Publicity - Your thoughts about it.

[Elf_Of_Light]

I'm doing an assignment for school on publicity, and I would like to have your opinion on it.
Are you for or against of publicity? What are, in your opinion, the good traits/advantages of publicity and what are the bad traits/disadvantages of it.
Do you think publicity is full of nonsense or do you think it can be useful/helpful.

Please post constructive answers.

Thank you. ^^

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Publicity is a useless facet of a society in decline.

Just as a premium on physical beauty denotes a society about to go the way of the Holy Roman Empire... I find that publicity corrupts people who were once good, just as power does. Since it all boils down to pretty much the same thing. It might be good when it's focused on a charitable organization, or calling attention to a serious issue, but it's rarely the case.

BAD.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Aaryanna_Mom]

Like anything else, publicity can be both good and bad, but it's far from useless or an indication that society is in decline. I would counter argue that the moment you see publicity disappearing is when one should be worried.

Anyway, it has it's negative aspects in the form of invasive marketing, but it also has it's good points in promoting artistic events and charities. And it's an excellent tool for getting a controversial opinion known.

[The Spectacular Professor]

Publicity: Now there's a headscratcher.

First off, we take all we know about the subject and lay it out in the open:

1: Publicity is basically giving something attention.

2: Like anything, publicity can be good or bad (beneficial or damaging to your reputation.)

3: Too much of anything is bad, and the same goes for publicity.

4: Publicity can raise awarenes, or just get on your last nerve.

5: Both Britney Spears and Mahatma Ghandi have recieved huge amounts of publicity.

From each point above one thing becomes very clear: Publicity is a mixed bag. There are times when it helps, such as raising awareness of an issue like high crime rates. Likewise, it can destroy indiscriminately. for example, Britney spears, who has thrust herself into the public eye in desperate bids for attention so many times that some speculate her life may be in danger.

Therefore, I am somewhat neutral on the issue. while I think publicity has its uses, I am dead set against its abuse, such as people making spectacles of themselves for attention or papparazzi followng people every minute of every day and destroying their privacy in order to develop a 2 page tabloid story about how they gained 3 pounds.

[/me trying to sound smart]

[Retribution]

[quote name='Elf_Of_Light']I'm doing an assignment for school on publicity, and I would like to have your opinion on it.
Are you for or against of publicity? What are, in your opinion, the good traits/advantages of publicity and what are the bad traits/disadvantages of it.
Do you think publicity is full of nonsense or do you think it can be useful/helpful.

Please post constructive answers.

Thank you. ^^[/QUOTE]
[font=Arial]I'm confused with your question -- I don't understand why someone would be for or against attention given to someone or something by the media. I think your definition of the word is potentially problematic.

In and of itself, publicity is neither a good nor bad thing; I'm certain we all agree that 'attention' at large cannot be definitively assigned to be inherently "good" or "bad". The question is so vague it's difficult to answer.

The easy way out would be to say "it has good and bad qualities to it". It could be argued that media attention was a driving force of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It could also be argued that media coverage supports and perpetuates societal ignorance by only covering stories with no real national significance (small-scale murders, robberies, odd factoids) instead of politics or community based information.[/font]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Retribution][font=Arial'] I think your definition of the word is potentially problematic.[/font][/quote]
[FONT=Arial]Agreed; I don't even know what kind of publicity you're talking about.[/FONT]

[SunfallE]

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"]Hey you two college students. :p Remember your audience, as in peeking at the profile. Anyway, try simply answering the question in general as it would potentially apply to all mediums. Though some of you already did that. And since it's rather simple as in it can be good or bad, how about you let us know if your assignment has a particular area it's suppose to cover Elf_Of_Light. Right now as the others have pointed out, we're not entire sure what area you are trying to focus on. In other words, in what context are you looking to compare the pros and cons of publicity for. Celebrities? Marketing? Politics? And so on.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Elf_Of_Light]

[quote name='SunfallE'][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"]Hey you two college students. :p Remember your audience, as in peeking at the profile. Anyway, try simply answering the question in general as it would potentially apply to all mediums. Though some of you already did that. And since it's rather simple as in it can be good or bad, how about you let us know if your assignment has a particular area it's suppose to cover Elf_Of_Light. Right now as the others have pointed out, we're not entire sure what area you are trying to focus on. In other words, in what context are you looking to compare the pros and cons of publicity for. Celebrities? Marketing? Politics? And so on.[/FONT][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

What I'm looking for is different points of views on publicity related to marketing and stuff like that.

