[Socialism Today, No 1, September 1995, p. 24-27]
Modern advertising is selling us more than products, says Margaret Jones. It’s also selling us dreams, illusions and insecurities – and the capitalist system.
In the war year 1942 social critic Erich Fromm wrote of the callous triviality of radio commercials: a city was bombed, with thousands of people dead, and the announcement is ’shamelessly followed or interrupted by an advertisement for soap or wine‘.
Although advertising has become much more sophisticated since, Fromms remark retains its relevance. However, denunciation is only one possible attitude.
Social critics of advertising divide into those like Fromm and cultural critic John Berger who regard advertising as a symptom of a corrupt consumer culture; and, by contrast, those like some ‚postmodernists‘ who think advertising ‚liberating and countercultural‘ in its artistic playfulness. In fact both these positions overlook the ways in which our values are shaped by advertising.
It is often said, not least by those who design them, that ads may be regarded as ‚art‘ – as a form of popular culture. Of course, there is a sense in which all art expresses the social and economic contexts out of which it is produced, and of which it forms an integral part. But ads have a special ideological relationship with capitalism that (for example) a reggae number, or an abstract sculpture placed in a public park, do not. Our values and visual environment are shaped by the physical presence of advertising. Not only does the ad market a product – but, with a greater or lesser degree of transparency, it markets a value system. Ads at their most transparent sell not just the cigarette or the luxury car, but capitalism itself.
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Head for the hills …
In a system where even your labour power is a saleable commodity with a variable market price, you are on your own to rise or fall by your own efforts. It’s up to you (at least in theory). Such lonely freedom may be celebrated – as in a recent ad for the Jeep Cherokee. ‚Go Nowhere Fast‘, the ad’s caption proclaims, making of this traditional expression of frustration and aimlessness a positive advantage – a matter of carefree autonomy and choice. In the double page of The Radio Times where this ad appears, the jeep points towards a blue panorama of the Sierra Nevada hills.
Escape the free-ways, says the text, forget about having to ‚battle into the city each morning‘. The jeep transforms you into that quintessential individualist, the cowboy: it is ’sure-footed‘, like a trusty horse, its handling ‚taut and responsive‘, even if ‚the going gets really tough‘. The aimless, rugged freedom offered here as an integral part of ‚Jeep – the American Legend‘, is actually the very antithesis of the regimented routine which most lives under capitalism are reduced to. As the ad’s language – ‚fill her up, point her at the hills‘ – suggests, in order to be wealthy enough to escape in a Jeep Cherokee at the weekends, the owner is probably also male.
Perhaps as a woman, however, you can fulfil yourself (and your traditional domestic responsibilities) by selecting that ‚perfect recipe for a healthy life‘ – the correct refrigerator: ‚Fresh food and fresh air … I’ve chosen. It’s Candy‘. The upper part of the magazine ad in which this momentous declaration appears pictures the Candy fridge, its door open on abundant food supplies – surrounded by vases of white flowers (cleanliness, purity) and cooking implements. At the bottom of the ad, the mother cycles with her family – apparently enjoying unlimited leisure, as well as physical health. All made possible by access to the magic value of Choice.
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Go global, young man
But, as we know, autonomy and choice are attributes under perpetual threat. The lucky few may exercise them, in varying degree: top company executives, perhaps a favoured few among the wealthier self-employed. But surely not the junior manager/professional in the Epson ad, craftily smiling above his lap-top, as he boasts, ‚It puts me in control‘. You too, the ad assures you, can ‚Go global from your desktop‘. If our young manager is a mere cog in the machine in the corporate hierarchy, his computer, gateway to the internet, inspires Faustian Turning the tables on the advertisers visions of power.
Our autonomy as individuals is constantly threatened, of course, from effects which have nothing to do with capitalism – ageing, sickness, difficulties in personal relationships. The fact remains however, that capitalism both holds out that dream of competitive individualism, of unlimited power and autonomy, and threatens that autonomy in the most basic way by depriving the individual of basic economic security.
One way of containing and co-opting such insecurity in selling a product is to play on the idea of upward mobility – of greater affluence, ‚higher‘ social standing. An ad for the Bulgarian wines of Domaine Boyar makes the proud claim that the wines ‚have earned a Royal Seal of Approval‘ from ‚King Simeon II of the Bulgarians‘ (who?).
