Identifying metaphors in TV commercials with FILMIP: the Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure

The analysis and identification of figurative language is one of the largest research areas in cognitive linguistics, and metaphor is one of these tropes. Focusing on the genre of TV advertising, a structural method for the identification of metaphorical components used in films in a cross-modal fashion is developed in the present paper. A corpus of 11 TV commercials is analyzed under seven steps that guide analysts from the content description of the multimodal materials to the concrete identification of metaphorical elements. This research presents the Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure (FILMIP, Bort-Mir 2019) as a tool for the identification of metaphorically used filmic components in multimodal filmic materials. More concretely, the paper presents the application of the procedure to two TV commercials from different perfume brands. FILMIP offers a valuable contribution not only to metaphor scholars but also to researchers focused on other fields of study such as multimodality, discourse analysis, communication, branding, or even film theory.

The Representation of the “Other” in the Turkish TV Advertisements

Turkey, which has a rich cultural mosaic, consists of the combination of many ‘Others’, including cultural, religious and ethnic the ‘Others’; the ‘Other’ as a gender role; as refugees, emigrants, etc. In such a multicultural climate, our research aim is to identify the stereotypes that represent the ‘Other’ in TV advertisements on Turkey’s mainstream channels. For this purpose, we examined 101 prime-time TV commercials that were broadcast on the five most watched mainstream TV channels between September and December 2020. Having conducted the quantitative and qualitative content analysis of TV commercials, we revealed the symbolic annihilation of the ‘Others’ in the Turkish advertising environment, which is accordance with the conservative perception of the country. In line with the international research, we came to the conclusion that the white Turkish men with medium-high socioeconomic status were heavily represented in the prime-time Turkish TV advertising. Nevertheless, it was also revealed that gendered visibility of the others as well as women portrayals were considered only as the ‘Other’ in the Turkish TV ads. Besides, our research findings overwhelmingly reflect the hegemonic culture and highly traditional views on gender roles.

EXPRESS: High-Energy Ad Content: A Large-scale Investigation of TV Commercials

A trend reported by both academics and practitioners is that advertising on TV has become increasingly energetic. This study investigates the association between the energy level in ad content and consumers’ tendency of ad-tuning. Using a data set of over 27,000 TV commercials delivered to U.S. homes during the period between 2015 and 2018, the authors first present a framework to algorithmically measure the energy level in ad content from the video of ads. This algorithm-based measure is then compared to human-perceived energy levels, which shows that the measure is related to the level of arousal stimulated by ad content. By relating the energy levels in ad content with the tendency of ad-tuning using two empirical procedures, the authors document the following. Overall, more energetic commercials are likely to be tuned in more or avoided less by viewers. The positive association between energy levels in ad content and ad-tuning is statistically significant after controlling for placement and other aspects of commercials. However, the association varies across product categories and program genres. The main implication of this study is that advertisers should pay attention to components of ad content other than loudness, which has been regulated by law.

English as an identity marker in Bangladeshi TV commercials

This paper analyzes the use of English in Bangladeshi commercials from a sociocultural perspective. A semiotic approach describes these multimodal commercials. An identity-construction approach provides a sociolinguistic understanding of them. The results are categorized into three types: monolingual, bilingual, and English loanword-translation commercials. This study confirms that, in the Bangladeshi context, the presence and positive connotations of English and Western culture increase the social and cultural value of the advertised product, engendering satisfaction and symbolic pleasure in consumers. These commercials prove that English is used to reconstruct and recontextualize the Bangla language and Bangla sense of identity on the basis of linguistic, semantic, and contextual references that exemplify metrolingualism. Thus, this paper contributes to the ongoing study of the role played by commercials in promoting the intersection between metrolingualism and the construction of local, national, and global identities within the methodological and theoretical framework of Cultural Linguistics.

Marketing Cardiovascular Mortality? Healthy vs. Unhealthy Food in Television Advertising

Background:Cardiovascular disease has been the leading killer of Americans since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, social distancing and stay-at-home requests, there has been increased television (TV) engagement, and marketing has become more impactful in modifying consumer behaviors. Objective: We evaluated the healthfulness of food marketing, based on commercials most frequently aired on American primetime networks during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Methods:We reviewed a total of 104 TV commercials, 89 chosen randomly during TV watching and 14 targeted to enrich the sample with the leading quick service restaurants (“fast-food chains”). The commercials fell into 4 categories: 1) fast-food chains, 2) brand-recognized individual items, 3) grocery chains, and 4) home-delivery meals. The food items displayed in each commercial were recorded and scored based on the previously validated healthful versus unhealthful nutrition scoring system, assigning either positive or negative values for each food item in the commercial. Results:We found that 58% of the commercials advertised fast-food chains (mean score = -3.1, i.e., 3.1 more unhealthy than healthy items per commercial), while 27% were brand-recognized individual items (-0.82), 9% were grocery chains (-0.4), and 6% were for home-delivery meals (0.83); each was less unhealthy than fast-food (p< 0.0001). Conclusions:Commercial TV in the US routinely promotes the consumption of foods that are known to be unhealthy, particularly those underpinning cardiovascular disease and its risk factors. Regulation and/or legislation to curtail the frequency and/or content of these commercials, and consider a ban on such advertising to children, similar to that previously employed in Canada and the European Union.

