11.20.09
The Left, The Right, and Advertising
I’ve edited this post slightly to make it tighter, and to incorporate an aspect of Giles’s comment below the original.
There are two adverts currently doing the rounds that really get on my nerves.
The first is for Clover, or Utterly Butterly, or one of those other butter-substitute spread things. You’ll have seen it, the posters are everywhere. They have a picture of some twit in a van holding a crumpet, and the words “Now With 70% Less Fat*” emblazoned in giant letters above him.
The things is, if you follow the asterisk and read the tiny print at the bottom of the poster, you will see that it says “When compared to ordinary butter”. I don’t think you’d be a fool for assuming that the claim of a 70% reduction related to the fat content of the same product but as formerly produced, not to ordinary butter generally. But then, you’d be wrong. Personally, I think this is misleading to the point of near-absurdity.
The other advert (or series of adverts) that irritates me is the T-Mobile “what would you do with free texts for life?” nonsense. Specifically, I’m annoyed by the bloke who is allegedly starting a “superband” now that he’s got free texts for life. Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m fairly sure that what was stopping him from forming a superband was never the cost of sending inane chatter to people he knew (he’d surely heard of Twitter).
The whole T-Mobile advertising campaign is simply daft. Right? Then again, T-Mobile must have done extensive market and advertising research before ploughing huge sums of money into this campaign. So they must think it will work. Which leads me to wonder: are people really so stupid that this sort of campaign, rather than causing them to scoff at the ridiculous premise, will actually encourage them to switch phone companies?
Perhaps many people are that dumb. Or perhaps advertising makes them that way. That and the cold, cynical manipulation of Simon Cowell et al.
Which leads me to my substantive point. I hate advertising. A quick summary of why: it inculcates pointless desires in people, encouraging them to buy crap they don’t need (cf. JK Galbraith’s The Affluent Society). This in itself would probably be no great disadvantage (indeed, it does lead to useful economic activity and create demand in the economy, so right now could have lots of advantages). But for me advertising becomes troubling when you take note of the status-anxiety and unhappiness that is fostered in people (especially women, heavily targeted by e.g. cosmetics advertising) who come to believe that they cannot live happy or fulfilled lives without the junk that advertising shoves down our throats all day every day.
Furthermore, because so much advertising is based on distortion, misrepresentation and outright lying, the general effect is the successful and pervasive dissemination of bullshit, dishonesty and manipulation. And I think we are significantly the worse for that.
And this is a point where I think people on “the left” can broadly be said to part company with “the right”. The former will tend to think there is something both intrinsically dubious in the practices of modern advertising, and undesirable in its effects. The latter will tend to think this is a bit silly: advertising is (on one conception) simply the process of rational economic actors seeking to maximise their utility by making other rational economic actors aware, or desirous, of their products. It thus prompts mutually beneficial exchanges, with create likewise beneficial effects for wider society. Or (on a related but different conception), that advertising is just something that human beings left to their own devices as free individuals will end up engaged in, and not something to be unduly concerned about – or at least, not so concerned as to think people’s lives are negatively impacted to the extent that the civil and market freedoms of advertisers ought to be curtailed in the name of any individual or social good.
If that’s right, an interesting consequence seems to follow. Insofar as the strength of hostility towards modern advertising does roughly track left-right divisions, this implies that being on “the left” is about more than simply having a preference for greater equality within societies (which tends to be how it’s delineated). Instead, thoughts about what kinds of practices we should be concerned about, and how those practices influence people’s psychology and well-being (and whether they have significant influences at all) seem pertinent too.
The first is for Clover, or Utterly Butterly, or one of those other butter-substitute spread things. You’ll have seen it, the posters are everywhere. They have a picture of some twit in a van holding a crumpet, and the words “Now With 70% Less Fat*” emblazoned in giant letters above him.
The things is, if you follow the asterisk and read the tiny print at the bottom of the poster, you will see that it says “When compared to ordinary butter”. I don’t think you’d be a fool for assuming that the claim of a 70% reduction related to the fat content of the same product but as formerly produced, not to ordinary butter generally. But then, you’d be wrong. Personally, I think this is misleading to the point of near-absurdity.
The other advert (or series of adverts) that irritates me is the T-Mobile “what would you do with free texts for life?” nonsense. Specifically, I’m annoyed by the bloke who is allegedly starting a “superband” now that he’s got free texts for life. Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m fairly sure that what was stopping him from forming a superband was never the cost of sending inane chatter to people he knew (he’d surely heard of Twitter).
The whole T-Mobile advertising campaign is simply daft. Right? Then again, T-Mobile must have done extensive market and advertising research before ploughing huge sums of money into this campaign. So they must think it will work. Which leads me to wonder: are people really so stupid that this sort of campaign, rather than causing them to scoff at the ridiculous premise, will actually encourage them to switch phone companies?
Perhaps many people are that dumb. Or perhaps advertising makes them that way. That and the cold, cynical manipulation of Simon Cowell et al.
Which leads me to my substantive point. I hate advertising. A quick summary of why: it inculcates pointless desires in people, encouraging them to buy crap they don’t need (cf. JK Galbraith’s The Affluent Society). This in itself would probably be no great disadvantage (indeed, it does lead to useful economic activity and create demand in the economy, so right now could have lots of advantages). But for me advertising becomes troubling when you take note of the status-anxiety and unhappiness that is fostered in people (especially women, heavily targeted by e.g. cosmetics advertising) who come to believe that they cannot live happy or fulfilled lives without the junk that advertising shoves down our throats all day every day.