In none-too-subtle flattery, the ad continues: ‚But we realise we still have to earn the approbation of another equally discerning palate. Yours.‘ Luxury car ads may take a similar approach.
‚Euro Jelly Mould It’s Not‘, is the promise made for the Alfa Romeo 146, the ‚most distinctive hatchback in its class‘. This is a ‚classy‘ car – but also one which individualises the owner.
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Raise your hand if you’re Sure
Inescapably, though, in the struggle for upward mobility, someone has to lose. ‚Raise your hand if you’re Sure‘, proclaimed a celebrated US deodorant slogan of the 1980s, which became a popular quip among American undergraduates – playing as it does on anxieties about under-arm body odour, but also on the more encompassing anxiety of students about ‚getting it right‘ academically. The raising of a hand in the classroom might be the path to competitive advantage over one’s peers, or to social and academic humiliation and failure. Likewise, cold sores, bad breath, hair loss, the wrong make-up, we are assured, may guarantee our doom in competition with more acceptable others. Even purchasing the wrong product could cost you your job – or so the AA ad which offers to lend you a car while your own is being repaired, implies. The promise is followed by a warning: ‚Try explaining to your employer why you didn’t take out an AA policy‘. Protesting that you’re late for work because the car is at the mechanic’s just won’t cut it.
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There may be troubles ahead…
Some ads create largely bogus anxieties in order to sell their products. Others market products designed to deal with very real insecurities, structured into the ‚free‘ market system itself. What if you lost your job, and couldn’t pay the rent? Or you were sued, and couldn’t afford the legal fees? In one TV commercial for the Abbey National building society, these perfectly explicable economic possibilities take on the inscrutable mystery of a cosmic threat.
However you may ‚build, plan, speculate, accumulate‘, pronounces an authoritative male voice, over blue tropical waters that gradually turn murky and sinister, ‚You never know what’s out there‘. The camera homes in on the deck of a schooner riding at anchor, where a shaggy mutt straight out of a Disney movie barks nervously at something unseen beneath the waves. Finally, this lurking threat materialises into the comforting form of a woman, who laughingly embraces her swimming male partner.
Together, the couple run to a beach shelter, built in the shape of the Abbey National umbrella/roof logo. In developing this narrative, the camera’s view is alternately close-up and confusing, then confidently panoramic. It is the building society – ultimately, perhaps, the capitalist system itself – which claims to underwrite this confident, comprehensive vision. Despite threats and dangers, with faith (and insurance) all will be well.
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We Care
After all, capitalism ‚cares‘. So BUPA assures the potential purchaser of private health insurance: ‚You’re amazing. We want you to stay that way‘. (The use of the first person here suggests a personal concern, that perhaps by implication the coldly impersonal, state-controlled NHS cannot offer?). Via its image of a helmeted, tough-looking biker cradling a tiny baby, an ad for Standard Life conveys an idea of protective tender care – wordlessly, but also through the slogan, playing on the company’s name: ‚For the really important things in life‘. Persil washes whiter, and is always… ‚caring‘ – as the well-known image of a child with teddy bear safe asleep under Persil-washed coverlet – assures us. Imperial Leather soap makes the large claim to be committed to ‚Protecting the fabric of life‘ – which turns out to be that ‚precious‘ substance, ‚Your family’s skin‘.
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The future’s bright, the future’s green
Capitalism also cares about the planet. So when Channel 4 broadcast a documentary for the tenth anniversary of the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior the commercial break featured an ad for ’natural‘ Gaio yogurt, full of images of breaking waves and shoals of swimming fish. Another boasted of the AST company’s reliability in maintaining the vehicles which carry hazardous chemicals on British roads. At least for some companies and their advertising copywriters, the future’s green.
No doubt the promoters of the products of free enterprise will not hesitate to go where Greenpeace has more boldly gone before them. It hardly needs saying, however, that advertisers are by definition not radicals.
A seeming liberalism in this ideologically most conservative of contexts, upon inspection finds its rationale in flattering the already-existing values of a particular targeted group. ‚Eco-friendly‘ washing powders, cruelty-free cosmetics, or the Virginia Slims cigarettes patronisingly marketed to women in the US a few years ago under the slogan, ‚You’ve come a long way baby‘, did not initiate the mass political campaigns which raised awareness about the environment, animal rights or feminism respectively – nor do the products they market seriously pretend to offer more than a token ’solution‘ and a token individual satisfaction to the consumer. These ‚politically correct‘ ads reassure by reinforcing pre-existing values. Their very appearance of ‚political correctness‘ may, indeed, itself be suspect. As one close analyst of ads has pointed out, the more pollution-prone the company, for instance, the more likely they are to mount ‚green‘ advertising campaigns.
