Advertising is based on creating dissatisfaction, on making people want more than they have, look different than they look, go places they've never gone.  It's based on the idea of creating a need where previously no need was seen.  A "Calvin and Hobbes" strip put it well, when Hobbes points out to Calvin that his emotional well being depended on a need that wasn't there until he happened to read an advertisement for a product.  This kind of dissatisfaction, though, is destructive rather than productive.  It's dissatisfaction based on ownership (or lack of), materialism, and aesthetic appeal, but not dissatisfaction based on the truly productive ways of improving ourselves.

Dissatisfaction isn't necessarily a negative trait.  If I'm dissatisfied with the way I treat other people, then I look for ways to improve that treatment.  If I'm dissatisfied with my job, I work harder to try for a promotion or I look for a different job.  But advertising depends on creating dissatisfaction on a material, aesthetic, or sexual level.  How many people in the world truly look like the men and women in the ads and commercials?  Look around--you know the answer.  

Yet how many young women (and increasingly young men) end up with eating disorders because they're trying to present an image just like one they've seen on television or in their magazines?  They don't listen when their friends and families tell them that they're too thin, because they're just where they want to be.  The problem, of course, is that they don't realize why they want to be where they are.

They've bought into the reality offered by advertisers, the reality that says you'll be more popular if you look a certain way, if you drive a certain car, if you wear a certain brand of jeans or t-shirt.  It seems so obvious that it's almost painful to see it, but try telling them that they're wearing a certain brand name because they've been victimized by advertisers, and they'll deny the possibility completely.  The tragedy is that wearing those clothes or buying that car won't have the effect that the advertisers have promised, and disappointment will join the dissatisfaction, just adding to the problems that we all have to deal with in our lives.

Advertisers often work at eroding our moral character, also.  One of the more offensive styles of advertising shows that lying is acceptable if we get what we need or want through it, or if it can help us save face.  One example of this is a current Dunkin' Donuts ad, in which a pregnant woman pulls up to the drive-through, pretending to be silencing kids in the back.  She buys four of a certain product, hushing the kids the whole time, but it turns out that all the children sounds are on tape, and she's deceiving the drive-through person in order to buy four of the product for herself without being embarrassed.

Why lie about that?  What's wrong with going through a drive-through and buying four of a product, even if it is for yourself?  The advertisers are implying there's something wrong with that, and there isn't.  What are kids learning from this?

I can think of two more ad campaigns that focus on lying as a means to an end; both of them, though, concern people on the job.  First, there are two "traffic reporters" working for a radio station.  We see their bird's-eye view of the highway, we hear them giving the traffic report, and we hear the sounds of the helicopter they're supposedly in.  Then they pop the tape of helicopter sounds out of the tape player, and they drive off from the hilltop they're on.  The ad is for an SUV that can take them to such places easily and quickly.  I guess it's supposed to be funny, but it's simply dishonest.  Ask yourself this: what would happen to you on the job if you pulled a stunt like that?  But again, what are kids learning from seeing such behavior on a regular basis on the parts of adults, who are supposed to be role models?

The other one was from Pizza Hut, and three or four people from the same office are in a car when they drive by the Pizza Hut.  They see an advertised special, and they decide to stop and eat.  Then we hear them calling the office on the cell phone, and they tell their boss or co-workers that the traffic is horrible, and they're not going to make it back for quite a while.  They're lying, for the camera shows the car on an almost-empty residential street.  Again, someone in an ad firm thought this type of dishonesty is funny, and made a commercial showing lying as one of those funny little quirks of people.  Why couldn't they get on the phone and say, "Hey, we're starving, so we'll be about a half-hour later than we planned.  We'll work an extra half-hour when we get back"?  But that would be honest (do I answer my own question?), and the "humor" would be lost.

So what do we do?  Ban advertising?  Absolutely not--that would run against everything that we hold dear, our freedom and our economy and our ability to choose.  But we need to start teaching kids early just what advertisers are trying to accomplish, and how.  We need to help them build an immunity to the wants and needs that are being created by people who don't even know who we are, and who don't even care, as long as we spend our money on their products. We need to show kids the results advertisers are looking for, and teach them the methods they're using.

Advertising can be very positive, and there are many positive advertisers out there who are doing great things with the ads they pay for.  We applaud them. But we have to be aware of how they're manipulating us--and advertising is a form of manipulation--if we want to be satisfied with our lives.  Let them do what they will, but let us see through their methods and deal with them on a personal basis, keeping ourselves and our minds healthy and whole, not becoming dissatisfied with who we are and what we have simply because someone's trying to sell us a product or an idea.  Live your life--be you, not what someone who will never meet you wants you to be or thinks you should be.

The cumulative effect of initiating our children into a consumerist ethos
at an even earlier age may be profound.  As kids drink in the world
around them, many of their cultural encounters--from books to movies to TV--have become little more than sales pitches, devoid of any moral beyond a plea for purchase.  Even their classrooms are filled with corporate logos.  Instead of transmitting a sense of who we are and what we hold important, today's marketing-driven culture is instilling in them the sense that little exists without a sales pitch attached and that self-worth is something you buy at a shopping mall.

