November 20, 2009
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.
October 31, 2009
To the barricades
Blogging is light because I have a million and one things to do, and I am stressed. Maybe there will be a post tomorrow about how people might think about “democracy”, and just what that might be. Maybe, if I can finally sort-out exactly what the hell I think is wrong with Leo Strauss’ critique of historicism…
Today, however, I want to call you all to the barricades (of teh internets). Several months ago I asked readers to submit complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority regarding an advertising campaign by Maximuscle Protein. The ASA upheld the complaints made against Maximuscle, banned the company from repeating such an advertising campaign, and accordingly Maximuscle adverts are now far more toned-down (no pun intended). We’ll never know whether it was the campaign emanating from this blog that made the difference, but I like to believe it was.
In that spirit of optimism, I’m going to ask everyone to submit complaints about another advertising campaign, this time by Sketchers Shoes. The campaign claims that Sketcher’s “Shape-up” shoes can “Promote Weight Loss, Tone Muscle, Improve Posture”. Indeed, these incredible shoes are allegedly so good that they allow you to “get in shape without setting foot in a gym”.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a PDF with the advertising claims, and then attempts to vaguely justify them.
Now I’ll admit that it’s probably possible that these shoes do tone muscle, and maybe even to a noticeable and significant extent. But that they burn a significant number of calories to the point where they can generate weight-loss, and to such an extent that one can get in shape without “setting foot in a gym”, i.e. doing any actual physically demanding exercise? I find that very hard to believe.
Obviously, I’m no expert on physical exercise. But from my limited knowledge, weight-loss occurs from burning more calories than are consumed. I find it very unlikely that a pair of shoes can cause a person to burn sufficient calories that this translates into meaningful weight loss (meaningful being “getting in shape without stepping foot in a gym”).
Of course, I could be totally wrong. These shoes could be truly revolutionary. But if they are not, then this advert shouldn’t be allowed, insofar as it misleads consumers into thinking that Sketchers shoes can promote weight-loss on a level comparable to conventional regular physical exercise.
So I’m going to ask you to join me in complaining to the ASA (via this form) along the following lines: ask the ASA to find out whether Sketchers’ claims about weight-loss and calorie-burning can be backed up by actual scientific evidence, to the extent that wearing such shoes can genuinely replace conventional physical exercise; if Sketchers’ shoes can’t do that, ask the ASA to ban the advert on the grounds that it is unacceptably misleading.
You may be wondering why I care about this. Well, I don’t have anything against Sketchers specifically. And I don’t really care if silly people buy these shoes thinking believing they’ll get thin. What bothers me is the world of advertising and marketing more generally.
We live in an age of constant bullshit, where we are told and sold lies on a daily basis. Modern consumerism largely rests upon selling people rubbish that they don’t need, on the back of false and exaggerated claims which are designed to inculcate desires as much as to satisfy them.
I see two things as broadly resulting from this. One is the ever-growing predominance of quick-fix culture; don’t go to a gym and put in hours of hard, boring exercise, or deny yourself nice-tasting food so as to lose weight – just get a pair of shoes that burn that fat for you! (Except of course, they probably don’t). For a whole host of reasons, I really dislike quick-fix culture. The other resuly is a hollowing-out of language as the mundane and trivial is described in terms that should be reserved for the meaningful and important – resulting in the debasement of values as distinctions between quality and trash are eroded away. These phenomena go beyond marketing and advertising, of course – but they have a lot to do with the growth of aggressive consumerism and the extent to which politics and wider culture increasingly emulated marketting. People may say the Bill Hicks sketch is cliched, but I like it.
So for me, complaining about Sketchers to the ASA is my own, small, personal resistance to the tide of inane, debasing, bullshit which informs so much of what is wrong with modern culture and society. Feel free to add your own insignificant weight to mine.