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True Genius
During the reign of capitalism, humanity has witnessed the development of some of its most spectacular technological achievements. Given this historical conjuncture, capitalism henceforth and for evermore – equals progress. Advertisements celebrate this assumed onward march through bogus appeals to scientificity. Are you losing your hair? Help ‚the self-repair of roots‘ with ‚organic Silicium‘. Science is in charge – another way to say that, despite seeming chaos, the system promises fundamental order. Real advances in science and technology may also be appropriated, though, for ideological reassurance – often implying the advantages possessed by the world’s capitalist ‚metropolitan‘ centres, in contrast with the relative lack of access to technology of those at the system’s margins.
A recent television ad for BNFL robotics and virtual reality systems is a case in point. It opens with a close-up vision of swivelling robotic arms silhouetted against the sky. Beneath and in front of them, a row of men wearing turbans mimics the robot’s arm movements with their own. BNFL has, by implication, learned from the human body movements of this technologically ‚primitive‘ people – but moved on, to create a new, more sophisticated world for those of the planet’s inhabitants privileged to dwell in it. The rest are left behind – they are the imitators now.
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The world is our plantation
From another point of view, the technological advantages which enabled the horrors of colonialism and imperialism go hand in hand with assumptions of superiority about metropolitan capitalism. ‚No need to wait ages for your bread‘, reads an ad for American Express travellers cheques from Lloyds Bank. The declaration is printed in mock-Russian script, clearly designed to evoke images of dreary bakery queues – under Stalinism, presumably. (Whether having no affordable bread at all is a preferable alternative is a question the ad does not try to address.)
In a television commercial for Typhoo tea firemen battle their way out of a blazing building. The scene takes place to the very classically ‚English‘ sounds of Edward Elgar. At the end of the commercial, however, we are told that Typhoo, although marketed as a product which ‚puts the ‚T‘ in Britain‘, is packed overseas in India ‚for plantation freshness‘ (not to mention the presumably much greater cheapness of the packing plant labour).
The Kenco coffee ads play on neocolonial nostalgia more blatantly. In one, a European woman, heir to the family coffee firm, visits a white coffee planter in Kenya. As they sip coffee, brought them by a smiling black servant, cheerful plantation workers look on from a respectful distance. At one level, the ad proclaims the virtues of a particular brand of coffee. On another, it represents nostalgia for a bygone era of European colonial rule. On a third, it naturalises and validates late twentieth-century relations between profit-makers and consumers in capitalism’s metropolitan centres, and the exploited producers of the ‚post-colonial‘ world.
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Have you won?
At day’s end, capitalism’s advertisers want us to know that ‚whatever is, is right‘ (or if it isn’t, it’s even now being sorted out). Above all, capitalism is a world both of continuity with the past, and of stability and reassurance in the present. Currently, the supreme example of an ad which offers reassurance through familiarity has to be the special offer poster for the ’super-hero meal‘ at McDonald’s, featuring the latest Batman film. Against a background of Batman’s chest, are superimposed a sheaf of McDonald’s fries, a McDonald’s burger, and a cup of Coca Cola, adorned with a portrait of Batman. Along with the McDonald’s and Coca Cola logos appears the bat symbol, inscribed with the words, ‚Batman forever‘. The meal, formerly the sole privilege of Batman, is now, we are told, ‚available to mortals‘ (unless, presumably, the said mortals are vegetarians, environmentalists, or being sued by McDonald’s for libel). ‚Have You Won?‘ asks the caption on the Coca Cola cup, advertising a lottery game. With Batman and McDonald’s on your side – fighting, as another comic-book hero has it, for truth, justice and the American capitalist way – how can you not?
In fact, advertisements under capitalism promise us a certainty, a security, that they cannot possibly deliver, whether in terms of our personal existences, or in terms of the entire system’s future. In the very act of promising, they are forced, paradoxically, to draw our attention to the fact that no such security exists. Good does not triumph, comic-book like, over evil. The majority have not won, and cannot win, in this particular lottery. For that indeed, to be possible, it might be necessary to change the rules of the game.
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