Promethean Advertising. A Philosophical Approach

Promethean Advertising. - A Philosophical Approach -

Advertising history and its structural development – as they are seen today – are strongly related to the development of the industrial society and the proliferation of mass consumption. We could even say that, because of it, the entertainment society has gradually passed the phases of hommo aestethicus and hommo consumericus implying and absorbing various social and cultural domains. We could say – in a metaphorical sense – that advertising has fulfilled for the consumer society (the second phase as described by Lipovetsky) a true Promethean role. Just like the mythological hero who rebelled against the gods (authority) in order to bring fire to the mortals, advertising has installed itself as representative of the many, which, by means of consumption are tired of knowledge. Worshiped at first as the most important media phenomenon, capable of communicating its content to cultures and cultural groups more and more diverse, advertising is now imprisoned on the mountain of its own deeds: critics of the consumer society accuse it of the most dreadful effects seen in contemporary society. These are considered to have appeared because of the alienation of social actors and advertising favoring appearance before essence. From a communication’s point of view, advertising is to be analyzed from different perspectives: the media and the channels used by it, its language, the medium-message relationship its reception generates, or the informational fields it opens. Approaching advertising from a structural-linguistic perspective, we observe that semiotic analysis are often made on the intrinsic description and analysis of the message, which is considered to be in itself the carrier of means, being the prior container of the significance. This analysis has the role of clearing the intentional

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meaning of the advertising message, but is incomplete if it lacks the taking into account of the social and cultural context in which the communication takes place. Because advertising is a contextual form communication, a great role is held by its public, who not only receives and decodes the message, but also – as we are going to reveal later on – establishes a personal meaning. As a primary form of its activity, the informative dimension of the advertising message has, for the first time, awakened the public’s interest in consumption and the objects that surround it. In its most common sense, advertising represents a discursive presence aimed at its public. This means: drawing attention towards something with a double iconic meaning: both visual and textual; talking up a material, social or cultural benefice, that up to this point was not revealed. It’s exactly because of this, that advertising critics state that, because of it, false needs have emerged, thus encouraging the production and consumption of objects and services that have nothing in common with an authentic existence. From their point of view, advertising is to be seen as an irrational system – against rational choice to be more precise – that appeals to our emotions; arguing that individual acquisition of goods is the only way of reaching social recognition and/or happiness; pointing out individuality and social competition as society’s main objectives. Economy is thus accused of making us greedy, materialistic and wasteful. On the other hand, as it reached more and more people, advertising has become more interested in changing social values and attitudes and less concerned with communicating information about products. Its defenders consider – because of the above mentioned reason – a necessary economic acquisition which has brought important social benefits: becoming a genuine link between social groups; raising individual living standards; opening the path towards expressing any new needs; and diversifying the world all in all. But if these associations sell beer and washing machines, as some of the evidence suggests, it is clear that we have a cultural pattern in which objects are not enough but must be validated, if only in fantasy, by association with social and personal meaning which in a different cultural pattern might be more directly available. The short description of the pattern we have is magic: a highly organized

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and professional system of magical inducements and satisfactions, functionally very similar to magical systems in simpler societies, but rather strangely coexistent with a highly developed scientific technology.1 By analyzing its social role, more and more authors consider advertising to fulfill the role today that art or religion did in other times, operating with its content of values in a similar way as myths, serving us simple stories in which values and ideals are transmitted, and proposing – at the same time – to the individual, a model for organizing the meaning of his/her experience. Varda Langolz Leymore, in The Hidden Myth (1975)2 states that, just like the myth, advertising strengthens behavioral models, working as a mechanism against anxiety that regulates the contradictions that a complex and confusing society like ours generates. According to the author, advertising offers a simple solution to the constant and annoying dilemmas of human condition by both generating and offering the solution to anxiety. Both advertising and myth abide the same construction rules of value based rating; both try to resolve inherent ambiguities and basic dichotomies that characterize

human

condition

-

polarities

like:

