There are at least two remarks anyone can make regarding advertising billboards and the language in which they are presented these days. The first is the size of advertising billboards that are increasingly assuming “superhuman” proportions. When you look at them from close quarters, they give you the impression that the artists who produced those huge billboards created pictures of peoples with an aura of immortality or a physical stature so out of this world. They are not only intimidating but also frightening. The people in the pictures may be nonentities in real life but they assume godlike proportions when seen on the billboards while we feel so diminished. We may perhaps call this an illusion or distortion of reality.
Advertisements are basically illusions of reality because they exaggerate reality like all art does. Some of them occupy one side of entire buildings and display people and products with such vivid pictures and colors that you often have the impression that you are dwarfed by the gigantic proportions. This is in fact the main objective of huge advertising billboards, namely to make you feel small so that you may think that the only way to become bigger could be by consuming a given product, that may be a new model car, or a bottle of whiskey or by saving your money at a local bank so that you become rich in no time, although interest rates are the same in all the banks,
Advertising gurus often tell us that one of the techniques of advertisements is to wet your mouth or stir your appetite for a product, that which may be a food item or a brand of liquor. Some of the advertisements on hotel premises are so lavishly done by artists with the aid of computer simulators that the products create in you the illusion of achieving happiness by consuming them by any means and without delay although everyone understands that meat is not the best healthy food nowadays when science is advising us to eat more fruits and vegetables.
That is why the same gurus tell us that we go to a certain entertainment outlet as if we are programmed to go there as a result of our daily bombardment with visual or auditory advertisements that manipulate our decisions quite unconsciously. They virtually force us to choose a given brand over the other. Some people think, quite rightly, that advertising is the science of manipulating the human mind and bending or twisting it to the extent that it is falling in love with certain products that subsequently assume brand names. This is a long-accepted and long-established fact of advertisement and we seldom question why we choose this or that product or service instead of a different one.
The second observation this writer in particular often makes is the language in which the words on the billboards are written. Exaggeration is an art in literature because the characters and situations are fictitious to begin with and you are expected what literary critics call, “the willing suspension of disbelief” in order to accept illusions as facts. Yet, advertisements work differently because if you tell the consumer that he would turn into a lion if he drinks a certain brand of beer, this will certainly fail to convince both the consumer as well as the general public because no one has ever seen humans turning into lions except in science fiction movies or in magical realist novels.
The other point about most advertisements written in English in particular is the language they use to convey their messages. Using English together with Amharic or any other Ethiopian language is justified because there is a sizable population of foreigners living in the country and consuming local or imported products and services. This is not however always the case. There are also remote regions where English speaking people have never set foot since god created those places. And yet advertisers who feel they are following the modernizing trends often resort to using English as their medium of communication. They write their advertisements in English which is neither “Afro-English” nor “Ethio-English” but something in between.
My advice to these kinds of advertisers is that they should write their messages into English and get them translated by professionals before they expose them to the eyes of the public. When you travel to the outskirts of Addis, it is not uncommon to see various business outlets exhibiting their properties in English whereas there might not be a single European or American putting order in English.
Advertisements, whether written in English or Amharic, should therefore be written in a clear language the majority of the local consumers understand because they should observer the main rule of language as a tool of communication. Advertisements are not expected to be written in Shakespearean English or the Amharic of author Haddis Alemayehu in “Love unto Death” but they should at least be free from spelling mistakes, common errors and clichéd expressions.
A pedestrian definition of language would suggest that it is medium of communication but for communication to be effective it has to be conveyed in a language and style that the communicators will understand without extra effort. This is the basic rule of written and oral communication that any average human being can understand. A more sophisticated definition says that, “Language is a system of communication that relies on verbal of interchanging messages or information or non-verbal codes to transfer information.
Advertisements are also modern public communication tools used by producers to sell their products to consumers because, “advertising is a form of marketing communication that aims to persuade and influence people to take a specific action, like buying a product or using a service.”
In Ethiopia, business advertising is a relatively recent phenomenon because capitalism was introduced lately and modern advertising was virtually unknown until late into the monarchic regime. Emperor Haile Sellassie can be credited for encouraging capitalist development in the country as he was fascinated with the level of development and civilization that European countries had attained as late as his exile to England following Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. As soon as he returned from exile, the monarch launched a vigorous program of capitalist modernization although the conditions for such a progressive agenda were not present during the post-war period until well into the 1960s.
According to the historical records, “In Ethiopia, advertising in general is believed to have begun in the 19th century, during the reign of Emperor Menelik II. At the time, advertisements used to be announced at main squares and streets using the “negarit”, a traditional war drum.” With the beginnings of capitalist economic development came the business of advertisement because the two were not separable. Even in relatively older Ethiopia, traders used primitive methods of introducing their items to the public by sending individuals to the most prominent market in Addis and in the region where they used their voices to declare that they are ready to sell such and such products that were mainly agricultural ones.
Whenever modern advertising in Ethiopia is discussed, the first name that comes to mind is Wubishet Werkalemahu, the doyen of modern advertising in Ethiopia “who made his name in advertisement business in his early days of his childhood. Wubishet is also famous for his pioneer work in traditional Ethiopia advertising during the time when modern techniques were unknown. he came to Addis Ababa from his native Yifat and his first stint in modern advertising was an assignment from his first customer that was the National Lottery.
He went all over the country to sell lottery tickets. In one of his interviews, Wubishet said, “I used to have one donkey – I loaded a bag of money on the back of the donkey and marched down along Churchill Avenue telling people that they better buy and take a chance.” By the end of the 20th century, business advertisement was well established as foreign companies massively set shops in the country while domestic businesspeople became increasingly familiar with the sophisticated techniques of advertising.
At the dawn of this century and the invention of more sophisticated electronic devices, advertising companies not only flourished in the global marketplace but their works also assumed professionalism based on the latest scientific discoveries. Capitalism would not have developed to its present stage anywhere in the world without the parallel development in advertising and its emergence as a separate field of study by colleges and universities as a vital aspect of marketing management.
The best option should be for our advertising agencies to understand the art and science of advertising as an engine that pushes forward their businesses but also as an art form that has its own ethical standards that put the consumers at the center of their activities. Consumers need respect and honesty to embrace a given product and breaches of ethics would be an insult to consumers and a disaster for th elong term prosperity of the advertisers
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 22 OCTOBER 2023
