Status Quo

[Swatopluk]

I think today the main purpose of ads is not to have consumers spend more but to channel the money that gets spent any way into the pockets of the advertiser, i.e. it is more about the distribution than the size of the pie.

[Aggie]

On an individual (advertiser) basis, yes. However, it doesn't make sense to me to expect that consumers will not be influenced to spend more money in total due to the influence of ads, particularly when you consider that a fair amount of advertising (for household products and food items, for example) is for brand-name products with lower-cost alternatives.  This type of advertising is usually asking consumers to spend more money for the brand-name product.  If an individual consumer chooses only brand-name products, that consumer will likely spend more money in total.

The same can largely be said for automobile advertising; luxury cars are not a necessity for transportation, and so need to be advertised to create a desirable image. Some consumers are careful to select a modest but reliable automobile that meets their needs, but many others can be coerced into financing far more than they could afford cash-in-hand in order to get a car that functions both as transportation and a status symbol.  Advertising as a system doesn't just influence choices between Product A and Product B; it also encourages conspicuous consumption and creates demand for products that consumers may have not known they needed. The business world speaks often of 'creating markets', which is exactly this process of offering consumers something that they would otherwise not have thought to want.

There's also the fact that advertising holds a real cost for the advertiser; if these techniques were not effective, they would not be used.  The tens of billions spent on advertising per year in the US implies that should it cease, consumers would tens of billions of dollars less out of their own pocket. Likewise for the availability of consumer credit; credit cards are not actually a necessity, but by removing them from the system less money would be spent by consumers in total, as evidenced by the increasing levels of consumer debt. I keep a credit card for convenience, but via cashback bonuses and never paying interest, I make about $200 - $300 off this particular card each year. Otherwise, there are non-credit alternatives that I'd prefer to use.


The battle for consumers, IMHO, is to keep as much of our hard-earned money for ourselves or re-direct it to important causes while still enjoying a reasonable standard of living.  The details of what one considers a reasonable standard of living is a personal decision, but we need to be vigilant about our motivations for buying what we buy and regularly re-evaluate the necessity of our purchases.

[Swatopluk]

With a savings rate of essentially zero, the pie cannot be 'embiggened' much (at least longterm since 'productive' personal debt cannot rise indefinitely*).
The question is, would people start to save, when not bombarbed with ads?
I think the individual ads have low influence on the fact that money gets spend, only what it is spend for. So, a company that does not advertise just loses its market share to rivals. As a result everyone must advertise to stay equal. I see it as similar to an arms race. Actual security is not increased with more weapons put on the already high stack but there is 'need' to keep up with the potential opposition. A lot of weapons serve no other purpose but to fight other weapons, not to foster the goals of the war effort itself (missile => anti-missile => anti-anti-missile => anti-anti-anti-missile...). Tanks got invented to neutralise the effect of machine guns but today the almost exclusive purpose of tanks is to fight other tanks, and they become pretty useless for anything else (WW2 tanks, even pre-war tankettes, would be the better and far cheaper choice for political oppression than a modern MBT).

Old ad: There is this product X (you may not have heard of yet). Buy product X, preferably from us
Modern ad: We know already that you will buy product X. Please buy it from us, not our rivals.

Really old filmed ads today look more like 'instruct and inform' clips than specific company ads. The potential customer has to be informed that such and such products exist in the first place and why it is so useful to have them (e.g. washing machines, vacuum cleaners, fridges, hairdryers). With still highly unsaturated markets it was more important to get the potential customer interested in the first place than to lure them specifically to the advertising producer. I remember historical ads that almost qualified as short movies explaining gadgets in detail while the brand name only appeared at the end almost as an afterthought. Modern ads on the other hand have often so little to do with the product that is has become a group game of 'who guesses first what this ad is for'. And this is intentional. Since we drown in ads, anything that can keep the customer's attention from wandering away has to be used. Mystery is one of those tools, 'keep them guessing, the longer the better'. The customer will find a kind of salvation in, at last, finding out what the whole thing is about and the hope is that this 'salvation' will be attributed to the advertiser and his product.

