barebones communication

I have been waiting for this. Or rather waiting for this book. I had it once, but it seem to have been lost. So I had to order a new copy. Used copy arrived to day from a book store in Canada. I had some difficulties tracking down a copy, but I managed by the help of Amazon. Thanks.

The name of the book is simply Persuasion in Marketing. Written by Horace S. Schwerin and Henry H. Nowell. Published by John Wiley & Sons in 1981. And if you belong to one of those (and there are many) that means that anything written more then 6 months back are either outdated or out of fashion, you should think again. If you are one of those simple minds, you are probably reading the wrong blog

The reasons I anticipated this book (apart from the fact that I have misled my original copy) are many. First of all I have written a series of articles based on it; secondly I have written a book partly based on it; thirdly it is extremely good reading for anyone who have the ambition of doing efficient, economical (and I don’t even mean money) communication. Commercial or not. The validity goes way beyond the area of marketing if you deal with the core message in the book. And again, I am surprises, that when I added this book to Library Thing less than 30 minutes ago, I am the only one to have this book in a personal library there.

The chapter that works particularly well from an operative point of view starts at page 157, and is titled The “Rules” of Persuasion. The section Seven Fundamentals is where we want to dig in. “Over the span of more than two decades SRC tested, in the United States and several other countries, some 50.000 commercials and other advertising messages. We could not help observing that certain fundamentals recurrently characterized the successful campaigns of our clients and were much less often to be found in weaker efforts. These fundamentals, it should be added, were not our brilliant personal discovery; all have been stated in similar form at one time or another by astute practitioners of advertising both before and since.”

Here are the seven fundamentals. Take good care of them, because they might turn out extremely valuable for you as well. And that might particularly be if you are in the advertising business and are in the habit of making huge sums of money doing expertise work in communication for products, people , ideas, causes or whatever the reason may be. 

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Forth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

Well, is does not seem of much, does it? I knew that I would hear that argument, because for many these fundamantal are merely trivial. You might think so, but I am not at all sure that you are at all right. Unless you want to lower that standard of persuasive communication.

From I have seen lately, and not so lately, very few people are able to live up to these “trivial” fundamentals when doing communication. If you are in the advertising business you may have a particular hard time meeting the standard here, since the audience sometimes are diffuse, the media scattered and the competition for mere attention to your message is hard to get. 

I will not, of course leave it at this Hopefully you did not think so. I will, in future posts, elaborate on each fundamental. So just stay tuned, and get ready for some interesting stuff here as well. The first thing you should do is, however, getting a copy of Schwerin and Newell’s book. If is is still out there.

If you are into the Scandinavian languages, and are able to read the letters of The Royal Kingdom of Denmark you might in fact do very well and maybe a little bit better with this book. That is, if you can get it. Hmmm …. I might even have a word with the publisher. 

Give it a thought on communication: Be serious in answering this question: How many pieces of advertising have you seen lately that really engage thought worth entertaining? And sent me a list of campaign so I can get entertained, as well

As I said: Stay tuned. And while you are at it, stay healthy as well

(The main tag for this barebones section will be rules of persuasion. If you hit the tag cloud you will be able to follow the section there).

Sometimes things turns out a little different. You get a bit more that you bargained for. At least a little more then you dared hope for. 

This can happen in every type of communication. In texts as well as in visuals. In other forms of communication as well, I would say. In commercial and non commercial communication 

We know that there are at least two levels involved in every act of communication. The first one being that content that we all can agree on. The manifest that is there for everyone to see. The horse in the field, the car on the road, the couple on the bench. This is the denotative level.

Second there is the connotative level. That overlay that always comes with denotations in the ways that denotations are presented to us. The horse that is running and connotes speed, the car that is broken and connotes damage, the people on the bench that sit close and connotes intimacy.

Are there levels beyond that. Ask Roland Barthes and he will say yes and point to at least one more level. He talks about an obtuse meaning as the third level. This is highly subjective and therefore hard to speak about in objective terms (I will have a specific post on that some other time). And Barthes even talks about a punctum as a specific item within a visual. The punctum attracts special attention.

Leave Barthes’ third meaning and his punctum aside in this post. The questions is then if there could be a third meaning other than that indicates by Barthes. I think thet there could be such an alternative third meaning. It occurs when the obvious meaning content of an image, or any other act of communication, transcends itself and move the spectator from specifics to generals. When the pair on the bench, the horse in the field and the car in the street contentwise moves beyond that of a specific pair, a specific horse and a specific car and tells a story of pairs, horses and cars in general. This is when you get that bit extra. Something more than you could hope to expect. 

I call this third level for the iconic level. Combine the word icon with that of notation and you will get icon + notation: iconnotation.

Let me show you a photograph to illustrate what I mean. It is a portrait of two sisters sitting on a bench (what coindence :-)).

