Aesthetic interpretation of advertising image

People often ignore the study of the deepest and core issues, which is the study of "advertising image". But in fact, advertising image is a very important topic, and western scholars even call it the center of contemporary culture. It can be said that to understand the profound connotation of advertising, we must first understand the profound connotation of advertising image; To understand the profound significance of advertising to contemporary culture, we must first understand the profound significance of advertising image.

The so-called advertising image is completely different from the "literary image" and "character image" that we often say. It is the product of cultural industry. From the perspective of cultural industry, advertising image refers to a kind of "likeness", and French scholar Foucault once put forward a famous concept: "reproduction". "Copy" is a concept opposite to "simulacra". The former is an imitation of the original and will always be marked "copy". As for the latter, it was first used by the French, referring to those fakes without the original. Its characteristic is to eliminate the traces of personal creation, and people often emphasize that it is disloyal to the original, but malraux pointed out that large-scale reproduction just reveals some neglected aspects: details or new perspectives. Berger, a Swiss modern art critic, pointed out: "Our most powerful ideas have lost their support. Replication is no longer just repetition as people think (they draw principles from etymology or habits); It corresponds to a set of operations, as complex as the technology it uses, as complex as the purpose it pursues, and as many functions as they provide. They make it a kind of production, and its importance is not only that it does not necessarily refer to the original, but also that it cancels the concept that the original may exist. In this way, this sample contains references to other samples in its singularity, and uniqueness and diversity are no longer opposed, just as' creation' and' reproduction' are no longer opposed [3].

It can be seen that the so-called "image" is an unrealistic reality and a nihilistic reality. It is not only an audio-visual product and a set of audio-visual symbols, but also represents the conscious or unconscious influence of an idea and consciousness on people. Take the world-famous Marlboro cigarettes as an example: 40 years ago, Marlboro was just ordinary cigarettes and ladies' cigarettes. "As mild as the weather in May" is its advertising slogan. Later, in order to increase sales, I decided to change to men's cigarettes and re-select coachmen, divers and farmers to advertise, but the effect was not satisfactory. Later, he changed to the image of a cowboy in the west: his eyes were deep, his skin was rough, his sleeves were raised high, his hairy arms were exposed, and there was a smoking Marlboro in Ran Ran between his fingers, and his body was rough and heroic. As a result, the sales of cigarettes soared. A quarter of the cigarettes in the world are Marlboros. People even say: if you want to be Europeanized, you need to buy a Mercedes; If you want to be an American, you must wear jeans and smoke Marlboro.

The appearance of advertising image has its profound social and cultural background. There is a universal law that human society moves towards a market economy society, that is, society moves from materialization to media. The transformation of the media by society will inevitably lead to the hollowing out of people. In this way, the media created by human beings but in turn controlled by human beings, coupled with the people who once created the media but were finally controlled by the media, will undoubtedly lead to the visualization of culture. Western scholars have a famous saying: the final stage of goods is image. It refers to this special phenomenon. "As long as you talk to anyone in the United States, you will eventually encounter such a word, for example, the image of someone, the image of Reagan and so on. But that doesn't mean what he looks like, not material, but symbolic. The image of Reagan is not his photo, not just his image on TV, but related to him, such as whether he gives people a sense of comfort, whether he has the courage of a politician, whether he gives people a sense of security, etc. " [4]. Here, the culture has undergone a fundamental change, and all four patterns in history have been broken: from essence to phenomenon, from deep to surface, from truth to illusion, from signified to signifier. It is no longer a depth mode, but a plane mode; No longer "the other", but "self"; It is no longer "textual" but "intertextual"; It is no longer "reflective" but "reactive". In a word, human culture is no longer "content", but "appearance". I remember as early as two thousand years ago, Plato expressed his hatred of art many times. One of the most important reasons was that he was afraid that art would become an image, so the real reality ceased to exist, illusion and reality were confused, and human beings could no longer confirm their actual position. Where does life begin and end? It will become a problem that no one can tell. It is unbearable that Plato's eternal worries have become a reality today.

It is not difficult to imagine that under the above social and cultural background, people's consumption psychology will also shift from commodity consumption to image consumption. There is a simple reason. In the market economy society, commodity is not only a commodity, but also a symbol of an image. When you buy a commodity, you also buy an image, just like when you buy Marlboro, you also buy the identity of the person you want to go to. We know that in the process of consumption, there are two aspects: economic cost and psychological cost. Economic cost is quantitative (except "disorderly price increase"), and psychological cost is variable. As long as the image of a commodity is recognized by the society (for example, it is recognized as a symbol of a certain identity), then no matter whether its economic cost is high or low, the psychological cost you spend when buying it is low (there is no social "rejection psychology"). On the contrary, the psychological cost you spend will be high. In the era of commodity consumption, people are concerned about economic costs. In the era of image consumption, people's consumption psychology will inevitably shift from focusing on economic costs to focusing on psychological costs. At this moment, people measure the value of a commodity not by how much it costs, but by how much it costs psychologically. People's choice of commodities is no longer a simple consumption activity, but a survival activity, a choice of their own lifestyle, status and social image. Everyone shapes his image through consumption choices, thus realizing the potential possibilities in his life. Purchase has become a sacred "ceremony" of self-determination and the only connection between people and the world and between people.

