A (LITTLE) GU...ESS IS GOOD FOR YOU

Love your adman as you would yourself !

* We now come to a significant moment in our exploration of the ins and outs of this fascinating field of economic endeavour, namely, the advertising industry. How heartless we have indeed shown ourselves in our relentless criticism of the feckless, irresponsible adman ! The poor creature is just doing his job after all. Some of us would be quite happy to be appointed head of marketing for a dogfood company or a laxative product. “Hey, Mary, I've just been made marketing head of Poopy laxatives !! It's all downhill from here, baby ! Hold the Brussel sprouts !“ How cruel of us.

* As people tend to regard them favourably, let us establish an open list as to the merits and demerits of an advertising industry in any given developed country. We are dealing in macro terms here, in order to stimulate debate.

* The advantages of the list are to allow one to quickly group elements in a visibly accessible form, without having to write 20 pages of text. It is also undeniable that one of the consequences of the immediacy of information-retrieval on the Internet may indeed be that of consequent superficiality. So be it. Lists, while condensed, thus non-exhaustive, do however provoke thought, discussion and opposing views, all healthy.

* We leave aside here the debate on State advertising, which can touch on propaganda - term interestingly enough, coined by the Roman Catholic church to designate its early missionary activities. We will include, on the other hand, advertising for worthy causes and for public service announcements such as road safety, HIV-AIDS, alcohol abuse etc.


ARGUMENTS FOR ADVERTISING


Major Elements

- Serves as the locomotive to propel or the lubricant to grease (choose your metaphor), the capitalist consumer society

- Erects an ideal model of societal values through pedagogical universality and ubiquity (socialising role)

- Favorises a materialist, individualistic form of societal behaviour, thereby opposing spirituality, collectivism and fanaticism

- Furnishes, through identification, sub-conscious dreams or life solutions to consumers (escapism, see also religion)

- Proposes immortality through obedience (the dead don't earn)

- Adapts swiftly and remorselessly to deep societal changes (no-change is good, change is good)

- Suggests, per purchase, a series of mini-templates for happiness/ contentment/ satisfaction (if you buy...then you will...)

- Elicits in consumers, feelings of rivalry/ envy, which may be economically productive (I want one like that too...)


Minor Elements

- Displays, shows and pre-informs on the supply of products and services on offer to consumers

- In so doing, facilitates consumer choice at POS (Point of sale) by packaging recognition

- Recognises and thus psychologically encourages and supports economic target groups (children, bank loan seekers, car-buyers...you exist !)

- Informs on the specifications of diverse products/services for purposes of comparison (price, ingredients, conditions...)

- Helps develop an aesthetic sense in consumers: visual/ aural/ textual / ludic creations appreciated en tant que tel (fun factor)

- May underpin national or regional unity through sales discourse (1998 soccer World Cup, Superbowl...)

- Improves consumer reading, comprehension, vocabulary and maths skills (price per kilo, humour, wordplay...)


* This constitues a start, hopefully objective, to be completed with your help if you wish, as we advance. Some of the above possess a flip side of course, being both positive and negative according to one's take on the subject.

* Our next post will (possibly) add to this list and will undertake to establish a list of negative characteristics of advertising. Should go to several tomes...



STUDENT CONTRIBUTIONS (note that there may be some overlap with those above)

Advantages of Advertising, minor and major

- helps people discover that 'undiscovered' need, which he or she was trying to imagine... (Mariana)

- informs people about the health of the company (see institutional ads) or about their own health (see public campaigns for the health sector)(Mariana)

- develops people's creativity and serves as a good subject to talk about with your friends over dinner, during unlimited cellphone calls, or with your bored grandfather (Mariana)

- teaches people how to use a product and understand its function/purpose (Alexandre)

- allows people/gives them the space to compare products to identify which one is the best (Alexandre)

- helps traditional media, such as serious newspapers with decreasing sales and even public TV channels, to survive in times of free online publications. These private sector "cash injections" can help ensure good in-depth journalism (Stefan)

- can be interesting/enjoyable/funny per se; ads entertain us (Romain, Gabriella)

- constitutes a way for elders/senior citizens to keep in touch, at least stay informed, on the evolutions of new technologies (Romain)

- by focussing on environmental problems, may have popularized the issue of global planetary threats, which may then be researched elsewhere... (Tamia)

- contributes to democracy through public debate (Tamia) Example : ?

