"A genre is a form of or category of a specific type of artistic work or literature that has specialised techniques or characteristics."- HyperDictionary.com. Companies continually use conventional images to sell their products, for example images of shiny new cars and beautiful women. There images audience-reception models are used to gain information about the consumer and then to decide on the 'type' of advertisements to produce. However, since the beginning of advertising the same devices have been used over and over again. These devices can be broken down into several audience reception models.
The Hypodermic Needle Model, this is when the audience are perceived as passive consumers (i.e. the audience is seen as not thinking and powerless), and they are 'injected' with information. This type of model is usually used for propaganda, to influence people's ideas and attitudes towards a certain subject, such as politics. The Uses and Gratifications Model, the audience here are perceived as active and decide what they want from the media.
English: Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs Itali...
English: Logo for the National Society for the Pre...
window dressingThey are not 'force-fed' information; they decide when they want the media. Devices here include sex appeal, humour, physical and psychological awards. These types of advertisements appeal to people's needs, the needs and wants of the individual are based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which focuses on 6 main stages (Fig 1).
There is a danger that today's audience have become almost immune to numerous marketing methods that have been used for many years. "Audiences are not to blank sheets of paper on which media messages can be written; members of an audience will have prior attitudes and beliefs which will determine how effective media message are"- Abercrombie 1996. This quote is one option that says the Hypodermic Needle Model does not work and the uses and gratifications model is much more suited too...