life-death,

peace-war,

happiness-sadness. The advertising system is to be regarded, from this point of view, as a simplified and slightly degenerate version of the myth, that can be accounted for the lack of duration and some times of detail (especially its most static form – the printed poster). Advertising may be regarded as a modern myth, also because of the fact that it interposes between abstract and concrete, between social symbols, cultural values and consumer habits. Furthermore, using a “dialogue of signs” – mostly visual signs – advertising strengthens the effect of value exchange between various cultures. Leymore considers advertising to be two-faced when it comes to social communication: a shallow manifestation, familiar to the masses, and a hidden manifestation, supporting the shallow one, with which it binds, giving it meaning. On the other hand, advertising, especially in its dynamic forms (TV commercial) manifests both a synchronic aspect and a diachronic one related to the proliferated meaning. Each product is portrayed by more than one different version of 1

Williams, Raymond, Our television, ed. Routledge, London, 1989, pg. 185 Leymore, V.L. Hidden Myth. London: Heinemann, 1975, Apud Dyer, Gillian, Advertising as Communication, ed. Routledge, London, 1982 2

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itself, just as any mythical story has more versions. Referred to as a transvestite modern myth, advertising has the same effect on the modern society as the myth had on archaic ones. Myths validate acceptable behavior through scanning of all the other alternate solutions “proving that the predominant is, in any society, in given circumstances the best”3. Advertising acts, according to the author, in the same way, as a conservative force determined to keep the biddings of things. In a similar way, Raymond Williams, calls advertising the magic system of present times: a highly organized system of magical persuasions and of the satisfaction generated by these, very similar, from a functional point of view, as magic was to the archaic societies, but coexisting at the same time with the latest hi-tech4. Advertising appears, in this sense as a cultural pattern that responds to our need of validating objects in a fantastical system (the famous hyper reality of Baudrillard), by associating them with social, cultural or personal meaning, not easily spotted directly or in our daily routine. No society can exist without a well defined mythology of its own, and as soon as this idea is accepted, it becomes clear that a society based on economy, mass production, and mass consumption should build its mythology in the form of advertising (speech). Fact is that no one gives meaning to the contemporary existential model – applicable meaning at least – as advertising does. We advance now to an even steeper slope: to the mentioned critics of the advertising attributed behavior manifestations (frenetic consumption, mercantile existence, and waste of resources) others add. These are of “internal” invoice, brought upon by advertising’s promise to bring, by means of its hyper reality, the paradise of satisfaction and wellbeing. The world of merchandise never seizes to orchestrate its minuses and deceptions to the majority of people. Material opulence, happiness deficit?5 The dilemma that is most frequently mentioned amongst contemporary social theorists is what if “advertising magic” should really hide the true resources of general satisfaction, and the more we consume, the higher the risk of becoming less 3

Ibid. Williams, Raymond, op.cit. pg. 185 5 Lipovetsky, Gilles, op. Cit. Pg. 136 4

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and less fulfilled as individuals. Just as Raymond Williams suggests, a magical realm could only aggravate suffering, by continuously generating dissatisfaction. We constantly live with the illusion of superiority generated by appearance and canned paradise, whit the promise of being delivered if we say three prayers, and the sublime generated by psychoactive substances. Material wellbeing and access to it through advertising seems to have induced only a hunger for acquisitions and ever disappointing experience. In one of his thesis, mentioned by Lipovetsky, Tibor Scitovsky6 states that one of our basic satisfaction sources is the will to try a variety of experiences and the need for constant change. It’s a well known that the trivial bores, and for us to rejoice there is the need to be kept in expectance – the expectance of something surprising. So far as the individual does feel this exterior stimulation, his enthusiasm remains awake. Scitovsky also points out the difference between pleasure as “a positive good” and comfort as “a negative good” resulted from eliminating the discomfort, considering that today’s society often confuses pleasure with the trivial comfort generated by goods. In the spirit of this idea the lack of comfort should be regarded as a preliminary step towards pleasure, in a way “you have to be cold to appreciate a good stove”, as if the individual could not live in complete comfort and enjoy it at the same time. He is constantly waiting for the pleasure that advertising promises, for comfort, and thus becomes bored. Because its in human nature to be unsatisfied and impossible to satisfy, and because a whole assembly of material goods prove to be incapable of bringing upon the awaited and promised satisfaction, consumption experience is the source of numerous deceptions7. Analyzing Hirshman’s model developed in his work Bonheur prive, action publique8, we can state that truly perishable goods (mass consumption goods) have a remarkable feature - that of bringing upon eternally repetitive pleasure, fact that makes them extremely resistant to deception. It’s easy for an individual to discard a certain brand of salami or milk, without felling dissatisfaction, and remaining at the 6