Co-occurrence network of TV advertisements revealing Japanese lifestyle

The relationship between culture and the appeals in TV advertisements has been extensively studied. We attempted to reveal the image structure produced by TV commercials in Japan, which may show the cultural features of the country, and to evaluate its temporal change. For this purpose, we constructed and analysed a co-occurrence network of keywords related to TV commercials by using immense data that include the records of all TV commercials aired in the Kanto area in Japan including Tokyo for a period of 15 years. We found a strong heterogeneity of the co-occurrence relationship, where a few keywords, e.g., ‘woman’, ‘man’, ‘animation’, and ‘logo’, co-occur with a huge number of other keywords every year. A community on a co-occurrence network can be regarded as a set of keywords that are mutually associated with each other through TV commercials. We examined the characteristics of the communities by associating them with categories of advertised products and found a temporal change in which the relationship between the communities possessing the image of entertainment and children and the category of PC and A/V gradually increases in strength. However, there was a consistent tendency in the examined period for the product categories related to communities that include ‘man’ to be less associated with those that include ‘woman’ and vice versa, which implicates a gender role inequality underlying the various appeals in TV commercials.

The Impact of Viewers’ Behavior and YouTubers’ Credibility in Advertainment on Building Consumer Trust

Advertainment is an upcoming concept in the current scenario combining two concepts called Advertising and Entertainment. This concept has helped modern day YouTubers to reach maximum customers within a short period. This study can facilitate spotting the factors of advertainment that have influenced on building client trust by YouTubers in Sri Lanka. In the recent years, YouTuber advertainment has become a trending advertising concept in Sri Lanka to grab the viewer’s attention as people are extremely tired of TV commercials and they tend to ignore them. However, the TV commercials were able to build the consumer trust by showing them repeatedly on traditional media. Therefore, will the YouTuber’s advertainment would also help to build consumer trust. In order to measure the impact of YouTuber advertainment on building consumer trust, viewers’ behavior and YouTubers credibility were selected as two variables. A quantitative approach was used as the research approach and data were collected via internet questionnaires and snowball sampling was used as the sampling method. The target population will be the young adults in Sri Lanka age 15 to 34 year olds who follow YouTubers content online. The results of this research revealed that viewers’ behavior has no impact on building consumer trust whereas YouTuber’s credibility has an impact on building consumer trust. Therefore, the YouTubers in Sri Lanka should maintain their Credibility among the community when creating their content of advertainment

REALTIME BLOOD BANK DATA REPOSITORY

The real motive behind the Realtime Blood Bank Data Repository is to streamline and mechanize the way toward looking for blood if there should be an occurrence of crisis and keep up the records of blood givers, beneficiaries, blood gift projects and blood stocks in the bank. As of now, people, in general, can just think about the blood donation event occasions through traditional media means like radio, paper or TV commercials. There is no data with respect to the blood gift programs accessible on any of the gateway. With the manual archive, there are issues in dealing with the records. There is no concentrated data set of volunteer benefactors. Along these lines, it turns out to be truly dreary for an individual to look through blood if there should arise an occurrence of crisis. This task plans to mechanize the blood and contribute to the board framework in a blood donation centre to improve the record executives effectiveness because of the developed size of records of information.

Perceptual Quality of Audio-Visual Content with Common Video and Audio Degradations

Audio-visual quality assessment remains as a complex research field. A great effort is being made to understand how visual and auditory domains are integrated and processed by humans. In this work, we analyzed and compared the results of three psychophisical experiments that collected quality and content scores given by a pool of subjects. The experiments include diverse content audio-visual material, e.g., Sports, TV Commercials, Interviews, Music, Documentaries and Cartoons, impaired with several visual (bitrate compression, packet-loss, and frame-freezing) and auditory (background noise, echo, clip, chop) distortions. Each experiment explores a particular domain. In Experiment 1, the video component was degraded with visual artifacts, meanwhile, the audio component did not suffer any type of degradation. In Experiment 2, the audio component was degraded while the video component remained untouched. Finally, in Experiment 3 both audio and video components were degraded. As expected, results confirmed a dominance of the visual component in the overall audio-visual quality. However, a detailed analysis showed that, for certain types of audio distortions, the audio component played a more important role in the construction of the overall perceived quality.