*the debt in total can (through interest) but it leaves no money to buy stuff

[Aggie]

The Google Glass promo (video on previous page) follows the old-style 'instructional video' approach, although with a very modern twist on the style.  As it's a pre-release ad to promote interest and spark discussion, it needs to show the features of the device.  I'd say this is still the case for newer technologies; smart phone ads still often give examples of functionality.

Your arms race analogy seems apt here; in both it's the professional class of warriors/marketers who are deploying their tools against one another. In both, it's the civilians who live with the fallout.

I have a hard time believing that with respect to food advertising in particular that there is no relationship between advertising exposure and consumption levels. With respect to consumer products, why are we so eager to put ourselves in debt to get a new, giant flatscreen television when the cost-free alternative is to keep using the old TV that we were very happy to purchase and use when it was new (assuming that it's still functional)?  While it makes sense to promote new products for people making end-of-life product replacements, the majority of technology consumption is upgrading from still-functional items as opposed to replacing broken ones. This in itself represents an increase in consumer spending, and IMHO it's largely due to marketing of one variety or another.

Advertising, by promoting the latest and greatest products, sets ownership of such items as a societal norm to the point that one becomes societally abnormal for not owning them.  I'm considered socially abnormal for not wanting a smart phone.  Is that because humans should, at a physiological level, want a smart phone, or because we've been bombarded with messages saying smart phone = good to the point that it's now a societal norm?

[Swatopluk]

Why go so far? Fashion has worked that way for millennia and often it was even mandated by the state and/or church. Not following the dictate of fashion not only marked ones as 'abnormal', it could even get one into conflict with the authorities.

[pieces o nine]

It's not just cars or clothes.

Consider the remodel craze in the US. There are dozens of programs designed to show why the house you live in -- no matter the details -- is WRONG WRONG WRONG and must be changed immediately  unless you want your neighbors to point and laugh at you. If your taste is ultra modern, you must go as retro as possible. If you like antiques, they must be chucked out (and *not* to the people on the programs doing Habitat for Humanity-style reclamation or antique-ing, no they must be destroyed with sledgehammers and cheering) and transmogrified into ultra-modern in order to "keep up the market value". Ditto for appliances, cabinets, furnishings. It ALL MUST GO and be replaced by something -- anything -- that is completely different to what you had before.

A friend (ahem) is having all new beige-white carpeting put into her house because the "old" beige-white carpeting (put down new before she bought it 4 years ago) is so hopelessly outdated she cannot bear it any longer. All rooms must be repainted, immediately, and refurnished as well, to suit the taste of her new friends-to-impress. She -- along with thousands of other amurkins -- has completely bought into the idea that a house is not where one lives,  but something to maintain as a potential showroom to be put on the block at any moment. It's very sad.

[Griffin NoName]

I have a friend in California (forget where exactly) who has a successful business acquiring bricks and other building materials from houses when they are knocked down by new buyers in order to build a new house - which she says is the fashion there - and selling the stuff onto.......... people building new houses because the existing one they just bought is second-hand............ !!

[Swatopluk]

How times change. I remember a documentary film from the 50ies where one could see how Americans take their houses with them when they move. Real houses built from stone, not mobile hiomes or wooden huts.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The thing with advertising is that it is a tool widely used not only by the big fish but the small ones as well, is the guy promoting his dry cleaning business in the local cable transmissions moving the same agenda as big oil, pharma or banks? I would think that self censorship is a far more ominous development than advertising.

[Aggie]

I think that it's possible to draw a dividing line between ads proclaiming the existence of a particular business and those designed to create or increase demand for a product or service.  The line is necessarily fuzzy as many ads incorporate both aspects. I don't see this as being linked to business size on a philosophical basis, although it's probably the case that a consumer needs to be reminded more often about the existence and location of Joe's Plumbing Supply Outlet than of Home Depot. Where I'd roughly draw the line is between ads that inform consumers of product or business options for products or services that they already know they need, and ads that convince consumers that they need a particular product or service to be happy (and thus increase total consumption). I don't feel it's practical or helpful to put judgement on individual ads according to this criteria, but differences do exist.  I often find low-budget ads for local merchants to be more intrusive and annoying than well-crafted ads for major corporations, FWIW, regardless of whether I think of them as ideologically 'better'.


