try, they almost never create culture. At best, they are accurate representations of it. Looking at advertising as a creative medium, it has certainly had an impact, but an overwhelming majority of advertising falls very low on the creative spectrum. Even if an ad is actively trying to create a new niche to fit into, a new concept to associate itself with, simultaneously explaining something new and meaningfully evoking it is nearly impossible. Creating culture requires time and concentrated effort – films, TV shows, books and music all fill these requirements. Advertisements have trouble passing this bar because they have so little time, and all their effort goes in to selling a product. A legitimately culture-creating advertisement would need to at least set itself up, meaning thousands or millions of dollars spent on advertisements that don’t directly sell a product. That is unthinkable for any organization. In many ways, the same capitalistic drive that makes advertising so suspect is also a safeguard against manipulation on too large a scale. When it comes down to it, an ad isn’t going to do anything that won’t help it sell. It is enormously more effective to play off of existing culture, to appeal to existing concepts and pre-established norms then to try and create them from scratch.

Advertising is easiest and cheapest when it is derivative. Thus, an overwhelming majority of advertising is exactly that. While it certainly has the potential to create culture, potentially negative or positive, it is rarely utilized to that end. For those of us concerned about the influences it has on us and upcoming generations, it’s important to resist laying all the blame for our societal shortcomings at the feet of a single factor. Civilization existed before modern advertising, flaws and all. If we see something we don’t like in an ad, we have to remember that it is only a reflection: the real culprit lies somewhere in the sprawl of modern culture.

Did I say how much I love English majors in Advertising?