Puffery, Shock Ads, Subliminal Advertising, Weasel Claim
Puffery
In common parlance, the term “puffery” refers to praise that is excessive or dishonest. A promotional statement or claim that represents the author’s subjective rather than the author’s objective opinions is known as puffery in the legal system. A “reasonable person” would not accept such statements literally. The purpose of puffery is to create an overblown impression of what is being described and is most often seen in testimonials.
An article or narrative that exaggerates praise and often overlooks or downplays opposing opinions or evidence to the contrary is known as a “puff piece,” which is also an idiom for the journalistic type of puffery known as “puffery.”
Puff piece
An article or narrative that exaggerates praise and often overlooks or downplays opposing opinions or evidence to the contrary is referred to as a “puff piece” in the vernacular. Reviews of films, albums, or products (such as a new car or television set) occasionally may be viewed as “puff pieces” because of the reviewer’s actual or perceived bias: a review of a product, film, or event written by a sympathetic reviewer or by a person who has a connection to the subject of the review, whether through employment or other connections.
For instance, a sizable media conglomerate that owns both print media and record labels may ask a worker at one of its newspapers to write a review of an album that the conglomerate’s record label is putting out.
The reviewer’s financial connection to the product or entertainment business is not necessarily as transparent as a monetary payment. In rare instances, a select number of critics may get an invitation only to preview a new movie or have a test drive in a new sports vehicle. The reviewer may write a biassed review as a result of having privileged access to the product, either out of duty or out of worry that failing to create a “puff piece” may result in the loss of future preview privileges.
When reviewers are flown into the review venue, given posh hotel rooms, and served catered food and beverages during the review, the possibility for bias in invitation-only preview sessions may sometimes be significantly increased. The most extreme instances of this circumstance are when the firm provides all-expense paid tickets to Hawaii or Mexico and hosts the preview screening of the movie or the product launch there, rather than inviting the critics to the company offices or another appropriate place.
Puff pieces may be used specifically in health journalism. Alternative medicine providers could be prohibited from making claims by laws against misleading advertising, but they might be allowed to work with journalists who are free to publish anything they want thanks to rules protecting press freedom. It may be profitable to hire health journalists to produce promotional articles for a product that has no impact.
Shock Ads
Shock advertising, also called “Shockvertising,” is a type of advertising that “deliberately, rather than accidentally, shocks and offends its audience by breaking norms for social values and personal ideals.”
It is the use of “graphic images and blunt slogans” in advertising or public relations to bring attention to a public policy issue, a product, or a service. Shock advertising is mostly used to get people’s attention and create a buzz, as well as to draw people to a certain brand or bring attention to a public service issue, health issue, or cause (e.g., urging drivers to use their seatbelts, promoting STD prevention, bringing awareness of racism and other injustices, or discouraging smoking among teens).
This kind of advertising is often controversial, disturbing, explicit, and crude. It may also include bold and provocative political messages that go against what people usually think about how society works. This type of advertising may not only offend, but also scare people. It uses scare tactics and elements of fear to sell a product or spread a public service message, making a “high impact.” This mix of scary, gross, and/or offensive advertising is called “shockvertising” in the advertising world.
Many people think that Benetton, the Italian clothing store that made the line United Colors of Benetton and advertised it in the late 1980s, was the first to do this.
There are many reasons why shock ads can be shocking and offensive, and there are many ways that they can break social, religious, and political norms.
They can include breaking tradition, law, or custom (like using lewd or tasteless sexual references or obscenity), going against the social or moral code (like using vulgarity, violence, nudity, faces, or profanity), or showing horrifying, scary, or disgusting images or words (e.g., gruesome or revolting scenes, or violence). Some ads may be shocking, controversial, or offensive not because of how they say what they say, but because the products they are selling are “unmentionables” that shouldn’t be shown or talked about openly in public. Some of these “unmentionables” are cigarettes, products for women’s hygiene, and birth control. But there are many products, services, and messages that people might find shocking or offensive.
For example, ads for weight loss programmes, sexual or gender-related products, clinics that test for AIDS and STDs, funeral services, groups that want less gun control, and casinos that naturally support and promote gambling could all be seen as controversial and offensive. This is because the ads are selling products or ideas that some people might find offensive or disagreeable. Some shocking ads, like French Connection’s “fcuk” campaign, may also use bad or offensive language.
Advertisers, psychiatrists, and social scientists have been arguing about how effective shock advertising is for a long time. Some scientists say that shocking ads do, in fact, make people feel stronger emotions. One study found that “shocking content in an ad significantly increases attention, helps people remember things, and has a positive effect on behaviour.”
The same study also shows that people are more likely to remember shocking advertising than less shocking advertising. Shock advertising could also mean using funny, sexy, or scary things to get people’s attention. Humor has been the most common way to get a message across in advertising for a long time, and people who work in the field say it is also the most effective.
