1 Marketers always want to know whether a new development is going to be a trend or a fad. By definition, a trend lasts at least five years, is broadly based, and represents significant marketing opportunities. A fad, on the other hand, has a much shorter life cycle, is usually confined to one or two industries, and represents limited potential. Naturally, marketers want to cash in on trends but avoid getting burned by fads. Here is a three-step checklist to help determine whether a new development will be a trend or a fad.
2 A trend has a solid foundation that supports its growth - demographics, values, lifestyle, and technology. A fad does not have such a solid foundation, but is usually driven by pop culture, fashion, “the trendy crowd,” and media.
3 Casual attire, for example, is a trend driven by demographics (a heavier population that prefers looser clothing), shifting values (comfort takes precedence over fashion), and lifestyle (informality in the home and workplace).
4 Analyze the mainstream today to determine
how much it will have to change to adopt a new development. This adjustment process can take five years or more before the mainstream is “ready.” To evaluate
accessibility, consider the following:
5 Appeal Buying books online is becoming a way of life for many Americans because the purchase decision is usually made in advance and seldom requires examination of the actual product. Most people are willing to wait a few days for delivery because books are usually a non-essential purchase. Buying groceries online, however, is not going to take off because it is out of sync with the way people shop for groceries. Food is an “essential” purchase that is seldom done in advance, as few people can wait for delivery and there is often no one at home to receive deliveries.
6 Ease of adoption Products will be more accessible if they do not require a change in behavior or tastes, are simple to use, and do not involve an educational process. Once the price of CD players came down, the mainstream quickly converted to this format because it was superior to tapes and LPs, and just as easy to use.
7 Price Some developments may have mainstream appeal, but will remain marginal because people are either unwilling to pay a premium price for it (environmentally safe dry cleaning) or simply unable to afford it (European luxury cars).
8 Availability Many people would like to surf or snowboard, for example, but participation will remain limited due to each sport’s geographical requirements: You need the ocean for surfing, the mountains for snowboarding.
9 If you can find related examples of a new development in different categories or industries, it is likely to be a trend. Eastern influences, for example, are permeating our culture - in spirituality, healthcare, food, fitness, design, and pop culture - so this is a trend. Belgian influences, on the other hand, are confined to a couple of avant-garde fashion designers and a few fancy restaurants in New York, so this is likely to
Adapted from Brandweek.
Using previous knowledge
Scanning
Recognizing
audience
Guessing meaning from context
Understanding
details
B
Do you think these things are trends or fads? Mark each trend (T) or fad ( F ).
_1. casual attire _5. CD players
2. buying books online __ 6. surfing
3. buying groceries online 7. snowboarding
4. environmentally safe dry cleaning 8. public transportation
Scan the text to check your answers. Then read the whole text.
Who do you think the text was written for? Check (y') the correct answer.
1. economics professors 3. bank employees
2. business people 4. fashion designers
Find the words and phrases in the reading that match these definitions. Write one word on each line.
1. make money from
2. losing a lot of money
3. is more important than
4. availability when needed
5. affecting every part; spreading through
cash
in
_ on. _(par. 1)
(par. 1)
_(par. 3)
(par. 4) (par. 9)
Mark each item accessible (A) or not accessible ( N ). Then write the reasons that the items marked N are not accessible.
. N \ eating expensive chocolates
price ... ___
_2. going skiing
3. microwave ovens
4. buying small airplanes
5. vitamin supplements
Relating reading to personal experience
Answer these questions.
1. Which things in your country do you think are fads? Which are trends?
2. Which fads were popular a few years ago but have disappeared? Why didn’t they become trends?
3. What do you think some future trends will be? Why?
Unit 13 • Fashion
103
WRAP-UP
Write the acronyms for these words.
1. central processing unit
2. Cable News Network
3. Music Television
4. Bachelor of Science
5. British Broadcasting Corporation
6. Master of Arts
7. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
8. Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
9. liquid crystal display
10. General Equivalency Diploma
11. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
12. personal digital assistant
CPU
B
Complete the diagrams with the acronyms from exercise A. Then add your own acronyms to each diagram.
CPU
COMPUTER
TERMS
TELEVISION
STATIONS
ACRONYMS
ORGANIZATIONS
EDUCATIONAL
DEGREES
\
Work in groups. Bring in fashion magazines. Discuss which fashions are fads and which are trends. Give reasons. Then present your ideas to the class.
