How does the government promote the anti smoking campaign (By Ron Chan)

Under the newly amended Smoking Ordinance (Cap.371), smoking is prohibited in most of the public areas or establishments with effect from 1 January 2007. Basically, anyplace with a ceiling will consider as a non-smoking area in Hong Kong. So how can the long-term smokers being survived after 1 January 2007? And also how does the government promote the anti smoking campaign?

Have you ever sit next to a smoker in a restaurant? The smoky air makes people choking. However, this will never happen again in Hong Kong now. Instead, both smokers and non-smokers “refresh” with such choking smell by getting out of the restaurant. It is obvious that more and more smokers standing next to the ashtray of the rubbish bin after baning smoking inside restaurant. Not only on the street, but many “mysterious” places like alleys, public lavatories or even the emergency exit of a building are become their smoking areas. It can not be affirmed as the “backfire” of the legislation, but it is observingly more people smoking on the street or in some concealed places. This phenomena mainly worked out by the penalty, but in some senses, it maybe done by the demonization to the smokers by the non-smokers.

In these recent months, the Hong Kong Government has published a numbers of advertisements though different media to advise people not to smoke anymore. The advertisements act as a blasting fuse to lead the non-smokers take actions on the smokers. It maybe just a gaze or some words. The mission of giving pressure to the smokers has drifted From The Government to the citizens beautifully. Just simply by the posters on the wall of some MTR stations, TV advertisements, leaflets, etc. In this month onwards, The Government even force the cigarette company to add a horrible waring picture onto each package of cigarette.

It is a little bit ridiculous that placing such gallowing picture on each cigarette pack. It is because there aren’t any other products being force to do so. Although cigarette is unhealthy to the smokers, it is a numbers of products leads bad results to the users too. For example, we have never heard or seen any aggressive actions done by The Government about to stop people drink beer. Does it mean drink beer will not cause any harmful effect to human? Another example, we have never seen a picture of car crush or the grey sky polluted by a car placed on a printing advertisement of a motor corporation. Does it mean driving is an extremely perfect activity that no harming effects towards human and the environment?

As a result, I think we better distill about the information after we consume from the society. Try to think a little bit deeper, don’t let the powerful force blurring your sight.

References:

http://www.smokefree.hk/cosh/ccs/detail.xml?lang=en&fldrid=225

http://blog.sina.com.tw/uedada/article.php?pbgid=138&entryid=369334

http://hk.news.yahoo.com/070106/12/1zhbp.html

http://pieatapple.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/

http://www.tco.gov.hk/eindex.html

The diamond advertisement culture(by Yuki Wong)

 

Consumers in recent years, they value the design and form of products as important as the function and substance of products, plus the major premise is that they believe the products satisfy them. People often buy products not for what they do, but for what they mean. Group membership creates expectations which extend to consumption of certain products or services, what we buy will be used by others to evaluate us. Products therefore can be used to boost self- esteem. Products need to have a status and identity linked with social groups if they are to transfer those to the consumer.

Remember i was read the magazine last month, i had seen a diamond advertisements, The company is J’s.
J’s duet line advertisement is relatively simple in its design and has less information provided.The background color of the advertisement is white, which indicates clean and pure. There is the product “a ring “in the middle of the page, and a shadow of it, which makes the image look like a pair of rings together. Underneath the ring, there is a word “盟” written, which means “vow”.

The advertisement smartly created a subtle feeling while consumers read it, just like the feeling they got when they were in love. The whole advertisement brought out a message that diamond ring can represent the vow that designers plant in their pure and innocent love relationship with their beloved one. Also, the advertisement didn’t bought out its message straight-forwardly, it make people to think, this can make the information store in memory of the customer for a longer time.

The strategy that J’s duet line had used is to stimulate consumers’ need, a pull strategy. Diamond is a kind of luxury item, specialty goods. It is usually expensive, not functional and unnecessary, it belong to the self-esteem group. All humans have a need to be respected and to have self-respect. The advertisement designer care how they appeal to people whose opinions they value. Consumer purchase luxury items in order to gain recognition and to feel accepted. A special reference group, and influence on what they believe and how they behave, they determine which brands are cool and which are not, to win acceptance by their peers they may purchase a certain style or brand and acquire behavioral and acquire behavioral habits that will earn their approval.

I thought that, nowadays many diamond company ’s advertisement like J’s. They use some feeling to represent their diamond more that just show the pictures and price.A good diamond advertisement is designed to attract customers, and supposed to deliver significant messages to them, that are what customer desire to know. In other words, a good advertisement can build up positive corporate image and positive corporate image maybe an important determinant of purchase.

local print media- magazines with tremendous amount of slimming advertisements (By Kitty Fung)

local print media- magazines with tremendous amount of slimming advertisements

October 6th, 2007 by kittyfung

I have discovered that almost every page i flip over in one of those gossip magazines( popular press), I can find the slimming advertisements with a photo of an artist( the notions of stardom). The use of Janice, Gillian, Ella and some TVB stars has been deliver to audiences with the energetic, lovely, playful, feminine and elegant images. The before and after photos of the stars are something what customers should judge with thinking, because the reliability of the weight loss doesn not indicate just by a picture, and the false pleasures of mass consumption of a surrogate fantasies. Our emotions and sensibilities are what is being manipulated by the mass exploitation of the mass media, the false dreams of staying on a fairly the same weight as the stars they see in the commericials after consuming their slimming programme. The collective portraits of stars has generated distorted desires, and therefore reinforced customers to be enslaved by the commercial machine.

