Hello Friends,
It is good to be back on WordPress. This is my first blog post in over two weeks! Thankfully, my readers have been great and consistently generated more views by sharing this blog with their friends and family. My total views has now grown to be more than 330 hits. Although I still have a a lot of progress to make in order to get 1,000 hits, I am still confident that I can reach my goal, easy.
Reminder: Please continue to share, share, and share my link: www.deanfromsiena.wordpress.com.
The purpose of today’s Advertising class was to discuss the importance and relevance that visual communication has in the advertising industry. In today’s fast-paced society, an individual is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day! Since we are not super humans, we can not remember and recite all of the information contained in all 3,000 messages that we encounter throughout our day. Meaning that it is the job of advertisers to create a message that has the ability to grab one’s attention and stick in their memory. This concept is known as an ad’s stopping power. To effectively create the idea known as stopping power, many companies have turned to using visual communication. Visual communication is known to be twice as effective than textual or audio communication channels.
One way to maximize the impact of stopping power through visual communication is by photoshopping to enhance your message. We all know what photoshopping is and why advertisers use it (visual communication is twice as effective than other forms of communication). A lot of people often take issue with the use of photoshopping in our society and we will look at a few examples of photoshopping that have backfired on advertisers later in this blog. Photoshopping, however, usually has a positive impact on photography that many people many not even realize. It is most likely subliminal or under one’s threshold of perception. For example, the photoshopping technique allows visual messages to have the correct lighting and color scheme. This correct lighting of contrast, color selection, and saturation give the advertisers the power to prioritize, emphasize, and highlight exactly what they want their audience to see.
Axe Example:
As you can see in the Axe shampoo advertisement shown above, the color selection of every aspect of the advertisement (background, water, etc.) was chosen carefully to emphasize key components of their product such as brand name, packaging design, labeling, and brand quality. The precise selection of the color and brightness versus contrast was determined and executed through the use of photoshopping. Axe has seen the rewards from effective advertising as their stock price has increased 17% over the last quarter.
Now let’s have some fun and look at some results of sloppy photoshopping. It’s very funny to see!
In conclusion, there is a lot more that goes into photoshopping than just trying to distort one’s body image to make it more “socially acceptable.” When using photoshop, it is important to check for errors, because effective photoshopped pictures, as shown above, can have such strong stopping power. A simple error in photoshopping can lead to brand disloyalty and a lack of credibility to that brand. Even for the large, established brands shown above such as Ralph Lauren and Victoria’s Secret.
I hope you enjoyed my blog about the use of photoshopping. Stay tuned to see what I am talking about next week! See you then! Share my blog: http://www.deanfromsiena.wordpress.com
Best,
Dean Maloney From Siena
Dean From Siena College 