104
Unit 13 • Fashion
PREVIEW
You are going to read three texts about the media. First, answer the questions in the boxes.
This newspaper article describes how tabloids are trying to establish credibility with the public.
1. What kinds of stories do tabloids usually cover?
2. Are tabloids popular in your country? Why or why not?
3. Is your favorite newspaper considered serious or a tabloid?
Read this magazine article to find out how journalists choose photos for news magazines.
1. What do you notice when you flip through a magazine?
2. What is the most popular subject of newspaper and magazine photos?
3. How are the pictures in newspapers different from those in tabloids?
This book excerpt presents opposing views on media violence.
1. Do violent movies and TV shows bother you? Why or why not?
2. Have you seen a violent movie or TV program recently?
3. Should children be allowed to watch violent programs?
Find out the meanings of the words in italics. Then check (*/) the statements you agree with.
1. Parents should curb the amount of television their children watch.
2. There’s too much blood and gore in the movies.
3. The media has little impact on the way people think.
4. Ethics plays a large role in what the media reports.
5. News programs shouldn’t air war footage.
_ 6. Most journalists are hypocrites.
7. It is the media’s responsibility to mobilize public outrage.
8. The media should withhold information that might cause panic.
10S
Unit 14 • The media
1 It could be the most shocking tabloid story in America - and one that they can’t print. Splashed across newspaper trucks making their deliveries in the northeastern states of America are the words, “No Elvis. No Aliens. No UFOs.” It’s not, of course, that aliens have stopped abducting, or that Elvis no longer eats at Burger King; it’s just that the new management at American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer, the Globe, and the Star, has decided that readers will no longer be hearing of it.
2 America’s tabloids are undergoing a major change under the leadership of David Pecker, a former director of a French company that publishes glossy magazines such as Elle. He believes that the way to halt the drop in readership that all the supermarket tabloids have suffered over the past decade is to take them upmarket.
3 Under Pecker, American Media is attempting to rebrand, reposition, or tweak its seven major titles to cover the spectrum from country music ( Country Weekly ) to the sensational to the super-weird: The National Examiner will focus on strange human interest stories; the Star on celebrities; the National Enquirer on credible, news-driven tales; the Globe will still feature gossip about the celebs; the Sun will focus on a more mature readership, with health-orientated and religious articles, and Weekly World News on nonsense such as the wedding of the world’s fattest man.
4 Pecker has a clear idea of the role tabloids need to play to win back readership. “What tabloids stand for is to expose the hypocrisy of the rich and famous,” he says. When he took over the company last year, he commissioned 5,000 consumer interviews to discover why only one out of eight people who flip through an American Media title at the supermarket buys it. The answer? “They were fascinated. But they didn’t believe it.”
5 On his arrival, Pecker issued an order: no more autopsy shots, no more Elvis sightings, no more UFOs. The tabloids would be entering an era of respectability, in which big-name advertisers would buy space, readers would return, and journalists would want jobs. “The easiest way to look at it is, if a big Hollywood story breaks, the Enquirer would do investigative stories, the Star would cover the impact on the celebrity’s career, and the Globe would really do the spicy parts of the story,” Pecker says.
6 After the decision to ban ads for psychic healers and miracle remedies, the titles have begun to attract new advertisers. The Enquirer has been redesigned with a sleeker, all-color look. In line with a new Enquirer slogan, “Get it first. Get it fast. Get it right,” old-style headlines such as “Kills Pal and Eats Pieces of Flesh” have been toned down.
7 Many doubt that United States tabloids can really change. “I can’t imagine a transformation that would give them credibility,” says Bob Steele, a specialist in journalistic ethics. “Good for them if they want to respect themselves. The question remains: What do they stand for as a news organization?”
8 Five million Americans who buy Pecker’s tabloids know exactly why they do so, even if they don’t believe everything they read. Will tamer tabloids succeed? Pecker thinks so. But there will be no Elvis.
Adapted from The Guardian.
Thinking about
personal
experience
Check (✓) the subjects that appear in tabloids.
1. sightings of Elvis Presley _ 2. sightings of aliens
3. sightings of UFOs
4. celebrity gossip
5. health-related articles
6. bizarre wedding stories
7. ads for psychic healers
8. ads for miracle cures
Scanning
Scan the text to find out which subjects above will no longer be in American tabloids. Then read the whole text.