The signs found in the advertisements are obviously the notion of beauty with thin body shape, the so called slenderness is what we signified as pretty and the signifier are the pictures and the text that quarantee to lose 10-30 pounds within 10 days or up to 4 weeks or so The idea of using female bodies in commercials clearly made us think that or seems like the people who should care about their weight are the ladies. The gendered body that has been applied on advertisements has influenced many females to be really conscious about how much they weigh, and also this has transform into what a self monitoring mechanism for the ladies. The reshaping of our taste in understanding what is beauty, “the skinnier the prettier” has been made by cultural production and consumption. What the meanings we get is to lose the maximum amount of weight as possible within the minimum amount of time, and at certain degree, in a nutritional point of view is totally unhealthy and dangerous for the body, but the mass media has penetrated ideas of losing weight in two weeks time is something that is undermining the health conditions of the ladies.

The ideology interprets behind those advertisements is at a certain point reinforced by the star power through popular culture production and consumption. The context tend to construct trends of beauty for females, and the mass media has raised a problematic issue for the feminist as the ideas behind marginalize people (subaltern) that are over weight by understanding the binary opposition theory. We should always bear in mind that the codes of the connotations revealed in advertisements are not denotations. The commodities it sells as a substitute for slenderness, or as the beauty of real life debauched by the mass media, and simplify the real solutions to health and beauty by glossing over its problems by presenting glib solutions.

 Mass culture theory points out the repetitive and superficial nature of this local print media brainwashes the majority of the people and the subaltern about beauty.

 Consumers should always be aware of what they are buying from such advertisements, the so- called before and after picture does not neccessarily reveal the exact weight loss. The reliability of advertisements is called into question. The manipulative persuasion of the mass media should be notice by consumers, especially the lack of intellectual and moral resources commercial exploitation made by the mass culture. We as audiences should not be passive consumers and buy into the mass consumption without reflections.

By Kitty Fung

The Thinness and Beauty (By K.W.Keith. Iu)

The terms “thinness” and “beauty” nowadays are closely related, which seems that the meaning of “thinness” is undoubtedly equal to“beauty”. Without any precise definition and proof, this view has become a “fact” in the temporary local culture.

When we go somewhere by bus, MTR, various slimming advertisements are everywhere, which are mostly endorsed by different beautiful models or artists, and performing similar thinness ideas. (See Youtube) “Popular culture is the culture which originates from ‘the people’”(Storey: 10). There are lots of propagandas produced by those advertisements and slimming companies, they have succeeded in creating a new high culture in Hong Kong. However, this new culture is worthy for us to discuss as the perceptions of the people nowadays, when compared with the past, have been totally changed.

In order to talk about “beauty”, I would like to chase back to the antique China. Yáng Guìfēi (楊玉環) (See figure 1), who is one of the four beauties in the China legend. People described her as “身材豐滿，膚如凝脂” (very corpulent), but why could she become the ‘highest-ranking imperial concubine’? In contrast, there was another beauty called Zhao Feiyan (趙飛燕), who was the beautiful wife of Emperor Cheng of Han, with more thinner body than Yang. For all that, Zhao had been peculiarly less favourite than Yang, at least Zhao was not one of the four beauties in the China.       

In the past, the Chinese, including the emperor, tended to like fat ladies, they believed that those who have bigger breasts and hips, even thick waists, can give mankind the good luck, so-called “福氣” (a good fortune). As a result, Zhao could not be as famous as Yang because she didn’t fit the standard of beauty when existed in the past.

“Popular culture is simply culture which is widely favoured or well liked by many people.” (John, Storey: 6). Indeed, we could find that ladies who have great bulk, can easily win others’ acceptance and due to the case of Yang and Zhao, fatness was defined as the popular culture in the quondam China beyond doubt.Besides, let’s bring the two ladies to the modern local world, will the situation be changed if they are living in Hong Kong nowadays? Absoultely! Yang will be called as “豬扒” (ugly lady) while Zhao will be appreciated as “索” (sexy), the reason which cause this huge change is the transforming of the standard of culture. People no longer like the ladies with “福氣”,which replaced by another term “豬扒”, a more derogatory word.

The comparison between the two period of time has been proven a changeable standard of beauty. “Popular culture is the culture which is left over after we have decided what is high culture” (John Storey: 6). “People do not find meanings in the world as people make meaning” (notes). What people think and define will adequately be able to change the notion of the culture.

To sum up, time allows modifying the definition of culture, mainly altered by people. Popular culture is not fixed thing, it can be a changeable, fascinating abstract object in the world.

Reference

1.Storey, John. “What is Popular Culture,” Cultural Theory and  Popular Culture: An Introduction, 3rd. ed. (Harlow:Prentice Hall, 2001), 1-15

2. Lecture 3 (notes)

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Guifei

 Fig.1