- presents life (as does consumerism), as simplified, often as caricature, but easy to follow (Farida)

- uses a common "référent culturel"(cultural stereotypes), so as a target, one rarely feels "lost in translation", thanks to common codes and references (in France for example, "Les Trois Mousquetaires", Claude François...)(Farida)

- if, as an adult, you're able to watch an ad and think : "this is manipulation and I am not going to fall into the trap", then Kant himself would have said that you were freeing yourself from the "guardianship" of mainstream thinking. This emancipation wouldn't be possible if advertising didn't exist (Farida)

- allows, just as tyranny or injustice pushes the best of people to become committed freedom fighters (e.g. Nelson Mandela), the most enlightened to become the heroic denouncers of the abuses of advertising and of consumerism in a globalised world (except some Parisian "bobos" and some latino "revolucionarios")(Farida)

- provides students with jobs in the industry (Pedro, Sophie, Pierre, Etienne)

- contributes to many sectors of the economy (without publicity, newspapers, TV etc. wouldn't be economically viable, for it is their main source of income)(Pedro, Sophie)

- encourages special offers and thereby helps the citizen/customer save money. Without advertising, special offers might not exist (Pedro)

- due to the constant flow/wave of commercials, stimulates a critical awareness in people, thus protecting them from commercial intrusions in their private thoughts and opinions; a sort of Darwinian process, a new kind of survival of the fittest : you filter or you drown in the wave (Emilie)

- although not essential to capitalism (one can buy a yoghurt or a shampoo without even having seen ads for those products), advertising exists, creates employment and stimulates growth (Emilie)

- succeeds in creating short stories that last one minute or even less ; to this extent, advertising could be considered as an art, just like the cinema (Maëva, Pierre)

- contributes to creating a TV culture ! (Maëva) Positive ?

- encourages lower prices; increases sales, which leads to higher production and more jobs, thus a virtuous circle (Sophie)

- encourages people's choices and decision-taking (Etienne)
  
- encourages diversity in society. Example : ? (Etienne)

- may provide the financial wherewithal for culturally or socially useful activities (sport teams, schools…), through sponsorship, for example (Lola)

- makes people aware of topical questions around the world or at a national/local level Example : ? (Gabriella)

- can create positive values of solidarity, cooperation, etc. Example : ? (Gabriella)





(à suivre)

BERETS OFF TO BAUDRILLARD

COOL MEMORIES II (1990), Jean Baudrillard, English translation by Chris Turner, Polity Press, 1996

For a change, let's glance through French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's book of musings, thoughts and aphorisms to escape from the constant, unilateral, advertising discourse which my somatised students seem to have assimilated quite successfully ! We are not hors sujet however, for the art of advertising covers the whole gamut of human experience, from cradle to grave. Adman to Deadman : And what sort of headstone would you like on your grave Sir ? Breton granite ? Crème de Touraine ? What choice of graven image Sir ? Advertising slogan ? May we remind you Sir, that for every slogan, our company will plant a tree in a McSchool playground ! Etc.

* Back to the Baudrillard book, from which I have extracted some interesting quotes below :

- " Everything makes us impatient. perhaps we feel remorse for a life which is too long, from the point of view of the species, for the use we make of it." (p4)

- "All these technologies which exalt or exasperate thought merely render it indifferent to itself... Le câblage est accablant." (5)

- "(On idleness)...I detest the bustling activity of my fellow citizens, detest initiative, social responsibility, ambition, competition...They are industrial qualities, whereas idleness is a natural energy." (7)

- "There is something faintly insane about belief, but conviction, which is a redoubling of belief, is downright moronic." (15)

- " The media reconcile us to violence, war, banality. Advertising, this nuptial sacrament and Extreme Unction, reconciles us to our artificial environment... Having himself become a virus, mankind is wrecking his dwelling-place and sanctuary. And the greatest mystery is perhaps that he was made for this, that this was his intended purpose." (23)

- "Hegemony of the commentary, the gloss, the quotation, the reference... We have to root out all metalanguages..." (25)

- "By his own admission, Descartes only thought for two or three minutes a day. The rest of the time he went riding, he lived...we can say of ideas that in Descartes they are to be found in thought and nowhere else, whereas in the modern world they are anywhere but in thought." (25-6)

- "America is not surrealistic at all. It is a universe of simulation or, in other words, a universe without artifice, not even the artifices of dreams... nothing can be imagined any more since everything becomes material, visual... nonetheless, (America has) become a dream universe." (39)

- "California... is a chivalric world with eyes only for its stars, and a courtly world, in thrall to the seduction of business and the love affair with images... It is not permissible to be bored... All new arrivals conform immediately; the solidarity is total. The Californians are committed to a job of advertising just as ascetic as the task of the Mormons with whom they share a geographical and mental space. They are a huge sect devoted to proving happiness..." (41)

- "Communication is to language what reproduction is to sexuality." (52)

- "(Should we) ...cancel the Third World's debt ?... debt is laundered precisely the way the drug trafficker launders money. For debt constitutes a heavy burden of moral culpability for the creditor countries... Thus, in laundering the debt, we launder our consciences as whites; we become whiter than whites." (54)

- "No pity for signs... with their semantic hypocrisy (the constant appearance of having meaning)... they must be taken for what they are - subtle and dangerous products of the world's indifference to us." (59)

- "Sex, lies and videotape. The spec of a class indifferent to life, but obsessed by its lifestyle. Of a class indifferent to itself and its desire, except when seen on videotape...it stands in...for seduction and language." (68) (N.B. videotape then = video today on I-Phones or Youtube)

