Critical Positions on Advertising
-Advertising as a manipulative tool
In the 21st century it’s impossible to escape advertising
Onslaught to media messages, overwhelming barrage of instructions, promises, fantasy lives, ideals – Billboards / television / Internet
As a medium advertising is probably the most dominant through the 21st century
Adverts that seek to persuade
-Instead of measuring yourself by your abilities / intelligence etc, in contemporary society we measure things by what people own or what people can buy.
Commodities
House / Wallet / Car / Jewellery / Haircut / Computer / Clothes / Music / Shops
Phone – Connotes sophistication, organisation, social status?
Music – Connotes your identity as a consumerist, a physical reflection of yourself, a record of who you want to be or your own opinions.
House – A symbol of who you are as a person for everyone to see.
Strive for things to reinforce who we are, and judge people on simplistic and superficial categories on what they own, creates a barrier between people.
Thinking this way shackles people, it allows you to make snap judgements and superficial assumptions about who people are.
YOUTUBE – ways of seeing
Contemporary culture creates this idea of glamour, competing, measuring ourselves under unattainable ideas.
Paradoxically it makes our lives poorer looking for this human enrichment.
Cooker Advertisement
Selling it on its virtues changes very quickly, moves onto the idea of an idealised life.
At the core of adverts – selling an improved version of you life, through the purchasing of commodities.
CK1 Advertisement – symbolic association
Connotations - Idealised lifestyle, sociability, being part of a community, being popular, men and women, youth, sophistication, coolness, fashion, status & glamour, belonging, multi racial,
It creates a false need to buy things. To keep buying & spending.
How does commodity culture perpetrate false needs?
Aesthetic innovation – making something look new and sexy makes us feel like we need it, e.g. fashion works on this. New clothes that are with it
Planned obsolescence – Designed to break, its planned so they can constantly release them, they keep you coming back.
Novelty – The idea that the new is always better, that we are more up to date
Commodity Fetishism
Advertising conceals the background ‘history’ of products. In other words the context in which a product is produced is kept hidden.
A dehumanisation of society. Reification
Things become personified -
Products are given human associations. Products themselves are perceived as sexy, romantic, sophisticated, fun etc.