"No one ad is so bad," says Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist and author
of The Shelter of Each Other, a best-seller about family life.  "But the combination of 400 ads a day creates in children a combination
of narcissism, entitlement, and dissatisfaction."

David Leonhardt and Kathleen Kerwin
Hey Kids, Buy This!

The puritanical message comes to us from a variety of sources: from school,
from church, often from parents, and every so often from political figures
when they refer to "traditional values."  Hard work, family loyalty, the capacity
to defer gratification--these are supposed to be core, American values,
the traits that made our country great and so forth.

But the permissive message, as I said, comes to us chiefly in the form
of advertising, which is a force to which family therapists should perhaps
devote more attention.  Advertising is inescapable; it is fed to us in dozens
of forms and in more and more settings.

from Spend and Save
Barbara Ehrenreich

welcome page - contents - gallery - obstacles - quotations - the people behind the words
our current e-zine - articles and excerpts - Daily Meditations, Year Two - Year Three
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

"How much is Nike paying you to advertise for them?" I used to ask him, and he used to tell me that Nike wasn't paying him anything--he was paying Nike for the "honor" of advertising for them.

This is one of the sadder tendencies of our commercial culture--advertisers are recruiting people to live life with their logos on their clothing, their cars, their uniforms, their backpacks.  You name it, and it's probably got a highly visible logo on it.  If you're an athlete or actor or any other extremely popular person, they'll pay you an awful lot of money to wear their clothing, but the rest of us have to pay for the privilege.  Tiger Woods gets paid millions of dollars every year to wear Nike clothing, but Ramon has to pay inflated prices in order to be able to advertise for Nike.

How do we get so wrapped up in the desire to have certain clothing that we're willing to pay to wear their ads?  I know what the psychologists and psychoanalysts would say, but their explanation is rather long and drawn out.  As simply as possible, it seems that we're trying to send a message about our own tastes and preferences to other people by deciding to wear certain logos.  In theory, this expression should attract others with similar tastes and preferences, which should help us to make contact with other people who are like us.

In practice, though, the wearing of logos acts more like a barrier on both ends--sender and receiver.  Many people read the logos to mean "If you don't like what I like, stay away."  This isn't an unjustified interpretation of the message, as many people (especially high school students) actually use logos in this way.  Much of their self-esteem and self-image is wrapped up in that logo and the message it sends, and which person who wears an over-priced Tommy Hilfiger shirt to school wants to be seen hanging around with someone who's wearing a shirt from K-Mart or Wal-Mart?  The student wearing the Nike clothes feels somewhat superior to the kid wearing the no-name shoes from a department store.

This seems to be a rather natural symptom of a society that is increasingly fragmented, among people who more and more have to SEARCH for an identity, for their parents aren't sharing theirs any more.  Unfortunately, the ad campaigns teach them to search outside themselves, to try to find identity (and thus fulfillment) in things that have nothing to do with their real lives.

Bill Watterson, in one of his typically perceptive "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strips, says, "A good shirt turns the wearer into a walking corporate billboard.  It says to the world, 'My identity is so wrapped up in what I buy that I paid the company to advertise its products!'"  He ends the strip with the line, "Endorsing products is the American way to express individuality."

It's a rather scary thought--our young people are learning that their identities are somehow connected to what they buy and what they own, despite thousands of years of wise women and men pointing out that this attitude is harmful to us as human beings, for it keeps our focus on external aspects of our lives.  And as we focus more on the external, we're less and less able to see clearly what we need to see internally.

There's no way to control the wants and needs of others, but there certainly are ways to educate people.  When my stepdaughters want clothes with a certain label, we'll buy them if they're reasonably priced, but we'll always let them know that their choice of clothing simply because of the brand name is exactly what the corporation wants of them--free advertising of their products.  And we'll never pay a high price for any clothing when more reasonably priced clothing is available in the next rack.

I don't know if Ramon loved his Nike clothing, or if he thought that the clothes contributed to his identity.  I do know that Ramon didn't need the clothing--he was a great person, and his personality spoke volumes on its own.  I also know, though, that the clothing acted as a barrier to some people who might otherwise have found him to be much more approachable.  Ramon was not Nike, and Nike was not Ramon, but Nike sure had shoved itself into his life and his consciousness.

Two great Kindle books from our site!  First, the daily meditations from the first year are gathered together in a single volume at just $2.99 for the entire year, and second, almost 4,000 of our most motivating and inspiring quotations are gathered in one volume for just 99 cents-- you can have thousands of quotations that took over a decade to pull together, all on your own PC, Mac, or Kindle, to take with you wherever you go, to read whenever you feel the need for inspiring thoughts.

welcome page - contents - gallery - obstacles - quotations - the people behind the words
our current e-zine - articles and excerpts - Daily Meditations, Year Two - Year Three
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation