Advertising
Apr. 26th, 2013 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerThe purpose of advertising, one would say, is to draw potential customers' attention to the products being offered by a particular shop or manufacturer, in the hope that the virtues of the products thus displayed will result in increased sales.
Nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes.
But some time, somewhere along the line, advertising, like "business," became a thing in itself, a subject to be studied, a science, a discipline. And I think it's fair to say that it has come to be about not so much the products as the customers. Put simply, the purpose of advertising as it is seen by those who practice it is to create a need.
Put slightly less simply but more straightforwardly, the purpose and point of advertising as we know it today is to create misery.
They show you pictures of happy people using the deodorant or the car wax or the cream cheese so that you will feel less happy because you have not got the deodorant or the car wax or the cream cheese. They show you pictures of unhappy people who can't keep their floors clean or balance their budgets or cure their sore throats, so that you know that unless you buy the detergent, take out the loan, suck the lozenges, that will be you. They get actors to pretend to be scientists to scare you, beautiful girls and hot men to torment you with impossible fantasies of sexual irresistibility, blokes in overalls to tease you with the thought that if you could only afford that shoddily made overpriced plastic widget maybe one of that endless list of terrifying DIY projects might magically become doable. They make men dissatisfied with women, children contemptuous of parents, bosses suspicious of their workers. They sow dissension and heartbreak wherever they leave their slimy trail, and we (indirectly) pay them for the privilege.
So here's my question; why do we tolerate it? Is paying for commercial telly in among the groceries (so it's less noticeable) really worth tolerating the existence of a billion-pound industry whose sole aim is to increase the sum of human unhappiness? Can we really think of nothing more worthwhile for thousands of creative minds to do with their talents? Isn't it time that advertising went back to its roots? "Simpson's Shoes are durable, smart and oh so comfortable. Always buy Simpson's." And a picture of a shoe. What's wrong with that?
And the answer, of course, is that it's all part of the machine; the advertising fuels the consumption that provides the profits. It's been this way for so long that most people think it's always been this way; that when Cowboy Dan moseyed into Pecos Gulch he was immediately set upon by flacks for the local saloon trying to make him feel inadequate because he hadn't been there yet; that Edburk the peasant, driving his wagonload of cured hides to market, had a campaign all mapped out in his head to convince people that only one of his hides could take away their innate unpleasantness and enable them to sire sturdy heirs. No, it wasn't like that. I wasn't there, but I know. This toxic culture of advertising, this cancerous growth on what should be the least important aspect of any trade, is a product of the last century. And it is a cancer, because it takes nutrition (= money, resources) away from the other, healthier aspects of the trade, and actually contributes nothing to the general welfare of the business.
Because it doesn't even matter whether we believe the advertising. I'd venture that most of us don't. We buy the stuff anyway; maybe the deodorant doesn't actually smell that bad, the wax gives the car a shine, the cheese flavours the pasta, the detergent isn't that much less effective than vinegar would have been, and the plastic widget gives you the illusory confidence actually to start one of those projects before it snaps in two. The advertising, in fact, vis-a-vis product sales, is (I think: figures may prove me wrong on this, but since they're all doing it, there's no control group to check that) irrelevant. "Simpson's Shoes are durable..." and a picture of a shoe would work just as well.
The larger point is, was, will be, that miserable people are easier to control. In this, government and big business are hand in glove as always. Politicians are funded by businesses out of their profits, and make the laws to benefit the businesses, because cronyism informs the broad sweep of government policy, and one thing on which they both agree is that people must be kept down, prevented from looking squarely at what is happening and seeing the crying need for change. One of the great lessons of the twentieth century is that people in the mass will put up with almost anything if they're stressed or depressed enough; if they think about social change at all, they sign an online petition or give to a charity and resolve to think about it later, a resolve rarely kept because the stress never stops. Advertising plays a crucial role in maintaining this level of stress; distracting us as we drive through the city, breaking up the flow of the telly drama we're trying to force our fatigued brains to focus on, taking up the first fifty pages of our glossy magazine (and the last thirty) and making us wonder why we bought the thing, just being there in all its tawdriness and horror and occasional surprising misplaced beauty. Advertising keeps the lid on the pressure cooker. And it does it not by making us content with our lot, but exactly the opposite.
