Sunday, 31 January 2016

Dalal Salamah

"All branches of the restaurant chain, Chili House, offer pizza burger, a special Italian dish that consists of delicious burger meat with pepperoni, mozzarella cheese, marinara sauce and green pepper, in addition to roasted onions and mushrooms and many of Chili House"s other delicious additions."

When reading the lines above, one does not doubt for a moment that they are part of an advertisement, but the truth is that they are not. They are actually quoted from a "news story" that appeared in the economic section of a daily newspaper under Corporate News in the same style the newspaper uses for all its other stories. The name of the newspaper appeared in the by-line, and the story used the same language, font and title design used in news articles, making it difficult for the average reader to recognize it as an advertisement, and not a news story in the professional sense of the word.

The lines above are an example of a prevailing practice in local media; namely, publishing advertisement content that promotes goods or services sold by for-profit private companies without using the traditional advertisement format, which differs in its language, content and layout from news stories. Instead, such stories copy the style and language of news and present facts and quotes in a similar way, with a similar placement for headlines and pictures, all the while not mentioning that these news stories are in fact "advertisements."

These stories usually appear on specific, almost daily, pages in newspapers" economic sections. In addition to "Corporate News" in Al Dustour, there is "Companies and Businesses" in Al Ghad and "Business Club" in Al Rai. Such news appears every now and then in Al Sabeel. Similar content can also be found on various news websites. Al Dustour and other news websites publish these stories with the name of the newspaper or the website in the by-line, Al Ghad writes "Amman" in the by-line, while Al Rai does not use a by-line at all.

"Advertisement stories" promote the same goods and services that are usually promoted by traditional forms of advertisements. Such goods include cars, hotels, banks, watches, phones, malls, hospitals, hardware stores, coffee shops, television sets, coffee, clothes, restaurants, and others. Quite simply, it is "news" that directs consumers to goods that range from a dish washing liquid to a hospital conducting heart surgeries.

The "deception" in "advertisement stories" is not restricted to publishing it in the form of editorial news, without warning readers that these stories are advertisements, but goes beyond this to being treated as news by the newspapers. These news stories are archived, and hence the reader can easily find them on the Internet when using any key words included in the stories.

These "implicit" advertisements appear to readers on news and newspaper websites in the same format in which news appears. Furthermore, Al Rai, which ends every story with a warning against any attempts to quote or use content without written permission to protect its intellectual property, uses the same warning at the end of advertisement stories as well. 

Al Ghad is the only newspaper that provides to its readers the service of "related news" next to the news published on its website. On many occasions, the links posted by the newspaper as related news next to an advertisement story are a mix of advertisement news and editorial news. The opposite holds true in that related news next to a news story is a mix of advertisement news and other news items.

While people working in the media know the reality of these stories, some bet on readers" "sophistication" and that they will know by time that the stories on such pages are exclusively advertisement stories. Consequently, readers will recognize them as such, even if the media does not explicitly say so.

However, this is not accurate, as there is no specific identity for stories published on these pages. Unlike "promotional stories" that explicitly advertise certain goods in a language that reveals their nature, these pages also include items that do not differ in their content and message from any other independent news story.

For example, stories about a lecture given by Mohammad Al Qudah, former minister of awqaf and youth, at Jadara University, UNICEF"s grant to Generations For Peace, and the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between the King Abdullah II Fund for Development and Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Knowledge Society are all news stories. They do not differ, even for those working in the media, from any other editorial content, but they all appeared in the "Companies and Businesses" page in Al Ghad next to other stories promoting evening gowns, a printing company and watches.  On the other hand, we find explicit promotional news published in regular economic pages. Stories with clear advertisement content, like Lexus car and its "absolute power" and "smooth performance," the draw by Ahli Bank to win a "dream house," and Arab Bank"s launch of a visa card campaign, appear on the "Money & Investment" page in Al Dustour next to news about a World Bank report on increasing competitive advantage, efforts to develop a national strategy for intellectual property rights, and the distribution of informational brochures about the Social Security Corporation.

As a matter of fact, the media outlet that publishes items on these specialized pages publishes similar items on its other economic pages.

Why Do Advertisers "Camouflage" Their Ads?

Publishing advertisements as news is not a Jordanian invention. "Advertorials" is an English term that describes advertisements designed to look to the reader as news stories. It is coined from two words: advertisements and editorial. This practice developed in the early twentieth century, but the term advertorial did not appear in dictionaries until 1961.^[i] It appeared in the United States. It refers to all paid press products that include promotional messages, whether this promotion is for a commercial product, political party, persons, etc.

The question here is: Why do advertisers camouflage their ads?

A study ^[ii] that examined ways in which people respond to advertisements, in their traditional and non-traditional forms, attempted to answer this question. According to the study, people have developed two different mechanisms for receiving news stories and advertisements; they trust the former and doubt the latter. This means that the impact of the message is basically determined by the context in which the message is conveyed. Therefore, if the reader recognizes the material he is reading as advertisement, the content of the message will not have the same effect it has on him if he recognizes it as news.

Another study ^[iii] says that readers automatically trigger "filters" when faced with advertisements because they know that there is a producer behind them who wants to sell a product and make more profit, and that in order to do so, the producer will exaggerate the effectiveness of the product. However, the same reader is not as judgmental and skeptical of editorial items, because they are perceived as "objective" products that are more credible than advertisements.

Readers" skepticism of advertisements in their traditional form does not only reduce interest in them, but it may actually backfire and produce an opposite reaction on the part of the receiver. ^[iv] It can be said that readers are more likely to remember products promoted through advertorials and take an initiative regarding them. ^[v]

A website specializing in managing promotional campaigns stresses to writers of this type of advertorials that these "advertisements" should look like an "independent news story," and that "in order to keep this appearance of impartiality you should avoid at all costs submitting an article that clearly reads like an advert," like labelling a story as "advertisement." The website stresses that the story is "most effective when people don"t realize it is a paid advertisement." 

This approach is basically a "trick" that deceives readers to believe that what they are reading is not an advertisement, but a news article, which is the outcome of professional media work. Readers assume that this content aims at educating them, not selling them products, and they perceive the outlet as an impartial broker that rises above personal interests, while in reality advertisers exploit this reputation to promote their products.  

Jordan"s Press and Publications Law ^[vi] explicitly stipulates that "any publication that publishes features or news involving any party for a fee has to clearly and explicitly state in the piece that it is an advertisement."

The Code of Honor of the Jordan Press Association warns against "publishing information (…) with promotional purposes," ^[vii] and states that "it is not allowed to mix promotional with editorial content." ^[viii] The Code of Honor also obliges media outlets to "explicitly state that advertising content (whether editorial or not) is an advertisement." ^[ix]