Evaluation so far.....

After reviewing critical research gathered from both consumer surveys, questionnaires and internet based resources. I have came to a partial conclusion of the advertising agencies messages broadcast over the christmas period, and the affects it has on peoples budgets and limitations.

In recent years christmas has gradually became a 'Hallmark Holiday' powered by the advertising industries, as they subliminally encourage children to ask for the latest forms of fun and entertainment at any cost. Gifts ranging from the illustrious Playstation 3 with its excessive price tag to pets and toys. Overall the market is being over-ran by celebrity endorsements which cause audiences to feel social desirability to be more like the celebrities by purchasing the products that they supposedly use themselves. Budgets are constantly increasing from year to year with companys paying millions to have endorsements, these companies span across Nike, M&S, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons. Certain companies to keep to traditonal ideas using father Christmas to portray their products. Coca-Cola is the main culprit using the saints image to appeal and sell soft drinks to children. An example of celebrity encouragment can be seen in the 2007 christmas advertisment broadcast by the Tesco company, which shows the Spice Girls shopping after gifts supposedly for one another in a Tesco store. The video discussion below shows the opinion of Jonothan Gabay on endoresments.



Watching TV right now is a bit like being the most attractive person in a pub at the end of Saturday night. All the high-street retailers are bounding around desperately trying to impress, flashing their cash and showing off their cool mates as they bid to get you in bed, in a strictly financial sense.
M&S has hired Antonio Banderas to smoulder, Bogart-style, alongside the usual crowd of Twiggy, Erin O'Connor and Lizzie Jagger. Tesco has recruited the Spice Girls, while Boots has opted for unknowns but seems to have recruited thousands of them in a Cecil B DeMille version of the office party. Indeed, it's pretty much like the golden age of Hollywood every time there's a commercial break, with Sainsbury, Woolworths, Next, Argos and Asda joining the unseemly jostle for space.


So enthusiastic are these campaigns that you can almost smell the desperation. The bottom line is, well, the bottom line. And it's not looking good. The summer was as dismal for the high street as it was for us - rain kept the pavements empty and the credit crunch made shoppers cautious. Accountancy firm Ernst & Young predicts that retailers will dominate the list of companies issuing profit warnings come yuletide.
This final month and a half of the year is the big chains' last chance - the period when they usually make up to 20% of their cash. Why else would John Lewis take to the small screen for only the second time in its entire history? The result - shadows and piles of gifts set to Morning Serenade from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet - is exactly the kind of awkward, arty attempt to join the fray that you'd expect from the patron saint of middle-class consumerism. We may have to advertise this year, the campaign is muttering, but we're certainly not going to go with all that nasty, noisy Woolworths stuff.

All of which means, according to Marketing magazine, a cool half a billion pounds spent on advertising before you add in Antonio's fee. So now it's over to us. Just remember that everything comes down in price on December 26

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2211106,00.html