Social Trends & TV Advertising

One of the best known sociological tools available to marketing professionals is The Yankelovich Monitor, an annual report which identifies the 52 most important social trends related to consumers' purchasing behavior. For example, some of the trends listed in the 1985 edition were physical fitness, reverence for science, female careerism, return to nature, antibigness, emphasis on winning, and away from clutter and complexity (Weinstein, 1987). Social trends like these are clearly reflected in the approaches TV advertisers take to persuade viewers to buy their product. For instance, there now seems to be a certain renewed patriotic feeling in America which advertisers have not been shy about tapping. Citibank's current ad campaign features the slogan, "Americans want to succeed, not just survive," while GM warns us, "It's not just your car it's your freedom," and Chevrolet proudly proclaims itself, "The heartbeat of America."

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s is the root concept behind much sociological research in marketing today. The market research program VALS (Values and Lifestyles) is what is known It a "psychographic" tool. Whereas demographics reflect facts about how people live, psychographics reflect how people see themselves rather than on how they really are (Rice, 1988). VALS divides people up into nine lifefstyle categories based on their needs, wants, beliefs, and attitudes, and provides the advertiser with a profile of each type. The different profiles are continually updated and tailored to the individual company's specific needs, and are supposed to give valuable insights into the target viewers' behavior as consumers. The VALS typology includes the need-driven survivors and sustainers; the outer-directed belongers, emulators, and achievers; and the innerdirected I-Am-Me's, experientials, socially-consciousness, and integrateds (Weinstein, 1987). So, if an advertiser knows that the main consumer of his product is a belonger who wants to be an achiever, he can design an ad which appeals to that profile i.e., for a car which has status but is still practical. Focus groups, photo-sorts, sentence completions, and diaries are some of the other methods social scie
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Approximate Word count = 1546
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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