Furthermore, because so much advertising is based on distortion, misrepresentation and outright lying, the general effect is the successful and pervasive dissemination of bullshit, dishonesty and manipulation. And I think we are significantly the worse for that.
And this is a point where I think people on “the left” can broadly be said to part company with “the right”. The former will tend to think there is something both intrinsically dubious in the practices of modern advertising, and undesirable in its effects. The latter will tend to think this is a bit silly: advertising is (on one conception) simply the process of rational economic actors seeking to maximise their utility by making other rational economic actors aware, or desirous, of their products. It thus prompts mutually beneficial exchanges, with create likewise beneficial effects for wider society. Or (on a related but different conception), that advertising is just something that human beings left to their own devices as free individuals will end up engaged in, and not something to be unduly concerned about – or at least, not so concerned as to think people’s lives are negatively impacted to the extent that the civil and market freedoms of advertisers ought to be curtailed in the name of any individual or social good.
If that’s right, an interesting consequence seems to follow. Insofar as the strength of hostility towards modern advertising does roughly track left-right divisions, this implies that being on “the left” is about more than simply having a preference for greater equality within societies (which tends to be how it’s delineated). Instead, thoughts about what kinds of practices we should be concerned about, and how those practices influence people’s psychology and well-being (and whether they have significant influences at all) seem pertinent too.
freethinkingeconomist said,
November 20, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Where I disagree is that I doubt anyone on the Right can seriously think that advertising is just about reducing search/transaction costs. It creates desires, rather than actualizes existing ones.
I am less annoyed by it than you, but being (a) 37 and (b) able to afford much more, I’m kinda more mellow. But I make an exception for Josh and his fricking superband, all of whom I want to punch really hard, especially the saxophonist. For Josh, being Josh is punishment enough.
I won’t be self-deceptive and claim that status anxiety etc are not exacerbated by advertising. But I think it’s sole role in the phenomenon is exaggerated. I get status anxiety from all sorts of places, and only a small part is to do with buying stuff. I won’t expand on my particular sources of SA though a lot are to do with reading. Or were, before I read everything.
And don’t bet on that advertising campaign existing because it works. The cliche is always: half of all money on advertising is wasted, we just don’t know which
Paul Sagar said,
November 20, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Giles, very quickly as I’m stupid busy:
1. Yes, fair point re attitudes on the right. I’ve edited the original to try and reflect that point, and to emphasise that what I’m concerned with is strength of reaction to the effects of advertising, as oppose to setting-up straw men opponents.
2. I’m not really bothered about not being able to afford most of the crap that advertisers push on us. I don’t want most of it. And what I do want but can’t afford, I’m lucky to have been brought up in such a way as to be able to say to myself “well tough, you can’t have it”, rather than buying it all on credit cards. What bugs me is the pernicious effects of repetitive advertising upon people’s conceptions of what they need for their lives to go well and for them to be respected and have self-respect.
3. I didn’t mean to imply that “status anxiety” (I hate that word, it reminds me of Alain de Botton, the stupid charlatan) is only caused by advertising – of course it’s not. I just think advertising creates a particularly pernicious and pervasive form of SA. (Though I sympathise regarding reading; I still can’t get over how little I’ve read and how much more I have to read…and how I’ll never read it all).
Tom James said,
November 21, 2009 at 2:50 am
But, as they say, whaddayagonnadoabahtit?
At some point you have to accept that people do things because they choose to do so. Arguing that they have been duped or brainwashed by teh evil corporationss (or teh evil religiousess, for that matter) is unhelpful. Muslim women wear the veil because they want to. I buy Red Bull brand energy drink[1] because I want to[2].
In reference to your wider point, what the left needs to realise is that exhortations towards the “improval of the masses” (by, for example, banning adverts/making advertising standards far stricter/attempting to foster a culture of satiety) is a much less effective vote-winner than suggesting that we simply redistribute a lot of money to poor people from rich people[3].
The actual problem with consumerist advertising culture is that it might[4] create a tendency towards overconsumption, where people buy far more than they actually need and so consume more resources and so cause more environmental damage.
But I don’t believe even this is entirely clear-cut. When (God willing) more substantive progress is made towards reducing CO2 emissions and generally creating a more eco-friendly industrial base a large part of it will be involved with persuading people in first-world countries to make certain alterations to their lifestyle. Doing this will require effective legislation, but it will also require effective marketing, which requires (amongst other things) a decent ad-campaign.
In summary: if there is a problem with the left it is its focus on this sort of hand-wringing at the expense of what should be the goals of 1) Making the poor better off and 2) Reducing our impact on the natural environment to avert catastrophic climate change[5].
[1]: Actually I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought a can of actual Red Bull. When I buy an energy drink I usually buy one of the generic own-brand versions from $a_major_supermarket.
[2]: The fact I’ve almost certainly seen a bunch of ads telling me that people who drink RB are hip and cool and the sort of people I want to be like is beside the point. You can argue I’m being manipulated. The guy from RB can argue that I’m choosing to buy RB because it has been “specially developed for times of increased mental and physical exertion.”
[3]: In comparison, I mean. IANAP so I have no idea what one does in order to win elections (which is presumably why I’m left wing).
[4]: The equivocation is there because I have no idea what the counterfactual “we became as rich as we are now but without mass-consumerism” would look like.
[5]: And for the majority of the poorest people in the world these are essentially the same thing.
ad said,
November 22, 2009 at 3:35 pm
it inculcates pointless desires in people, encouraging them to buy crap they don’t need
Perhaps someone should screen infomercials encouraging people to be content with their lot.
Ricky Howden said,
December 30, 2009 at 8:12 am
The T-mobile Ad really gets my goat as well. Well done sir