Consum Case

Advertising is an integral part of selling. Ever since man began to sell, he wanted another to buy. He exhorted the buyer through gestures, signs and words. He extolled the virtues of what he was selling and this in turn became the process of selling. The need to manufacturer (or procure), sell and consume, became a condition of human existence. With industrial growth and organisation of manufacturing process, we have now moved into the era of consumerism. The effort is on to find audience in order to sell products to mass clientele. The content of our lives is to a large measure conditioned by media messages of what we ought to buy - from junk foods to everlasting peace. Advertising has come to stay.

With over two billion people watching it every day, television is unquestionably the prime vehicle of our times. It is the ultimate opinion maker, and it holds captive an amazingly diverse and huge audience in previously unknown communion. Within the charmed magic circle of this idiot box the diaspora of an insidious sales message descends and perhaps settles. In this section the researcher analyse what makes a TV ad tick and how it has become a distinctive genre.

Television has been derisively called the idiot box. It is also known as the tube, the telly, simply 'TV' and by many other such names. Some of these names and definitions have a pejorative connotation, some others-grudgingly admiring. But, almost universally, we are still overawed by the technology which brought moving pictures into our houses for collective viewing. We still regard this box as something of a visual oracle. Whether we are complaining or complacent at times, we still do not turn off our sets. It is a habit hard to beat and we follow it like zombies. Unthinking, automatic. The term 'idiot box' has stuck and it will perhaps never come unstuck. We have come to regard the box as a thing that cannot lie: for is not seeing believing?

A 20th century phenomenon which is essentially technological in nature, television basically consists of electronic transmission of pictures (and sound) from one place to another.