Banks are an interesting case, because a certain amount of their advertising promotes saving (non-consumption) of money, albeit under the profitable care of their financial advisors or at minimal interest rates.  Up here at least, banks tend to focus largely on their overall image and/or convenience in order to get consumers to feel good about the overall company.  The idea is to have people deposit their money at the bank, then get some credit cards, then take out a mortgage, etc.  Promoting the idea of financial security is more important than trying to directly sell consumer debt. Given that banks need to hold a certain amount of actual money to get on with the profitable aspects of speculative investment and usury, the message of 'Save your money (with us)' makes sense from a business perspective. This is to some degree an anti-consumptive and (IMHO) positive message, even though the banking system as a whole might be a little more negative in its impact on society.


I'm not trying to argue that advertising is an inherently negative phenomenon; as stated in previous posts I can see the potential for advertising to promote inclusiveness and carry positive messages. However, I do think that advertising is a very significant part of our culture and as an explicitly coercive medium has a major (I'd argue a dominant) influence on both broad cultural trends and the minute day-to-day details of our lives*.  I feel that looking at advertising as "neutral" or as an innocuous background to other forms of media is a bit naive. Although the models for some traditional forms of media (TV) are changing somewhat, advertising had been the motivation and source of funding for making news and entertainment media (radio, TV, newspapers) available to the public throughout the history of this type of media.  It is the central reason driving business interest in social networks and other new media forms.  I'd not argue that it's the actual driver behind new technology, but for a product like Google Glass, designed and produced by a company whose revenue is derived largely from the ad industry, one should fully expect that the use of the product as an advertising platform will be a major consideration in its design and implementation.

IMHO, it's important to acknowledge the power of advertising and to question, assess and make choices about to what degree and in what forms we expose ourselves to it.



_{*to put it crudely, what you wipe your ass with may be largely influenced by the ads you've been exposed to.}

[pieces o nine]

I often find low-budget ads for local merchants to be more intrusive and annoying than well-crafted ads for major corporations, FWIW, regardless of whether I think of them as ideologically 'better'.

A local radio station runs incessant  ads for an online job service. It's not spelled out that these are largely low-paying, low-prospect, entry-level/service sector mcjobs; they make a hard sell that extremely skilled professionals rely on this service to land their dream career positions. This inherent dishonesty is annoying enough, but they up the ante with the female voiceover. Part of me admires their sticking with her despite the *overwhelming* negative feedback they receive; perhaps they really are  good at placing people in long-term positions, after all!

The other part grits my teeth every time I hear her loud, braying  voice in one of their over-the-top spots: e.g. an employee adamantly refusing to take a free, two-week vacation to the Tropics because she looooves the job this service placed her in soooo much. (throws up a little in mouth)  I'm guessing she did musical theater through school, as there's too-loud, project-to-the-back-row, inappropriate singing, or her fake sobbing (LOUDLY) because people hate  their ads, or plot jokes about how people hate  their ads, but they're still fantastic at job placements. I don't know. A "service" this tone-deaf and insulting to its target audience doesn't inspire much confidence that they pay any real attention to the requirements spec'd by the potential employer, or the actual skills of the potential employees. But then, careless placements almost guarantee repeat customers from both employers and employees, driving the overall "placement" numbers up, right?  

*to put it crudely, what you wipe your ass with may be largely influenced by the ads you've been exposed to.

That reminded me not of an ad, but an otherwise forgotten novel. The quote refers to Kimberly Clark, something along the lines of, "...no matter which orifice you need to wipe, this industrial giant is standing by, ready to hand you something to wipe it with." Now that  would be a great advertising campaign!  

[Swatopluk]

There is no negative publicity or so thesaying goes

We should also not forget that aggressive advertising is by no means a modern phenomenon. Almost all forms used today can be traced back literally several millenia.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Besides, traditional advertising is on it's way out, younger people rarely listen to radio stations preferring to listen to playlists in their phones, watch TV on DVRs where they can fast forward the ads, or watch online episodes from services like Netflix, Amazon or Hulu, and more and more people use ad blocking software with their browsers. In those cases, product placement, and brand peddling (clothes brands from Nike to Hollister, etc, where the items are billboards themselves) are the methods of choice.