The theory of selective perception could also be used to explain how shock advertising works. Selective perception is the way that a person chooses, organises, and evaluates stimuli from the outside world to give him or herself meaningful experiences. This means that people pay more attention to some parts of their environment than to others. The consumer chooses unconsciously what information to pay attention to, and this choice is based on different perceptual filters that are shaped by the consumer’s past experiences. One kind of filter like this is perceptual defence.
Perceptual defence is the way people try to protect themselves from threatening ideas, things, or situations. This means that a message will be filtered out if a consumer finds a certain kind of advertising content scary or upsetting. One example of this is a heavy smoker who might not want to see a picture of cancer-sick lung because it might be upsetting or uncomfortable.
A subliminal message is a signal or message that is meant to be seen or heard but not fully understood. For example, it could be a sound that the conscious mind can’t hear but that the unconscious or deeper mind can. It could also be a brief image that the conscious mind doesn’t see but that the unconscious mind does. This definition assumes that there is a difference between what is conscious and what is unconscious, which may be misleading. It may be more accurate to say that the subliminal message (sound or image) is picked up by deeper parts of a single mind.
People have often thought that subliminal techniques are used in advertising and propaganda in the real world (e.g. party political broadcasts).
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard, which came out in 1957, was the first book to use the term “subliminal message.” This book told about a study of movie theatres that were said to have used “subliminal commands” to sell more popcorn and Coke at their concession stands. But the author of the study, James Vicary, later admitted that it was made up.
Subliminal perception or cognition is a type of unconscious cognition. Other types of unconscious cognition include paying attention to one signal in a noisy environment while keeping track of other signals (like one voice out of many in a crowded room) and tasks that are done automatically (e.g. driving a car).
In all of these cases, researchers have tried to figure out how much of the unattended or unconscious signal or message is picked up (unconsciously)—that is, if the whole message is picked up and understood, or if only its main and simplest parts are. At least two different ways of thinking about this exist. One of them says that only the simplest parts of unconscious signals are picked up. However, keep in mind that most research has only looked at the simplest parts of thought (rather than testing for complete comprehension). The second school of thought says that unconscious cognition is all-encompassing and that much more is seen than can be put into words.
Different kinds of research on subliminal perception have been done. For example, if patients who have been given anesthesia are completely aware even though they seem to be asleep or unconscious. Even though the patients say they don’t know what’s going on while they’re asleep, it’s clear from what they can remember after they wake up that information is being taken in without their awareness.
In the same way, studies of people with neurological damage show that people who say they can’t see certain stimuli, for example, still respond based on the information they get from those stimuli. For example, people with blindsight may not know that they are getting information from a part of their visual field that they think is damaged.
Subliminal Messages in Advertising
A form of subliminal messaging commonly believed to exist involves the insertion of “hidden” messages into movies and TV programs. The concept of “moving pictures” relies on persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement in a series of images projected at 23 to 30 frames per second; the popular theory of subliminal messages usually suggests that subliminal commands can be inserted into this sequence at the rate of perhaps 1 frame in 25 (or roughly 1 frame per second).
The hidden command in a single frame will flash across the screen so quickly that it is not consciously perceived, but the command will supposedly appeal to the subconscious mind of the viewer, and thus have some measurable effect in terms of behavior.
As to the question of whether subliminal messages are widely used to influence groups of people e.g. audiences, there is no evidence to suggest that any serious or sustained attempt has been made to use the technology on a mass audience. The widely-reported reports that arose in 1957 to the effect that customers in a movie theatre in New Jersey had been induced by subliminal messages to consume more popcorn and more Coca-Cola were almost certainly false.
The current consensus among marketing professionals is that subliminal advertising is counter-productive. To some this is because they believe it to be ineffective, but to most it is because they realise it would be a public relations disaster if its use was discovered. Many have misgivings about using it in marketing campaigns due to ethical considerations.
Weasel Claim
An informal name for words and phrases intended to give the appearance that something precise and important has been spoken, but in reality simply a broad or ambiguous assertion has been delivered, is “weasel words” or “anonymous authority.” The words “some individuals say,” “most people think,” and “researchers believe” are examples.
Using evasive language may enable one to subsequently reject any particular interpretation if the remark is contested since the language was never intended to be precise. Weasel words may be a sort of tergiversation and can be used in political speech and advertising to deceive or hide a prejudiced viewpoint.
A prejudiced or otherwise problematic comment might be softened or understated using careless language. Using words like “somewhat” or “in most ways” is an example of this since they add ambiguity to sentences that wouldn’t have it otherwise.
Forms
A 2009 study of Wikipedia found that most weasel words in it could be divided into three main categories:
- Numerically vague expressions (for example, “some people”, “experts”, “many”, “evidence suggests”)
- Use of the passive voice to avoid specifying an authority (for example, “it is said”)
- Adverbs that weaken (for example, “often”, “probably”)
Other forms of weasel words may include these:
- Non sequitur statements
- Use of vague or ambiguous euphemisms
- Use of grammatical devices such as qualifiers and the subjunctive mood
- Glittering or vague generalizations