- "All this artificial intelligence, this tele-sensoriality, screen perception... is the definitive end of illusion... the illusion of existing at any price, the brute illusion of death... all this vanishes right away... into the opposite of illusion, into total disillusion." (85)


* In this final quote, might Baudrillard be wrong in assuming so much ? Perhaps he is indicating - a Cartesian Frenchman under the influence of Californian myth and sun - that at his age and with his experience of life, that this is the impression he gets from the those in the environment in which he finds himself

* Though a smaller sample of society, when observing young French university students, we do not have quite the same impression of their reactions to their techno-environment. They seem to use it more than be used by it, although maybe education and individual character will come into the equation...à voir

HUMAN ANIMALS STILL

Where we seem to digress

Once an animal°, Man has evolved over time into, if one were cynical, a prolific, creative, serial killer. Anyway, into a creature possessing certain human characteristics (emotions, memory, humour, certain rational thought). Unfortunately however, in our humble opinion, he is still only at the hybrid stage of 'human animal' in terms of development

* If all goes well (lol), tomorrow he may accede to the ultimate(?) stage of sentient development on his small planet, that of HUMAN BEING. Too soon today to speak of 'humanity', except in tones of hope and reverence.

* “Throughout our lives as sentient beings, we are constantly under the influence of others and their ideas or creations, even of their personalities”. This highly illuminating comment by an undiscovered genius, rings true for the reason that it does seem to reflect our own life experience. Far from being rational like scientists, LOL, we tend to live and evolve in groups. In a sense, the group is US. A hermit is a nonsense in terms of the 'human' race, for we are condemned to reproduce our species

* Correct me if I am wrong, but given that our gene pool and our experiences are always going to be distinctive whatever the geography or climate, and given our natural gregarity, we are going to be in frequent physical contact with and possibly influenced by, several or many people almost every day

* Nowadays, this interaction can also occur via another medium, where the contact is multiplied by thousands, even millions. Whenever we see a human face in close-up on a TV screen or at the movies (the Carl Dreyer film 'Jeanne d'Arc' is a good example), we receive a quasi-physical shock, for we are witnessing the miracle of a new human being's appearance before us. Surely this is a mirror reflecting our own existence

* On screen however, the impact of the human face will lessen and disappear if re-iterated often, as we see in many Hollywood productions. The Russian Eisenstein, on the other hand, used the close-up shot in such a masterful way as to maintain the illusion of humanity (as in 'Staroye i novoye' - 'La Ligne générale'). But he was a genius. Perhaps witnessing the birth of a human baby might be a parallel to a better understanding of this feeling of 'attraction + shock'

* This daily physical contact with other humans, along with our reactions, may be termed 'interaction', but the term 'interaction' excludes neither influence nor rejection. One can unconsciously fall under the influence of what another says, does or does not do, just as one may consciously reject it

* We wish at this point to quite strongly stress the importance of this concept of influence. Whereas in previous posts, we have gone bananas criticising certain tendencies in advertising today, we wish to state forcibly that as 'human animals', peer influence is a natural tendency

* First proviso : as we know, advertisers do attempt to influence our behaviour by the manipulation of ideas and concepts via different media. Insofar as we, as educated citizens, are aware of this state of affairs, the deal seems reasonable, except of course when advertisers exploit in bad faith the educational ignorance of certain parts of society

* So advertising influence exists, nous l'avons rencontré, but we must proceed to fix the limits to this concept which decent advertisers should respect and responsible authorities should police :

- no discourse in bad faith (David Ogilvy would have agreed with that)

- no knowing exploitation of people's lack of education/ mental deficiencies

- no defacing/ overcrowding of public areas by ad billboards/ hoardings

- no ads in public places which, by their presence, could cause harm or danger to members of the public (e.g. road signs)

- no ads, except public service announcements, in public media and in schools

- no disproportionate volume of ads in private media (fixed limit)

- no use of subversive or secretive methods or technology in advertising messages/ media (e.g. hidden cameras in LCD ad boards at the Paris Etoile metro station)

- no misleading/ subliminal forms of influence masquerading under other names (advertorials, promotional events, games, viral marketing...)

- no crowding/ slowing down of Internet airwaves by aggressive pop-ups and videos

- no excessive advertising volume in any media or in public places where this might bother the citizen in his pursuit of happiness


* This is a non-exhaustive list°° of the areas in which advertising must be reigned in and regulated by formal, governmental bodies (French BVP, NOT !) and independent groups of specialists, academics and concerned citizens

* Influence exists, it is natural to humanity, but it too must be closely overviewed in the communications field, for if not, our society will fall victim°°° to the corruption of power oligarchies of the same ilk as the disastrous financial speculators/ CEOs of recent times. There is no other way.



° Note : do not forget that worms and bees are essential to other species, including Man
°° If you wish to add to the list, please contact me at : william.stephens@sciences-po.org
°°° We often already are...