As a picture of these sisters it is rather saying for those who know them. The more, however, I looked at the picture it took on an extra dimension. I know these people well, but the more I looked at the picture the sisters disappeared as people that I know, and took on a dimension on simply “sisters”. They could be any pair of sisters. The image turned into an icon for the notion sisters.

So here is the deal then. Pictures (let’s limit the discussion to that) consists at least of three possible levels of meaning:

1. Denotation, 2. Connotation, 3. Iconnotation

Do I hear you say that these two people does not have to be sisters? They could be anyone. Could just be friends. Well, that does not really of matter. The important thing is that their likenesses; both facial likeness and likeness of bodily position indicates strongly (connotes) they they have some kind of intimacy beyond sitting on the same bench. Right? So, if your prefer the picture be be an icon on intimacy, that would be quite ok with me. Please remark that hand that turns out behind the back of the right hand sister. It wraps up the ideas of intimacy very well, in my opinion.

Of course all of this can be contested. Please do. The good thing with blogs, however, are that they very seldom are contested.

Should I mention that denotations and connotations are default levels in all images, and all types of communication, and that iconnotations are not. The two first are a question of quantity and the latter a question of quality. As sloppy image will hardly ever aspire for iconic status, since e. g visual distractions will not likely help concentrating the message. Any message.

Stay tunes and I will return to that

Well, you will be surprised. I was.

Up till a month ago I had no idea that Edmund Husserl has written much about images. Not to speak about photography. Until I had a closer look in my bookcase and found this book: Edmund Husserl: Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerungen, herausgeben von Eduard Marbach, Husserliana Band XXIII, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. 

I am ashamed that I have to admit that I have had this book since April 22, 1980. On the other hand it might have gained considerably in value since it is still in mint condition. I paid Deutsche Mark 255,00 for it at that time. And that is a small fortune. It is a brick on 724 pages written with an obscure philosophical pen. Husserl’s pen. The major parts of it about 100 years back. Don’t let that disturb you.

The good thing is, that is was translated (yes, it was) by John B. Brough in 2005 and published in a paperback edition by German publisher Springer. Goes by the title: Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898 -1925). And it comes at a much better price. It’s a good read.

What is even better is that the book is absolutely amazing for anyone that intents to dig into the ontology and images and photography. So, it you plan to have a career as a university professor, or simply settle for a Ph.D., or have an interest in the arts in general, you should simply start with this book. It leaves Roland Barthes and Susan Sonntag in the back row. And it does so in a couple of pages into the book.

You should move NOW, since this book and this branch of research have hardly picked up yet. But it will. You could really take the drivers seat for a while even if it will probably leave you with a 700+ pages headache. That will pass over time.

You don’t have to thank me for this recommendation now. You can pay me later. When I loaded both books to Library Thing a little while ago it turned out that I, so far, am the only one that have pointed to these books. And there are tons of books in there already. So the show is yours for the taking.

And as I said. You can pay me later, but if you are into this areas either as a researcher, student or just out of plain interest: GO FOR IT. I will - with some delay

You will find the precise references to both the original version from 1980, and to the translation from 2005 by following the links. Both ways you are in for a brick of pages. 

NB: When you are done with Husserl’s theory on images and photographs you could always send me a quick word as to why the image below might have a certain phenomenological affinity And, add a bit of semiological and gestalt psychological analysis while you are at it.

Good luck with both the books, and the picture. 

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Buy the English translation of Husserl’s work. Follow the link and support the site:
Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898-1925) (Husserliana: Edmund Husserl Collected Works)

5. Aestheticism

Obscurity is not a world unknown to Barthes. Or to his readers or his critics.

Particularly if you want to venture into his world of photography. Barthes is famous for his article on the Third Meaning, that he wrote for the French periodical Cahiers du Cinéma in 1970. Here he introduces the notion of the obtuse meaning of an image. Some would rather call this the obscure meaning of an image (I will handle this issue in a separate post). 

I have to admit though, that already in 1961 when introducing his fifth connotation of aestheticism obscurity is present. To me it is, anyway.

Barthes states: “when photography turns painting, composition or visual substance treated with deliberation in its very material “texture”, it is either so as to signify itself as “art” (which was the case with the “pictorialism” of the beginning of the century) or to impose a general more subtle and complex signifier than would be possible with other connotation procedures”.

I’m am not sure what Barthes means with “a general more subtle and complex signifier”. So I am not in a position to be very helpful here. Sorry about that, but I urge you to pick up Barthes’ text directly, and tell me what this is all about. I will be more than happy to be educated here :-). How his connotation procedure of aestheticism can act as a mean of laying content into an photography, obscures me. Simple as that.

Here is an example of what I would call aestheticism in Barthes’ meaning “photography turns painting”. Or at least such a trial. This image, that is shot in Barthes’ own country, France, are overly saturated and filtered to make it look more like a painting than a photography.

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text