SEMINAR NOTES: CRITICAL POSITIONS ON ADVERTISING:

Critical Positions on Advertising

-NY Times Square , Volume of info we get in everyday lives

-Pop-ups on the internet

-Junk mail, in the post, in e-mails. I don't need viagra thank you very much.

Even places like art galleries, something associated with free thinking and lack of advertising and commercialism have ads and billboards nowadays.

Marxist/Marxism

-wrote communist manifesto 1848, the way capitalism produces inequalities.

-said communism would emerge

CRITIQUE OF CONSUMER/COMMODITY CULTURE

Commodity - something that's traded

In commodity culture, we construct our identities through the consumer products that inhabit our lives. This is what Steward Ewen terms the "commodity self"

-Judith Williamson author of 'Decoding Advertisements'

"Instead of being identified by what they product, people identify themselves with what they consume." (Williamson. 1991:13)

For example, old adverts for the The Stanley Range were sold on their abilities to transform our lives, sold on its features. The product was at the forefront and focus of the advert.

Some years later, the same product starts to be sold with its symbolic associations.

SYMBOLIC ASSOCIATIONS 

B+W - classy. BOOK "no logo".

You kind of subconsciously want to get spray to be accepted to parties etc and be in the midst of new crowds 'livin the life', this will be your lifestyle once you get the spray. By magic.

How does commodity culture perpetuate false needs?

• aesthetic innovation
• planned obsolescence
• novelty

Channel 4 exists because of ad money.

People selling black phone, to get a white one. AESTHETIC INNOVATION.

Fasgion changing, stuff going out of fashion. Clothes, technology, apple products annually go out of date.

Social pressure

Planned obsolescence - missing bits out on purpose, e.g. missing camera out of iPad on purpose so they could put it in an iPad 2.

Marx concepts. "made in singapore"

Ignoring relationship between maker. In older society there was people like cobblers, blacksmiths etc. Everything was more personal.

Reification

• Products are given human associations
• Products themselves are perceived as sexy, romantic, cool, sophistaved, fun etc.
• Things seem "sexy" "fun" - e.g. 

Ferraris = sexy

Stillettos - Sexy

Glasses = Nerd

Frankfurt school (set up 1923)

Herbert Marcuse author of One Dimensional Man (1964)

Commodity culture manipulates us and makes us think one dimensionally - it stifles us and prevents us living full, meaningful and creative lives.

John Berger. Ways of Steering 

Why aren't cars made out of stainless steel > it'd last 70 years, but they don't wan't that. "I'm fast as lightning son, better get your nikes on." Thinking Nikes make you run faster.

11,000 new TV commercials made every year, which was a decade old stat. Probably triple that now with all the sky channels etc.

95 million new printed adverts produced each year.

5 commodities that make you who you are

• clothes - trainers, fashion, belonging to groups, aspiring to be something you're not. 
• food - e.g. halal food, can't eat certain meats
• Music - social, 
• Technology - macbook, iphones, etc, > blackberry >iPhone. Apple made brand synonymoush with hipness and creativity.
• Comics - says alot about you
• Marijuana
• Games
• Made food a sort of competition, M&S>Lidl. Aspire to buy more expensibe stuff. The way thry brand it. In Scotland it's "1 a day.