And we won't be truly healthy till we steel ourselves and cut it out.
Nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes.
But some time, somewhere along the line, advertising, like "business," became a thing in itself, a subject to be studied, a science, a discipline. And I think it's fair to say that it has come to be about not so much the products as the customers. Put simply, the purpose of advertising as it is seen by those who practice it is to create a need.
Put slightly less simply but more straightforwardly, the purpose and point of advertising as we know it today is to create misery.
They show you pictures of happy people using the deodorant or the car wax or the cream cheese so that you will feel less happy because you have not got the deodorant or the car wax or the cream cheese. They show you pictures of unhappy people who can't keep their floors clean or balance their budgets or cure their sore throats, so that you know that unless you buy the detergent, take out the loan, suck the lozenges, that will be you. They get actors to pretend to be scientists to scare you, beautiful girls and hot men to torment you with impossible fantasies of sexual irresistibility, blokes in overalls to tease you with the thought that if you could only afford that shoddily made overpriced plastic widget maybe one of that endless list of terrifying DIY projects might magically become doable. They make men dissatisfied with women, children contemptuous of parents, bosses suspicious of their workers. They sow dissension and heartbreak wherever they leave their slimy trail, and we (indirectly) pay them for the privilege.
So here's my question; why do we tolerate it? Is paying for commercial telly in among the groceries (so it's less noticeable) really worth tolerating the existence of a billion-pound industry whose sole aim is to increase the sum of human unhappiness? Can we really think of nothing more worthwhile for thousands of creative minds to do with their talents? Isn't it time that advertising went back to its roots? "Simpson's Shoes are durable, smart and oh so comfortable. Always buy Simpson's." And a picture of a shoe. What's wrong with that?
And the answer, of course, is that it's all part of the machine; the advertising fuels the consumption that provides the profits. It's been this way for so long that most people think it's always been this way; that when Cowboy Dan moseyed into Pecos Gulch he was immediately set upon by flacks for the local saloon trying to make him feel inadequate because he hadn't been there yet; that Edburk the peasant, driving his wagonload of cured hides to market, had a campaign all mapped out in his head to convince people that only one of his hides could take away their innate unpleasantness and enable them to sire sturdy heirs. No, it wasn't like that. I wasn't there, but I know. This toxic culture of advertising, this cancerous growth on what should be the least important aspect of any trade, is a product of the last century. And it is a cancer, because it takes nutrition (= money, resources) away from the other, healthier aspects of the trade, and actually contributes nothing to the general welfare of the business.
Because it doesn't even matter whether we believe the advertising. I'd venture that most of us don't. We buy the stuff anyway; maybe the deodorant doesn't actually smell that bad, the wax gives the car a shine, the cheese flavours the pasta, the detergent isn't that much less effective than vinegar would have been, and the plastic widget gives you the illusory confidence actually to start one of those projects before it snaps in two. The advertising, in fact, vis-a-vis product sales, is (I think: figures may prove me wrong on this, but since they're all doing it, there's no control group to check that) irrelevant. "Simpson's Shoes are durable..." and a picture of a shoe would work just as well.
