"A good advertisement must do five things and do them all. If it fails in one, it fails in all. It must make people see it, read (listen/watch) it, understand it, believe it, want it."
--newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane, quoted in Jeannette Smith's The Advertising Kit, 1994
How much is advertising a part of your life?
Notice The Advertising In Your Environment
Choose one or more of the following activities. For one day, keep track of all the advertising you see and bring back your tally to your team. Graph the results and prepare a chart of your most interesting findings.
1. Average Time the TV is on in Your House
2. Average Number of Commercials, Per Hour
3. Average Time Viewer Watches TV per Day
4. Average Length of Radio Listening per Day
5. Time Spent Reading Magazines, per week
6. Number of Examples of Product Placement in Popular Films
7. Number of Ads for Movies in Videotape Rental Tapes
8. Number of Ad Posters in Convenience Stores
9. Number of Billboard or Outdoor Advertising Messages Seen, Per Day
10. Number of Ads Seen on One Half-Hour Internet Experience
11. Number of Advertising Messages Seen on People's Clothing in One Day
Discuss how your findings were affected by the method you used in counting and measuring. How might different methods produce different results?
- Average American sees 1,000 ads per day according to NBC special, "Sex, Buys and Advertising"
- Average U.S. citizen exposed to 32,000 ads per year Mark Dery, cited in Adbusters Quarterly
- Number of commercial messages seen by age 40? 1,000,000 ads, according to Neil Postman
Notice The Advertising In Your Environment
Choose one or more of the following activities. For one day, keep track of all the advertising you see and bring back your tally to your team. Graph the results and prepare a chart of your most interesting findings.
1. Average Time the TV is on in Your House
2. Average Number of Commercials, Per Hour
3. Average Time Viewer Watches TV per Day
4. Average Length of Radio Listening per Day
5. Time Spent Reading Magazines, per week
6. Number of Examples of Product Placement in Popular Films
7. Number of Ads for Movies in Videotape Rental Tapes
8. Number of Ad Posters in Convenience Stores
9. Number of Billboard or Outdoor Advertising Messages Seen, Per Day
10. Number of Ads Seen on One Half-Hour Internet Experience
11. Number of Advertising Messages Seen on People's Clothing in One Day
Discuss how your findings were affected by the method you used in counting and measuring. How might different methods produce different results?