Sorry for not being clear about it. ^^

[The Spectacular Professor]

In that case, I really don't pay much attention to it. I get most of my news from the internet, so I usually know if something I'm interested in is coming along long before commercials start popping up. Sometimes, advertisements can be funny, interesting or informative, but they usually just get on my nerves.

[Rachmaninoff]

[quote name='Aceburner']Sometimes, advertisements can be funny, interesting or informative, but they[B] usually just get on my nerves[/B].[/QUOTE]That's about my take on it. I don't watch anywhere near as much television as I use to because advertising just annoys the hell out of me. It doesn't help that in the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding advertisements. Today, a similar program would only be 42. So that gap of actual show vs commercials keeps getting wider.

The whole marketing bit just grates on my nerves since everywhere you turn stuff is practically tossed in your face in an effort to get you to buy something. Sure its necessary, but I'd rather pay a fee to not be subjected to it. Though since I have cable and use the onDemand section to watch stuff without all the annoying ads, I suppose I already do. So my take on publicity for marketing purposes... mostly bad.

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"]That's really kind of hard to answer since the pros and cons for publicity in relation to marketing is highly dependent upon the actual situation or circumstance to which it is applied. Did your teacher give you a case example? Something to look at and say oh, in this case... and so forth?

So perhaps you could clear that up as well? I haven't much to say other than a short spiel on how I see it. Which is a mixture of good and bad. Good in that it's a necessary tool to help promote one's goods, but bad in that if not done correctly, its taken as an invasive measure that can put a client off from ever wanting to buy your product. [/FONT]

[[Sound_Nin]]

[quote name='Retribution'][FONT=Arial] It could be argued that media attention was a driving force of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. [/FONT][/quote]

[COLOR=Navy][FONT=Book Antiqua]This is a good example to start from.

Yes, the media gave quite a bit of attention to the "Civil Rights movement". That much is certain, can be presented in fact.

However, when the media gets into things, it causes a certain problem. It emphasises certain things and belittles others, sometimes giving certain events no coverage and in fact even creating facts.
So unless you were there, there isn't much you can possibly know for certain. Yes, there is always some truth.

This could get into History as a whole, and the fact that [I]history is written by the victor.[/I] And as such, news is reported in a flattering or unflattering light, according to the majorly accepted thought.
If someone or something is considered "bad" to the government of said country, or the majority of such a nation, it is stigmatized to no end, and facts are made up to support this. The same can be said of things considered "good".

So how could we know if something ever even happened? Eyewitnesses only get you so far, in terms of forced confession and motives (by which I mean the "witness" has something to gain). Written proof is the best bet, but not even that is certain. Physical proof in general. But when you start thinking this way, it never ends. There is very rarely a way to find truth, when you get down to basics. That is, if you weren't there and saw things for yourself. Excuse me if this comes out completely paranoid, I hope you can at least see my point. ;)

I could even go so far as to say that the media is basically spoonfeeding our entire generation, and generations before and after us, what "they" want us to think. This may sound crazy, but if you've ever said something was wrong, and then stopped to wonder: [I]"why[/I] do I think it's wrong?" then you know what I mean. Basically, no one's questioning these things. It really makes you think.

So to wrap this up, my opinion is this: publicity itself is neither good nor bad. It is simply the people who report it, who are biased with their own beliefs, that can make it into something bad.

Actually, this conversation could cover the media in general, and even history itself.

[U][B]EDIT:[/B][/U]

Okay, so this is dealing with marketing. I can't bring myself to get rid of the long monologue I went into above, so I'll just keep going in a different direction! Yay! (...my fingers are tired...)