Scitovsky, Tibor, L’economie sans joie, Calmann-Levy, Paris, 1978 Scitovsky, Tibor în Lipovetsky, Gilles, op. Cit. Pg. 139 8 Hirshman, Albert, Bonheur prive, action publique, Fayard, Paris 1983 7

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same time a consumer of goods. On the other hand, numerous long usage goods, especially public services (heath, education, entertainment) produce deceptions, by means of degradation of living standards, generated by the deceiving of expectations and social disappointment. To conclude, not the advertisement’s products are the ones that disappoint, but the values associated with them. This fact only convinces us of the importance of consumption in the life of the individual; we are made to be consumers, to assimilate and then consume again. As much as the dominant ideology is going to anathematize the current brand fetishism, consumerism is going to mind its own business, modeling society, history, culture, the Marlboro man and the American cowboy, Lara Croft or the wonder detergent. Let’s take an example: when Wally Ollins, the famous branding specialist, launched in Romania one of his books he made a rather cynical statement: “Brands are the gift that commerce gave to the culture”. He exemplified by quoting a paragraph from the book “Humboldt’s Gift” by Saul Bellow, in which the main character was wearing a Luis Vuitton bag and was paying with Visa Gold credit card. In other words, he wanted to point out that a brand is capable of enriching artistic expression, due to the fact that it represents things (just like the metaphor), images, values, emotions, life philosophies in an ultra concentrated form, or even a single word. Regarded as a whole, the consumer era doesn’t seize to offer stimuli through new experiences and its tendency towards the constant renewal of products. Today, products have diversified to such extend, have individualized themselves within the process of consumption, that we can no longer consider them mere goods. Even if not always spectacular, nuance technological innovations that we perceive today provide us the satisfaction of assisting live to the successive transformations of our lifestyles, traceable to the changes in our consumer habits that are in strong relationship with the former. Frankly speaking, just as Lipovetsky observes, the deceiving of individuals is present rather in our public consumption of goods than in the similar individual process (traffic, crowded sights, public transportation, etc.). Private satisfaction and public dissatisfaction, this is homo consumericus’ growing concern.

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The more intense we feel the need for emotional proximity and communication, the more frequent the personal deceptions are9, just like in a human to human relationship. In this contemporary context, theorist have criticized the “tragic existence” as a result of mass consumption and of the “impostor merchandise-happiness”, without taking into account that if this tragedy really exists, it is only the individual’s responsibility to be able to communicate with himself and the others in accordance with the traditional models. Actually, the individual seems not to be that much obliged by the need to consume, as he is to isolate himself: The civilization of the hyper merchandise has generated less alienation from things, but has emphasized the need of the individual to be himself the disruption between himself and himself, and himself and the others, the difficulty of existing as a subject-being10 So, if in the beginning advertising was seen only as a instrument capable of aiding turnover growth, even since the phase of mass consumption (the second phase as described by Lipovetsky), it becomes more and more clear that advertising has taken up the role of educating the masses with consumer era’s exigencies, stating a new way of life centered on any kind of consumption. The stake is, obviously, that of educating the masses in the spirit of spending and consumer challenges that also open the way for liberation of information and mass knowledge. As soon as advertising appeared, the public gained access to information until then classified, thus gaining the power of a multiple choice. Thus, advertising presents itself as a device of isomorphic, modern essence regarding revolutionary political cravings that state the full power of society over itself and its right to define itself without the need of an exterior principal11. In other words the liberation process from the traditional normative powers that defines the postmodern society, transforms advertising in the main instrument for “extracting lifestyles from the traditional legacy”. Once this revolution was done, advertising’s ambitions multiplied, becoming the upholder of the current generation, 9

