Representation of foreign cultural values ??in environmental advertisements of Tehran

Master's Thesis of Social Communication Sciences

Abstract

The present study was compiled with the aim of representing foreign cultural values ??in the environmental advertisements of Tehran. In this research, we were looking for answers to these questions, whether the environmental advertising of Tehran city presents and advertises foreign cultural values ??or not, and if it advertises, what foreign cultural values ??are there in the advertisements. In order to answer these questions, environmental advertisements of Tehran city were selected as a statistical population and through a multi-stage sampling method (350 environmental advertisements). Then, using the theories of persuasion, persuasion, persuasion and social learning, a theoretical framework was formulated and based on that, questions and hypotheses and a reverse research questionnaire were prepared. In the next step, by using the content analysis method and reverse questionnaire technique, the required information was collected and the desired information was analyzed at two descriptive and explanatory levels using spss software. The results of this research showed that environmental advertisements of Tehran promote values ??alien to Iranian culture. Most foreign cultural values ??are presented by commercial advertisements. Foreign goods advertise the most value of luxury and domestic goods advertise the most consumerism. Not much attention has been paid to the promotion of national production and the value of Iranian labor and capital, as well as the important value of saving, even in urban cultural advertisements. Among the other results, the advertisements that had a lot of appeal have most of all advertised the alien value of luxury and prosperity. Another result of the current research was that the advertisements of government institutions paid more attention to the value of maintaining the hijab and appropriate clothing for men and women than the advertisements of private institutions. In this research, there are 8 hypotheses, all 8 of which have been proven.

Key words: cultural values, persuasion, representation, foreigner, commercial advertising, environmental advertising

Introduction

"Of course, the highest element that has a fundamental influence on the existence of any society is its culture. It is a community. Basically, the culture of every society forms the identity and existence of that society, and with the deviation of the culture, even though the society is powerful and strong from the economic, political, industrial and military aspects, it is empty and mediocre. If the culture of a society is dependent and borrowed from the western culture, it will inevitably find other dimensions of that society on the side of the opposition, and finally it will be consumed in it and will lose its existence in all dimensions" (Imam Khomeini, 1365: 16).

In general, advertising is one of the most important and influential elements in the field of culture of any society, because people today are constantly exposed to the media's advertising bombardment, and with the spread of the media, these ads become more widespread, so it seems very necessary to investigate the ads and prominent cultural values ??in them.

1- 1- Problem design and its definition

Our daily life is closely related to advertising. Every morning when we wake up, we wash our hands and face with Sio soap and brush our teeth with Darogar toothpaste. We go to work with Iran Khodro or Saipa cars, along the way and in the traffic of Tehran, whenever we look up to get away from all the hustle and bustle, we see a lot of environmental advertisements that increase our consumption more and more. During the day, we call others with Nokia and Samsung mobile phones, go to Ekhtaz Novin, Saderat or Mellat Bank to do banking, and go to Citizen and Refah stores for daily shopping and pay the amount through Tejarat, Sepe and Meli bank cards. At home, we sit in front of Samsung and LG televisions, we prostrate to Mehr Amin to perform religious duties, we drink water from the Side-by-Side refrigerator, and we go to sleep at night on a comfortable mattress and flower-woven blanket!

Advertisements fill our minds with various images in such a way that even when we hear the name of a product, we remember famous names and certain brands that are constantly seen through the press, radio, television or environmental advertisements. They listen to us, we fall.

"We inform you so that you can choose" is the slogan claimed by an advertising agency.

"We inform you so that you can choose" is the slogan claimed by an advertising agency. As can be seen, "awareness" and "choice" are the two main categories and constitute one of the definitions of advertising (Kalantari, 2017: 20). Generally, theoretical insights about commercial advertising in the contemporary era include two points of view: the first point of view belongs to thinkers who cherish advertising and believe that through it access to goods and the right to choose is provided for the consumer, but the second point of view is from those experts. is that they consider advertising as a tool in the hands of a capitalist producer to influence the masses of consumers and bring them under control (Farhangi, 1379: 69).

Kenneth Galbraith [1] in the book The Affluent Society says about advertising: "advertising institutions do not let people act according to their habits, because these institutions were created mainly to arouse new desires in people and create needs in them that they previously had (Kalantari, 1377: 20).

However, the defenders of advertising against this view claim that this tool, as many people fear from its great power, does not have a seductive effect and only provides information to possible consumers so that they can choose with more and better knowledge (Farhangi, 1379: 69).

For years, the whole metropolis of Tehran has become a big market for urban or environmental advertisements is A city that is covered by skyscrapers and apartments, and colorful environmental advertisements have added to the confusion of this bustling market.

Wall signs, cement and metal stands, three- and four-sided signs, billboards, Al-Aidi digital signs[2] and so on. Among the methods that were used for advertising in the city of Tehran since the fall of 1370 (Kalantari, 1377: 21)

Environmental advertising gradually covered the entire city and became one of the inseparable parts of Tehran, this started with the promotion of Iranian goods and gradually spread to the promotion of foreign goods as well as contradicting Iranian-Islamic values ??and culture, to the point where the names of shops, which is considered a form of environmental advertising And after the Islamic revolution it was modified to some extent, it went back to the use of foreign names and photos.

Considering that nowadays commercial advertising as a multifaceted phenomenon, apart from its economic effects, can leave cultural and social effects, and some strong theoretical trends in cultural studies also believe that commercial advertising has a very high power of cultural formation, so the study of these advertisements seems necessary (Mir Fakhraei, 2016: 91).

People who pass through the streets of Tehran every day and are in commuting are constantly faced with these scenes and advertisements of an alien environment with Iranian culture, which, in addition to the imagery in their minds, annoys their thoughts and souls due to the use of strong and stressful colors and dry and soulless images. Over time, this can cause culture change, turn today's urban man into metamorphoses who are captive to his unconscious mental images, and drag him, as defined by Lerner[3], towards increasing expectations, which are not his real desire. Therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to environmental or urban advertising, especially in a metropolis like Tehran, which has the largest population in the country. During this research, we intend to examine foreign cultural values ??in the environmental advertisements of Tehran. The most important variables investigated in this research include the type, content, prominent cultural values ??in advertisements, the urban area of ??advertisements, their attractiveness, and so on.

1-2- Stating the necessity and importance of the research subject:

The necessity and importance of the research subject is divided into two theoretical and practical parts, which we explain below.

1-2-1- Theoretical necessity and importance

So far, many researches have been conducted in the field of commercial advertising and the psychology of advertising, and numerous books have been written, the vast majority of them have been aimed at making more profit for merchants and missionaries. Few people have done research on the health of environmental advertising and urban landscape and lack of visual disturbance. Meanwhile, environmental advertising is a combined knowledge of urban planning sciences, economics, urban sociology, environmental graphics, architecture, landscape design, industrial design, psychology, structural engineering, and most importantly, communication science.