Thus, the advertising image was born. Advertising is an ancient way to promote goods. But at that time, the appeal point was product appeal and the foothold was hard promotion. Modern advertising is completely different. As we all know, its appeal point has changed from product appeal to emotional appeal, and its foothold has changed from hard promotion to soft promotion. But what people don't know is that all these changes, in addition to the external social and cultural background, have an internal reason at work, that is, the change from advertising to advertising image. It means that the content appearing in the advertisement is no longer semantic information, but symbolic information. It used to be people-goods, but now it has turned to people-symbols-goods. Between people and goods, artificial visual experience has been added, and "seeing" has been disturbed and deviated. Humans have also entered the "suspected environment".

The so-called "suspected environment", that is, Psendo, which means false environment in Greek, means that human beings do not directly know their own perceptual world, but insert suspected environment between them, so that people can know the environment through it. The advertising image promotes such a "suspected environment". Modern people live in the suspected environment of advertising, just like living in a "copied" world. The relationship between people and things is communicated by advertisements. If there were no advertisements, people would feel that everything was strange. Because people only know it, but don't know its image. In advertising, here and now has become a place at that time. By interpreting symbols, people get information beyond commodities and grasp the image of commodities. However, the image of goods advertised in advertisements and the relationship between people and things are not true after all. Because here, the symbol itself has nothing to do with the real thing, but an artificial and virtual meaning statement unit. It reflects not the relationship between commodities and commodity images, but the relationship between packaging and manufacturing. What is presented to people is a completely false world.

Then, what is the basis for advertising image to skillfully package and shape the image of goods? We know that commodity consumption is everyone's instinct, and it tends to be as much as possible, but for practical reasons, people's actual consumption cannot be controlled by rational self. On the other hand, people's consumption is restricted by psychological cost. The "psychological cost" is controlled by the "exclusion psychology" of social groups. If everyone does this, the psychological cost will be low, otherwise it will be high. Advertising image focuses on these two aspects. It is intended to create reasons for consumers' luxury consumption, let consumers find excuses to convince rational self from the identification of social groups (in fact, it bypasses the control of rational self), and turn goods from unnecessary to necessary, from luxury consumption to general consumption, thus willingly joining the ranks of luxury consumption. "Mass communication tools, such as television, benefit from social scientists' research on human behavior. It is no accident that TV advertisements try to link the products they sell with what most people appreciate or want to go. If TV advertisements can make us associate a certain brand of cigarettes with the grandeur of horse herders in ancient western China, then we will be tempted to smoke and buy that particular brand of cigarettes. It would be better if the shepherd handed a cigarette to a beautiful woman. In this way, advertising has appeal, which not only hits the desire of men to be masculine, but also hits the requirement of women to make themselves look gentle and beautiful. Advertising design tries to guess what people like best, and then tries to connect advertisers' products with these needs. Any one of you can judge the success of these conditional procedures "[5].

It is for this reason that the advertising image always packages itself as an advanced cultural image. This advanced cultural image always shows people a new world from the perspective of content, and it is a new world that can be obtained through purchase. In advertisements, we often hear: "So-and-so is your best choice". It is both "best" and "choice", which seems to be objective, but in fact, the advertising image never cares about "best", only cares about "choice", and never provides consumers with the best products, but the best reasons. Such as "Nestle" coffee. People in China never drink coffee, but only drink tea, but "Nestle" coffee dared to come in and succeeded in one fell swoop. From the advertising point of view, we should admit that the word "delicious" and its advertising screen are a very successful advertising image: drinking "Nestle" is a symbol of high taste and high taste.

From the visual point of view, this advanced cultural image always uses the "relationship between the picture and the bottom" to highlight what it wants to promote. Moreover, because advertisements often rely on mass media such as photography and television, they often give people an immersive feeling, and are often mistaken by consumers for being there, making people mistakenly think that they are the right person for the beautiful woman in the advertisement to ogle at, or that as long as they buy a certain commodity, they will add a warmth to love as advertised ... This advanced cultural image is from the perspective of acceptance. More deliberately exaggerate the difference between ideal experience and real experience, so that the omnipresence in advertisements leads to consumers' all-demanding, so that consumers consciously deny the goods at hand and turn to identify with the goods in advertisements, consciously deny the real consumption experience and turn to identify with the ideal consumption experience in advertisements. We should know that while advertising creates various reasons for consumers, consumers are also creating various reasons for their trust in advertising. In this way, consumers have a kind of psychology of wanting more than they can fill, and a vicious circle has emerged. The goods in hand are always bad, but they are not in the advertisement, which is far better than the goods in hand. The commodity image in special advertisements is only a representation. Once you get it, it's meaningless, and then it becomes boring. In this way, the advertising image constantly creates a sense of scarcity, a sense of scarcity that makes people feel excluded because of the expansion of their horizons, and constantly introduces the object to eliminate scarcity, so that people can buy according to the instructions of the advertising image to alleviate the anxiety of scarcity. If so, life always gives people a sense of scarcity, so people have to flee to the advertising image. Although the exaggerated propaganda of advertising image can arouse people's appetite, it is illusory after all, and the result is lost in life ... This cycle of plane promotion is the deepest secret of the frequent success of advertising image in commodity propaganda.

In this sense, there are indeed sufficient reasons to believe that advertising has created a "miracle" for mankind with the help of advertising image, and advertising image rules mankind through advertising image. It created a new god for mankind. People judge the world according to the advertising image, and also integrate into the collective through the opportunity provided by the advertising image.