Guessing meaning from context
Making
inferences
Find the words and phrases in the reading that match these definitions. Write one word on each line.
1. put an end to
2. change slightly
3. represent
4. not allow
5. made less forceful or offensive
6. less exciting
halt
(par. 2) (par. 3)
(par. 6)
(par. 4) (par. 6)
(par. 8)
B
Where do you think the headlines could appear? Match each headline with a tabloid. (Note: In some cases more than one answer is possible.)
a. National Enquirer
b. National Examiner
Table caption1. Quintuplets' Mom and Dad Say Five Babies Are Not Enough
c. Sun e. Weekly World News
d. Star f. Country Weekly
g. Globe
_2. VITAMIN E | _3. President’s Son | _4.| | DOLLY 1 |
is the Secret | Arrested for | Wins Major | |
to Looking | Assault | Country Music | |
YearsYounger | Awards Again |
WORLD'S TALLEST WOMAN WEDS WORLD'S SHORTEST MAN _
6. Find Out How These Hollywood Stars Got their Start
Why Husband Number Six No Longer Wants Liz
Relating reading to personal experience
Answer these questions.
1. What is the most outrageous story you ever saw or read about in a tabloid?
2. Which of the newspapers mentioned in the text would you most likely readr Why?
3. Should any kinds of stories be banned from newspapers and magazines? If so, which?
107
Unit 14 • The media
READING 2
1 “Wanna buy a body?” That was the opening line of more than a few phone calls I got from freelance photographers when I was a photo editor at U.S. News. Like many in the mainstream press, I wanted to separate the world of photographers into “them,” who trade in pictures of bodies or chase celebrities like Princess Diana, and “us,” the serious newspeople. But after 16 years in that role, I came to wonder whether the two worlds were easily distinguishable.
2 Working in the reputable world of journalism, I assigned photographers to cover other people's nightmares. I justified invading moments of grief, under the guise of the reader's right to know. I didn't ask photographers to trespass or to stalk, but I didn't have to: I worked with pros who did what others did, talking their way into situations or shooting from behind police lines, to get pictures I was after. And I wasn't alone.
3 In any American town, in the aftermath of a car crash or some other hideous incident when ordinary people are hurt or killed, you rarely see photographers pushing, paparazzi-like, past rescue workers to capture the blood and gore. But you are likely to see local newspaper and television photographers on the scene - and fast. . . .
4 How can we justify doing this? Journalists are taught to separate doing the job from worrying about the consequences of publishing what they record. Repeatedly, they are reminded of a news-business dictum: Leave your conscience in the office. You get the picture or the footage; the decision whether to print or air it comes later. A victim may lie bleeding, unconscious, or dead: Your job is to record the image. You're a photographer, not a paramedic. You put away your emotions and document the scene.
5 Bringing out the worst. We act this way partly because we know that the pictures can have important meaning. Photographs can change deplorable situations by mobilizing public outrage or increasing public understanding. . . .
From US News & World Report.
6 But catastrophic events often bring out the worst in photographers and photo editors. In the first minutes and hours after a disaster occurs, photo agencies . . . buy pictures. They rush to obtain exclusive rights to dramatic images and death is usually the subject .... Often, an agency buys a picture from a local newspaper or an amateur photographer and puts it up for bid by major magazines. The most keenly sought "exclusives" command tens of thousands of dollars through bidding contests.
7 I worked on all those stories and many like them. When they happen, you move quickly: buying, dealing, assigning, trying to beat the agencies to the pictures. I rarely felt the impact of the story, at least until the coverage was over. . . .
8 Now, many people believe journalists are the hypocrites who need to be brought down, and it's our pictures that most gall. Readers may not believe, as we do, that there is a distinction between sober-minded "us" and sleazy "them." In too many cases, by our choices of images as well as how we get them, we prove our readers right.
Sometimes ellipsis (...) is used to show that words, phrases, or sentences have been omitted from a reading. For example, the ellipsis after the words and fast (par. 3) indicate that sentences were omitted from the original paragraph.
Predicting
Skimming
Read the first paragraph on the opposite page. Then check (»/) the statement that you think best describes the writer's opinion.