My opinion on publicity related to marketing is as follows:

As long as there's no exaggeration, no outright lies about the product, like saying "if you take this vitamin supplement or such and such you will live forever" (obviously I don't mean quite as blatant as that, but you get the idea) then there is very little problem with publicity.

In fact, in this instance, publicity is completely instrumental to the company or individual selling the product, and without it, it would be less well-known and will bring in MUCH less profit.

Yesss. If someone wants me to delete that long-winded conspiracy theory up there, feel free to tell me and I'll delete it. :]
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[The13thMan]

[COLOR=DarkOrange][FONT=Century Gothic]As i feel with a lot of things in life i believe the quality and usefullness of publicity is largely circumstantial and dependent upon the source. There's good media and bad media, propaganda and honest unbiased reporting.

Unfortunately i think a lot of popular media nowadays is quite biased and often times extremely misleading. I know that a lot of media reports ignorantly on science and psuedoscience topics, often times only reading the bottom line and reporting it as truth when it's far from it.

Needless to say, i don't watch the news.
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[Elf_Of_Light]

[QUOTE='[Sound_Nin];808888'][COLOR=Navy][FONT=Book Antiqua]This is a good example to start from.

Yes, the media gave quite a bit of attention to the "Civil Rights movement". That much is certain, can be presented in fact.

However, when the media gets into things, it causes a certain problem. It emphasises certain things and belittles others, sometimes giving certain events no coverage and in fact even creating facts.
So unless you were there, there isn't much you can possibly know for certain. Yes, there is always some truth.

This could get into History as a whole, and the fact that [I]history is written by the victor.[/I] And as such, news is reported in a flattering or unflattering light, according to the majorly accepted thought.
If someone or something is considered "bad" to the government of said country, or the majority of such a nation, it is stigmatized to no end, and facts are made up to support this. The same can be said of things considered "good".

So how could we know if something ever even happened? Eyewitnesses only get you so far, in terms of forced confession and motives (by which I mean the "witness" has something to gain). Written proof is the best bet, but not even that is certain. Physical proof in general. But when you start thinking this way, it never ends. There is very rarely a way to find truth, when you get down to basics. That is, if you weren't there and saw things for yourself. Excuse me if this comes out completely paranoid, I hope you can at least see my point. ;)

I could even go so far as to say that the media is basically spoonfeeding our entire generation, and generations before and after us, what "they" want us to think. This may sound crazy, but if you've ever said something was wrong, and then stopped to wonder: [I]"why[/I] do I think it's wrong?" then you know what I mean. Basically, no one's questioning these things. It really makes you think.

So to wrap this up, my opinion is this: publicity itself is neither good nor bad. It is simply the people who report it, who are biased with their own beliefs, that can make it into something bad.

Actually, this conversation could cover the media in general, and even history itself.

[U][B]EDIT:[/B][/U]

Okay, so this is dealing with marketing. I can't bring myself to get rid of the long monologue I went into above, so I'll just keep going in a different direction! Yay! (...my fingers are tired...)

My opinion on publicity related to marketing is as follows:

As long as there's no exaggeration, no outright lies about the product, like saying "if you take this vitamin supplement or such and such you will live forever" (obviously I don't mean quite as blatant as that, but you get the idea) then there is very little problem with publicity.

In fact, in this instance, publicity is completely instrumental to the company or individual selling the product, and without it, it would be less well-known and will bring in MUCH less profit.

Yesss. If someone wants me to delete that long-winded conspiracy theory up there, feel free to tell me and I'll delete it. :]
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Actually, what you said above is really good. Thanks. ^^

[Mr. Maul]

[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=1][COLOR=DimGray]I'm a firm believer in the clichéd phrase, "[B]no publicity is bad publicity[/B]."

There are two ways of looking at it. The first, and most common way, is that the phrase means there is no such thing as bad publicity; all publicity is good. The other angle is that having no publicity at all is, in itself, bad publicity.

Either way, I think both meanings are true.



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