Advertising, Publicity & the Media

Mass Advertising

Times Square: A bombardment of adverts; the epitome of capitalism.

There are 11,000 new adverts per year, and 25 million print adverts per year.

Pop ups- they invade our lives.

Karl Marx 1818-1883: Communist Manifesto 1848

A Marxist would argue that we live in a commodity culture where we are governed by markets and materialism. In our capitalist culture, our identities are build upon commodities. What we own defines who we are. Stewart Ewen terms it ‘the commodity self’. Judith Williams says ‘instead of being identified by what they produce, people identify themselves through what they consume.

We perhaps believe in the commodity culture because the adverts lead us to believe that our lives will get better by it. CKI lead us to believe that buying perfume- aka flavour water- will turn us into sophisticated, sexy, popular people. Our purchases make us believe we are those things.

Traditional adverts used the virtues of the product to promote it. The Stanley Range ad says your life will be improved by a better cooker where as the Milady Pipe tries to attach a lifestyle to the pipe.

Commodity culture perpetuates false needs by bringing aesthetic innovation, planned obsolescence and novelty.

Aesthetic Innovation: iPod

If a product looks nicer, it becomes ‘needed’ because it is nicer.

Planned Obsolescence

Products in the commodity culture are designed to break so that you will feel you have lost something when you don’t have it, thus meaning you are compelled to buy more.

Commodity Fetishism

Advertising conceals the background history of products. Theorists would say that we know each other through the things we own rather than our genuine personalities. Our relationships are mediated through commodities.

Niked trainers are marketed as empowering females, but they are produced through sweatshops where females are slaves.

Reification

Products are given human associations. When we associated humans with commodities so much, the commidty gains a ‘human’ aspect and becomes a character. In the mini advert, the family are bounded by the car as it becomes part of the family. With this, people become less ‘human’ and are judged more like commodities. Rather than describing their personality, they describe their physicial attributes. Lip Gloss- becomes sex.

Frankfurt School 1923

Herbert Marcuse- One Dimensional Man: Commodity Culture stops us seeing things in several ways.

John Berger- Ways of Seeing: Advertising shows us we become richer when paradoxically we become poorer. Both of the images in adverts show we are inadequate until we gain the product.

Painting

A painting of a guy who is identifying himself through the trappings of their lives; their commodities.

Adverts are tricks, but there are positives; economy, subsidising the media quality, stereotyping. But it makes us unhappy with what exists, it manipulates people, encourages addictive, obsessive and acquisitive behaviour. It distorts the language and encourages bad grammar. It is specially indoctrinated in children because it encourages us to buy unhealthy products. It encourages people to deplete the worlds resources. www.anti-ipod.co.uk Culture Jamming.

Victor Burgin

What does possession mean to you? 7% of our population own 84% of our wealth.