1. Mainstream journalists are more ethical than tabloid photographers.
2. Mainstream journalists are no more ethical than tabloid photographers.
3. Mainstream journalists are less ethical than tabloid photographers.
Skim the text to check your prediction. Then read the whole text.
Restating
Making
inferences
Relating reading to personal experience
A
Underline the sentences in the text that have the same meaning as the sentences below.
1.1 told myself that shooting people at sad times was my way of informing the public, (par. 2)
I justified invading moments of grief under the guise of the reader's right to know.
2. Journalists covering a news story aren’t supposed to think about whether they’re doing the right thing, (par. 4)
3. Sometimes journalists can help people by showing the photographs, (par. 5)
4. Editors pay a lot of money for photos that their competitors want. (par. 6)
5. Only after the story was out of the news did I think about the pictures, (par. 7)
6. The public doesn’t trust or respect people in the news business, (par. 8)
B
Check (V) the statements that are true.
_/ 1. Other photo editors have done the same thing the writer did.
2. People who appeared in the writer’s photos wrote him angry letters.
3. Pictures taken at scenes where someone dies do not end up in print.
4. People in news photos are not always asked whether their pictures can be taken.
5. The writer wants to apologize to some people in the pictures he used.
6. The writer now works for the tabloid press.
7. The writer still feels guilty about some of the things he has done for his job.
C
Answer these questions.
1. Do you think photographs play an important role in telling a news story? Do you remember a photo that had a strong impact on you?
2. Do newspapers in your country print photographs of catastrophic events? Do you think they should? Why or why not?
3. Do you think journalism is a respectable profession? Why or why not?
109
Unit 14 • The media
READING 3
Media violence harms children
The debate is over. Violence on television and in the movies is damaging to children. Forty years of research conclude that repeated exposure to high levels of media violence teaches some children and adolescents to settle interpersonal differences with violence, while teaching many more to be indifferent to this solution. Under the media’s influence, children at younger and younger ages are using violence as a first, not a last, resort to conflict.
2 Locked away in professional journals are thousands of articles documenting the negative effects of media, particularly media violence, on our nation’s youth. Children who are .heavy viewers of television are more aggressive, more pessimistic, weigh more, are less imaginative, and less capable students than their lighter-viewing counterparts. With an increasing sense of urgency, parents are confronting the fact that the “real story” about media violence and its effects on children has been withheld.
3 Leonard Eron, one of the country’s most important experts on media and children, has said that:
There can no longer be any doubt that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime, and violence in society. The evidence comes from both the laboratory and real-life studies. Television violence affects youngsters of all ages, of both genders, at all socioeconomic levels, and all levels of intelligence. The effect is not limited to children who are already disposed to being aggressive and is not restricted to this country.
4 Every major group concerned with children has studied and issued reports on the effects of media violence on children. Many have called for curbing television and movie violence. Doctors, therapists, teachers, and youth workers all find themselves struggling to help youngsters who, influenced by repeated images of quick, celebratory violence, find it increasingly difficult to deal with the inevitable frustrations of daily life.
Media violence does not harm children
One of the reasons we have so much trouble understanding complicated issues like supposed connections between culture and violence ... is that so many “experts” are thrown at us, often offering contradictory conclusions.
But some experts have better credentials than others. Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles, no fan of TV violence, has been studying and writing about the moral, spiritual, and developmental lives of
children for much of his life. His works have been widely praised and circulated as new, insightful looks at kids’ complex inner lives. Parents worried about the impact culture has on their kids should ignore the headlines and read The Moral Life of Children. They would know more and feel better.
A young moviegoer, Coles writes, can repeatedly be exposed to the “excesses of a Hollywood genre” — sentimentality, violence, the misrepresentation of history, racial stereotypes, pure simplemindedness — and emerge unharmed intellectually as well as morally. In fact, sometimes these images help the child to “sort matters out, stop and think about what is true and what is not by any means true — in the past, in the present." The child, says Coles, “doesn’t forget what he’s learned in school, learned at home, from hearing people talk in his family and his neighborhood."
Culture offers important moments for moral reflection, and it ought not to be used as an occasion for “overwrought psychiatric comment," Coles warns, or for making simpleminded connections between films and “the collective American conscience."
Adapted from Media Violence: Opposing Viewpoints.
Predicting