Lipovetsky, Gilles, op. Cit. Pg. 147 ibidem 11 Ibid pg. 151 10

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informing it, and at the same time nurturing its appetite for consumption. By passing from the second phase of consumption to homo consumericus, advertising becomes ever present in all of life’s aspects, grabbing hold of all the referal systems, expressing visions of the wolrd, proposing messages, value judgments or ideas, aiming to build a public (in a tardian sense). Slogans like: „just do it” (Nike), „Think different” (Apple), „Be yourself” (Calvin Klein), problems like: racism, war, environment, are ment to become messages that don’t have the role of stimulating needs, but of creating emotional links with the brand, as promoting an image becomes more important than the product itself. We are witnessing, even since the 80s a restructuring of advertising principals that join the logic of permanent diversification that characterizes intimate consumption of the hyper consumer society. We can easily observe that numerous advertising campaigns seize to emphasize over and over the USP (unique selling proposition) of the product, focusing on playfulness, on spectacle, surprise or humor. It is not about selling a product anymore, as much as about a lifestyle or an imaginary that sparkles emotion. The objective of the advertising discourse and commercial persuasion are transfigured: communication focuses on creating a link with the brand. “It is not enough anymore to build trust, to create awareness around a product and impose it on the memory of the consumer: you must transform the brand into a myth and make people love it”12. So, repetitive advertising, theorized by Rooser Reeves, in what was later known as Unique Selling Proposition or USP, is followed by a much more creative form of advertising, integrated into the marketing mix, fragmented in multiple messages, carrying materials and various styles. This change can be best observed empirically at big brands that have had a history similar to that of the consumer society. They have also passed through the three phases described by Lipovetsky: in 1986 Coca-Cola has had one TV commercial the whole year, but in 1997, it had ordered 17 of them, fact which brings us to the conclusion that advertising is joining

12

Ibid pg. 81

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the general hyper modern tendency which dictates that variety and speed impose as imperatives of experience. A new advertising age is upon us, an age that, subscribing to the principals of fashion (change, fantasy, seduction etc.) is at the same level with the emotional and reflexive buyer in the third phase of consumption13. Important in this phase is not the fact that classical, mercantile advertising is replaced by brand communication based on much more complex communication strategies, but that the latter is present at all levels, being thus aware of the needs of wellbeing that animate the subject. There is no more need of educating the consumers about the goods on the market, or of the importance of consumption as a cultural dimension, “the masses are on their own consumerist, in love with evasion, the new and good living”14.

Fig.1 A. Silbermann’s model

of

social

memory

conjugation

based

on

the

message carrying channels

We can describe the way in which advertising messages contribute nowadays to the crystallization of the socio-cultural picture, based on the diagram above. According to A. Silbermann15 the influence of media (including here advertising as well) tends to divide social knowledge between surface knowledge – superficial, but instant and full of different elements – and profound knowledge – with less elements, but much better anchored in associations that lack the conventionality of the former . Hence, from interacting with advertising, the individual extracts from the medium proposed by the 13

ibidem Ibid pg. 157 15 A. Silbermann apud Popa, Dorin, Comunicare și Publicitate, ed. Tritonic, București 2005 14

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discourse those fragments that are to become his cultural ambiance. “Through a process of integrating these fragments into the preexistent background, meaning his memory, a new dimension is unraveled, a dimension that is specific to his individuality, meaning individual culture”16. This fact means that every stimulus that gets into contact with the individual will be filtered by his own hybrid culture, benefiting from the permeability of an infinite number of stimuli propagated by different channels. With the aid of advertising, the individual will perceive the world appealing to his entire experience arsenal, to all his bits of reality that have be assimilated, become, by summing up all the messages to which he has been exposed “the sum of personal events of his history and his cultural deeds”17. Linguistic researchers, such as Asa Berger or J.-L. Houdebine, consider that the omnipresence of advertising intertextuality represented by the couple slogan-image becomes a mark of inter-culturalism that its discourse develops, making it easy to read cultural facts within the impressions of this society. “We are actually emerged in narrative. Every day, from birth to death, we swim in an ocean of stories”18. Without detailing advertising intertextuality yet, we care to state that nonetheless we assist today to its transformation into an organic compound that has evolved from cause-advertising to expression-intensifier-advertising (the term belongs to Lipovetsky) that perceives the individual as an entity educated in consumerism and often reserved when it comes to the violent recurrence of advertising messages. We are confronted with a social phenomenon similar to a creative spectacle that looks, not as much to exalt the product (like it did in the second phase), but to “invigorate, excite, amuse or interpellate the consumer”19. Advertising’s objective, such as we tried to draw in the beginning of this paper, cannot be boxed in a mercantile strategy that mechanically leads the needs of the people, but becomes an opportunity to play with the public (and allow the public to play), creating meaningful emotional links with the consumer, starting at the level of language and argumentative structure, that are to be analyzed below. 16

