Fascinating must-see TV.
The show starts with the idea of "clutter" in our world due to the ubiquitous advertising all around us. In the specific instance the narrator is in New York's Times Square and says the city has been covered by a thin layer of blinking, flashing, animated messages. Advertisers try to break through the clutter by creating more, better, different ads - and end up with a self-generating cycle of more clutter in the process.
Advertising is about giving people what they want. People want to fill some void in themselves, to create meaning in their lives. Advertisers tell people a story so they can convince themselves what they want - in other words so we can sell-our-selves (literally and figuratively).
If you want love buy Coke, if you want community buy Starbucks, if you want sex buy everything.
They use the example of the ill-fated attempt by Delta airlines to create a new/faster/cheaper version of itself called "Song". An ad campaign is started that doesn't talk about cheaper fares, more room, comfortable seats, better food (or whatever an airline consumer might want) but rather focusing on the positive emotions of the concept "Song". People end up liking the ads but are not sure what is being promoted.
TV advertising is becoming less and less valuable as use of digital recorders like TiVo grows which allow consumers to skip the commercials. Advertisers are weaving the selling of items into the shows, or in the case of one episode of "Sex in The City" convincing the writers to base the show on one commercial theme (in that case a type of Vodka).
Lots of questions...What does this do to the the artistic value of a piece? If the idea is to sell vodka how much range can there be? Is there any element of trust required between an artist and the audience? Integrity? More importantly - if everything is an advertisement do we homogenize or possibly even destroy our culture? What would we give up if all art, writing, spoken word became commercialized?
Even a theoretically balanced show like this PBS Frontline "The Persuaders", had a little bit of logo showing. The narrator is shown working at his computer and the camera manages to catch a great shot of his laptop logo - it's an Apple of course, he being an artistic sort of creative type and all.
A secret in the advertising world is that no one really knows how effective ads are. An old saying goes, "I'm wasting half my money on advertising, I'm just not sure which half."
Most consumers would not say "I saw x, or y in a magazine or on TV and then decided I should buy it." The effect of advertising is much more insidious and deliberately below our conscious level of thought. Advertisers use experts such as a psychiatrist who probes the "reptilian brain" to find what the codes are for our desire. He then sells the "code" to advertisers.
Although most consumers (myself included) would not admit to being influenced by ads, brands and logos - we do have quite strong brand loyalties. How we came to those loyalties may be hard to explain. I don't know why I think Tide is the best detergent, but somehow I'm convinced.
Another advertising guru studied what brings people to join cults in hopes of using that knowledge to sell. He stumbled on this idea while listening to Saturn car owners use similar words to describe their brand loyalty as Hare Krishna's do theirs.
Selling politics.
The use of the right words to sell an idea is explored. The administration stopped using the words "global warming" and replaced them with "climate change". There's some funny clips where a congressman starts to say "global..." and then stumbles on to "climate change". The selling included changing the war in Iraq to the war on terror, replacing the phrase estate tax with death tax.
It's fascinating and a little scary.
We are all, I imagine, a little conflicted on this idea of consuming and being encouraged to consume. It's part of what makes America such a wonderful place to live and conversely not so wonderful for the planet or people in third-world countries.
I love ads. I like to buy stuff. I'm not obsessed with buying things and I like to use what I have and try to reduce my ecological footprint, but I'm not hypocritical enough to say that I'm going to stop either looking at ads (they can be great art, funny, beautiful...and just make you feel good) or buying a certain amount of stuff. I like my laptop, my iPod, eBay, Starbucks, and certain brands.
Everything at some level is about selling or being sold.
If there was one thing that was key in the program it would be this -
The idea for advertising is based on You. Selling things to you requires that you be thinking about what you need. Not about what I need or they need - what you need. So...if we wanted to make a little dent in the affluenza we suffer from we might start thinking a little less about me and a little more about us.
We need to fill our lives with something. To find our own meaning. We could do that with a pair of Nike tennis shoes but it might be better for our fellow humans if we did it with something that required reaching out, helping and showing compassion to those who could use a helping hand.
As Naomi Klein the author of "No Logo" put it,
"When you listen to brand managers talk, you can get quite carried away in this idea that they actually are fulfilling these needs that we have for community and narrative and transcendence. But in the end it is…a laptop and a pair of running shoes. And they might be great, but they're not actually going to fulfill those needs."
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