The larger point is, was, will be, that miserable people are easier to control. In this, government and big business are hand in glove as always. Politicians are funded by businesses out of their profits, and make the laws to benefit the businesses, because cronyism informs the broad sweep of government policy, and one thing on which they both agree is that people must be kept down, prevented from looking squarely at what is happening and seeing the crying need for change. One of the great lessons of the twentieth century is that people in the mass will put up with almost anything if they're stressed or depressed enough; if they think about social change at all, they sign an online petition or give to a charity and resolve to think about it later, a resolve rarely kept because the stress never stops. Advertising plays a crucial role in maintaining this level of stress; distracting us as we drive through the city, breaking up the flow of the telly drama we're trying to force our fatigued brains to focus on, taking up the first fifty pages of our glossy magazine (and the last thirty) and making us wonder why we bought the thing, just being there in all its tawdriness and horror and occasional surprising misplaced beauty. Advertising keeps the lid on the pressure cooker. And it does it not by making us content with our lot, but exactly the opposite.
And we won't be truly healthy till we steel ourselves and cut it out.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 11:19 am (UTC)I'll give it a thought. Maybe we can show many happy little ebook readers instead who crack witty insider jokes about Oonaverse and Tetrad and have lots of fun! Or who say to each other "Avevale stories are interesting, smart and oh so entertaining. Always read Avevale." :)
Ähem. Apart from all silliness, I agree.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 11:37 am (UTC)If you chnage advertising like this, then there will be thousands of people made unemployed (because they know of no other way to advertise a product), and their children (and their kittens, but possibly not their stuffed bears) will ***starve***.
Any change would cause untold ***misery*** (etc etc etc
no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 12:32 pm (UTC)When I was a kid, drunk driving was generally acceptable. One think I really noticed watching a load of films from the 1940s-1970s was how often drunk driving was used as a comic device - with no indication at all that it could be dangerous. I believe, and I have seen the evidence for it, though it would take me a while to dig it out, that the reason this changed is advertising.
Advertising also had a similar effect of seat-belt wearing (clunk click every trip, anyone?)
The 'five a day' thing was originally an advertising campaign, paid for out of government marketing budgets. It's been hugely successful in getting people to eat more healthily, lengthening their lives and improving their quality of life.
Advertising saves lives. Advertising massively improves lives.
The bottom line? Advertising is an enormously powerful tool: it can be used for good things, bad things and morally neutral things.
Condemning advertising because it makes bad stuff happen is as rational as condemning science because there are nuclear bombs or condemning education because there are people who made them, or condemning literature because there racist/sexist/otherwise awful books.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 04:20 pm (UTC)Clunk click every trip isn't just conveying information, it's conveying it in a way that grabs attention, changes behaviour and sticks in peoples minds even decades later. And that's what advertising is.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 05:56 pm (UTC)It does not have to induce misery. It can, in fact, be used for good and creative ends. Advertising techniques can even be used to educate: Sesame Street was started as an attempt to use advertising methods (and Muppets) to teach children to read and count.
Advertising is more about creating a desire for the new or inducing dissatisfaction with the current. Misery may or may not happen as a result. After all, there are a number of genuinely funny commercials.
I'm not saying advertising doesn't cause and feed misery. It clearly does both. However, creating misery is not always its primary mission, or even its secondary mission.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-27 02:45 am (UTC)Part of my curriculum at university as a Communications major was advertising. We were taught dozens of ways to encourage people to buy a product. Most of them boiled down to making the customer feel they wanted the product. There was no thought given to making people feel inadequate if they did not buy the product - we let peer pressure do that for us, they said.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-27 06:25 pm (UTC)Advertising isn't there to create misery, it's there to bring a product to your attention. The fact that a lot of it DOES create dissatisfaction is a product of the people who came up with that campaign. Not all of them are like that, and in a lot of cases, it's a side effect.
In other words, I disagree.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-29 08:27 pm (UTC)Advertising on the order of "Ocean Breeze Soap Will Get You Clean" works just fine in isolation. The need to turn advertising into a craft in itself came out of competition between producers -- it wasn't enough to show how good your product was, you had to out-shout the people making a nearly identical product and make the buyer buy yours instead of theirs. And since it looks tacky to directly bash the other product, people had to find some other way to make their own memorable -- which naturally led into the slimier uses of psychology that make up marketing today.
Misery is just a useful byproduct. *dry*