Ibid pg. 50 Moles, Abraham, Sociodinamica Culturii, Ed. Ştiinţifică, Bucureşti, 1974, pg.67 18 Apud Berger, Arthur Asa, Naratives in Popular Culture, Media and Every Day Life, Ed. Sage, UK, 1997 19 Riou, Nicolas, Pub Fiction, ed. D’Organization, Paris, 1999 17

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* We need to be careful when calling advertising a social trendsetter under current conditions. This role, fulfilled in the second phase of consumption, is abolished by an individual educated through consumerism and already selective when it comes to the consumed forms. Hypermodern advertising appears rather as a “resonance box”, than an agent of social transformation. Though advertising critic denounces exactly this attempt to diffuse significant messages and values towards the hypermodern individual, accusing it of totalitarian ideological practices, we are ready to state otherwise. Just as we have shown in the beginning of this analysis, it is quite difficult to continue speaking of totalitarianism in the third phase of consume, when whatever the power of communication means, homo consumericus can not be regarded otherwise than a active individual. His interests, affinities, and values filter most of the received messages, or otherwise consciously abandon himself to the global informational network. Consumer generated education grants us the chance to fight against obsessive persuasion. Where is to be found the despotic domination, when value marketing does not have other purpose than to align to the triumphant ideology of human rights, of minimal morality or ecology?20 Although present at al existential levels, brands have never been so fragile in front of the individual consumer, finding themselves in the situation of constantly needing to refresh their image to be appealing to its public. In spite of any expectation, advertising is the one that adapts to the current society and not the other way around. We are privy to a change that tends to state once again the sovereignty of the subject, allowing it to see in the advertising discourse, rather an opening than a almighty paradigm. Just as Varda Langolz Leymore states, today advertising serves much more humane interests, nourishing sensitivity and the need for alternative realities that lie within the subject, without the sense of wanting to impose such a reality. Advertising is becoming that story that we are told before going to bed, a register of reality that takes part in the multiplying of messages through the image-text ambivalence.

20

Lipovetsky, Gilles, op. Cit. Pg 158

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Therefore we consider that de communication dimension of advertising is sustained by the theoretic perspective mentioned above, through the description of the current background in which advertising interacts with the social plain represented by its target, and each and every individual that takes part in it. Along with the third phase of consumerism described by Lipovetsky, advertising becomes evidently social-intentional – it is aimed at someone and a certain direction. If the Palo Alto School has convinced us that any interactive act is an act of communication by the simple fact that any interaction is bearer of a message, in the interaction between advertising and the targeted hyperconsumers we can decipher the message that it communicates. If the second phase of consumerism saw advertising as a communicational dimension that educated the masses in the wake of the new consumer society’s exigency, and imposing itself as a true trendsetter, today the flux has been inverted: advertising has become the voice that speaks the feedback of the target group, for whom it acts like a mirror. Today we seize to believe any brand that does not communicate according to our own image, our own aspirations/values. Just like on a global screen, our ever growing needs to: visualize our emotions, to consume intimately, and to experience our own individuality has to be fulfilled. This is the paradoxical happiness of the hyperconsumer and advertising’s answer to such a challenge. Stronger, but more fragile than ever, we end up loving brands in a relationship in which we expect to be mirrored, rejoicing at what we see, believe, and hope far beyond the anguish of disappointment and daily boredom.

Phd. at. Oana Barbu West University of Timişoara Faculty of Political Sciences, Philosophy and Communication

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