{"id":24745,"date":"2006-04-18T16:56:17","date_gmt":"2006-04-18T16:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marketingisdead.blogspirit.com\/archive\/2006\/04\/18\/how-the-medium-affects-the-message.html"},"modified":"2006-04-18T16:56:17","modified_gmt":"2006-04-18T16:56:17","slug":"how-the-medium-affects-the-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/consumerinsight.eu\/marketingisdead\/how-the-medium-affects-the-message\/","title":{"rendered":"How the medium affects the message"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The purpose of this paper is to show how accounting for the most recent developments in such a qualitative subject as semiology can profoundly alter the patterns of a quantitative discipline such as media planning.<\/span> <\/p>\n

Media planning today is founded on communication models derived from that of Shannon and Weaver<\/u>, i.e. models which prohibit our accounting for the influence of the actual medium on message perception. Thus, in print media, the evaluation of various magazines is made in terms of target readers, i.e. readers belonging to the relevant target group.<\/span><\/p>\n

Without wishing to appropriate Mc Luhan’s deliberately provocative formula of \u00ab\u00a0the medium is the message\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, we simply wish to explain here why, when talking to the same population, the same message will be more, or less, effective according to the title in which it appears.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because for one and the same product, and with an identical target audience, the impact of the same advertisement can plummet by almost 40 % according to the title which carries the advertisement. In other words, accounting for the medium’s specific input influencing the efficacy of the message appears to be just as important (at least) as the breakdown of readers!<\/span><\/p>\n

Problematic and methodology<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

When C\u00e9sar Birotteau, Balzac’s celebrated \u00ab\u00a0perfumer merchant\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, decides to boast the virtues of his \u00ab\u00a0twin sultana pastry\u00a0\u00bb<\/i> and \u00ab\u00a0carminative water\u00a0\u00bb<\/i> to attract local customers, he has to make do with placards astutely located in what today we would call his \u00ab\u00a0marketing zone\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon afterwards, Emile de Girardin opened his daily paper to advertising and so made \u00ab\u00a0La Presse\u00a0\u00bb<\/i> the very first advertising medium<\/span>(1)<\/span><\/sup>. Articles and advertisements got along together without any real interference, and the successors to Birotteau bought nothing other than Girardin’s readers, since his prose was of little significance.<\/span><\/p>\n

From then onwards, media planning made do easily with the multiple communication theories derived from the Shannon and Weaver pattern, represented as follows :<\/span><\/p>\n

Transmitter > Coding > Message > Decoding > Receiver<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

When conveying a message to the receiver, the transmitter and the receiver share a common code. So such a pattern implies perfect symmetry between the coding and decoding operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

From a linguistic standpoint, this pattern appears to hold water. When telling B that \u00ab\u00a0the door is open\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, A is assuming that B has the same code as he : a glossary and grammar, where \u00ab\u00a0door\u00a0\u00bb<\/i> is defined as an \u00ab\u00a0opening through which one enters or leaves an enclosed area\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, and appears to be the subject of a verb in the passive tense.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, if B’s code glossary happened to be totally Shakespearian in nature, he would never understand A’s message.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The problem with this sort of pattern is that \u00ab\u00a0the door is open\u00a0\u00bb<\/i> will have a different meaning according to context. For example: \u00ab\u00a0You can go away, the meeting is over\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, \u00ab\u00a0Close it, it’s cold in here\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, \u00ab\u00a0Watch out, there might be a thief around\u00a0\u00bb<\/i> and many others for which this pattern will never make allowance, whatever the common code shared by A and B.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why a certain number of semioticians have recently replaced this pattern with more flexible or more complex notions such as that put forward by Grice, for whom the message has no real intrinsic significance. It is up to the receiver to infer the message from clues.<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u00ab\u00a0Relevance\u00a0\u00bb<\/i><\/span>(2)<\/span><\/sup>, Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson point out that \u00ab\u00a0from Aristotle to modern semioticians, all theories of communication have been founded on one and the same model, which we will call the code model. Here, communicating is a question of coding and decoding messages. Recently, several philosophers, including Paul Grice and David Lewis, put forward a wholly different model which we will call the inferential model. In this instance, communicating is a question of producing and interpreting clues.\u00a0\u00bb<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0Robert has bought le Figaro\u00a0\u00bb<\/span><\/i> can mean \u00ab\u00a0Robert has bought a copy of le Figaro\u00a0\u00bb<\/i> or \u00ab\u00a0Robert has bought the firm which publishes le Figaro\u00a0\u00bb.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Sperber and Wilson call attention to the ambiguity of such a phrase, while stating that \u00ab\u00a0under ordinary circumstances, listeners would have no problem choosing one of these two meanings\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, namely the first.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if the people conducting this conversation happened to belong to circles close to Robert Hersant, now owner of \u00ab\u00a0the firm which publishes le Figaro\u00a0\u00bb<\/i>, the second meaning would have been the right one.<\/span><\/p>\n

In both cases, the people present have the same code, i.e. the English language. On the other hand, the context is not the same:<\/span><\/p>\n