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How Advertising Controls Public Opinion
by Frank Azzurro
Advertising is a powerful tool in any society run by mass media. If a political entity or a corporation has liquidity, a good portion of that liquidity is usually spent on some type of advertising budget:
Advertising Age estimated global measured advertising expenditure of$1.9bn in 2006, making Coca-Cola the world's #12 advertiser.
Since television has become such a large part of our lives, with advertising fueling that engine, advertising has permeated almost everything you see when you turn on the TV. It started in the 1950s with cute product placements in shows - innocent enough, until we find out later that corporations wouldn't allow certain plot lines if they didn't conform to an image with which the advertiser was comfortable. But in the 1960 Presidential debate, when Kennedy scored huge points for good looks, posture, and youth over Nixon's five o'clock shadow and worn down appearance, advertising crossed a cultural divide: it wasn't just about TV anymore; the image of candidates were becoming increasingly important, vs. the ideals and messages of those candidates. It's no wonder that at about this time in US history, we lost strong leadership.
This is not to say advertising was never a problem before TV came along. Of course, advertisers had sign placements and product placements well before TV - on radio, on city streets, in magazines. As television became ever more important, however, so did advertising, and in 1960, we saw just how important it was when Kennedy clinched one of the closest elections in US history away, from a Vice President of eight years no less - even after radio broadcasters had declared Nixon the clear winner in the debates.
Fast forward to 2008, and we have much the same problem: candidates parroting words that the crowd wants to hear, and advertising simply mirroring that same problem in the form of pushing junk like hamburgers and sugar-water down our throats:
McDonald's spend over two billion dollars each year on advertising: the Golden Arches are now more recognised than the Christian Cross. Using collectible toys, television adverts, promotional schemes in schools and figures such as Ronald McDonald the company bombards their main target group: children. Many parents object strongly to the influence this has over their own children."McDonald's argue that their advertising is no worse than anyone else's and that they adhere to all the advertising codes in each country. But others argue it still amounts to cynical exploitation of children - some consumer organisations are calling for a ban on advertising to children. Why do McDonald's sponsor so many school events and learning programmes? Are their Children's Charities genuine philanthropy or is there a more explicit publicity and profit motive?
In politics, money is collected in the form of donations (read: special interest groups attempting to buy a candidate so that if they do get elected, they would be forever tied to that group and their needs instead of the needs of the people). Those donations buy advertising for the candidates, and in the past few decades, the candidate with the most advertising dollars wins. Once the masses allowed Obama's campaign to catch fire, and once he became the trendy pick for President, money began pouring in - and now the final push begins, with the election merely two weeks away:
Sen. Barack Obama shattered, by a country mile, the record for dollars raised in a single month, pulling in $150 million in September, according to an e-mail the campaign sent out this morning....
The number explains why Obama has been able to saturate the airwaves in swing states, and afford luxuries such as the half hour infomercials he plans to run later this month.
In a healthy society, would morons be so powerful en masse with their "votes" - which are really bought by candidates - who are bought by special interests - via parroting ideals like 'change', without any details behind what's changing or how? This is all indicative of a broken system; advertising government to the masses with fluff (which, not coincidentally, is allowed in the corporate advertising world). The government has inserted itself squarely into the marketplace, which the founders of this country envisioned as free of government intervention.
To strike back, corporations have inserted themselves squarely into politics, so two institutions which were supposed to be separate (industry and government) have begun regulating each other, leaving the rest of us to watch bright images on high-definition screens - alternating between the football game, pictures of cute girls in beer commercials, and candidates on TV telling you how if you're not happy with your current lifestyle, things will change for the better as somehow, some way, more money will be put into your pocket - or taken out so the government can take care of you like the baby you are.
It's time our society rid itself of the collusion between government and industry: the two working together have helped produce some of the most harmful products ever seen in history for consumption - be it political candidates, Bisphenol-A, poisonous but legal pharmaceutical drugs, or sugar water assisting the spread of a diabetes epidemic. Your tax dollars, in part, go toward fueling the advertising of all of these things right back to your TV set. Speak with your actions, not just your vote: ignore the TV!
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To answer the question you
To answer the question you had for me, yes, I do "seriously" believe that if people focused more on making their communities better, they would form their own groups to reject certain types of advertisement as they see fit. As for the other issues you raised, it's no coincidence that architecture, education, etc. have all had far too much in the way of government interference, and one could argue that's the reason for their decline (zoning regulations by corrupt politicians - see Corrupt's interview with Michael Arth about how this actually prevents him from making better communities in most states). Education before the government began regulating it at the state level (and even federal to some extent) was much better because it was private institutions (churches, etc.) offering the education. People were held to higher standards, and you could either make yourself better within that system or be thrown out. Now, classroom sizes are huge due to a lack of public funding (even though they collect plenty of our property tax money to fund education) and kids have autistic children and children with down syndrome in the same classroom at times, let alone underachievers who either don't belong in school or are simply dragging their classmates down. This is government in action - centralized power bringing everyone down instead of taking the best and trying to bring them up.
Yes, the market should have more power and less regulation because it's more reflective of leadership in society than what we have now, and would promote longer term solutions to problems we have. Let me add here that we don't really have a free market today, just like we don't have capitalism (it's debtism, and it's mostly due to government policy, not "greedy corporate people"). Think about oil: the free market would have taken the same initial trajectory in terms of oil consumption when automobile demand skyrocketed. But once ONE spike in price hit - the 1970s oil crisis - the free market without gov't intervention would have focused its efforts on longer term solution. Now, the oil companies know that as long as they keep digging for oil and the US is out fighting wars abroad to import as much oil as possible, we're just now, 30 years later than we should have, starting to make a serious effort toward alternative fuel. A truly free market would have been all over this 30 years ago, and who gives a shit about Israel, Iran, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia at that point? W/ the government involved that process has slowed down due to artificial pricing, friendships and enemies in the middle east, etc. etc., which is delaying the inevitable. Just like the housing market - no free market would have ever allowed half the loans that existed between 1999 and 2005, but the government wanted it, the fed printed the money, and the loans were pushed into the system at low interest rates. This was a policy decision and they messed it up, as they always do.
The Modern Market and Communities
Alright, I think I am beginning to see your point, and the remark about petroleum and markets is poignant. However, I must point out that it was lobbying by market institutions that brought about the market intervention by government that you condemn. The problem with markets as currently practiced is that they seek to grow beyond what is socially, culturally, and ecologically beneficial. That is in no wise the fault of governments alone. I invite you to research the political science of lobbying, which will reveal the proficiency with which market institutions convert government into a tool to serve their own ends. This is the natural logic of the market, not reflective of internal corruption: it is merely the acting out of that logic, and it's destroying much of what we value culturally and spiritually---surely you will agree that advertising plays a large role in this.
To be honest, I have to admit that I am surprised to see such a pro-market sentiment here on Corrupt---encroachment by the market on our social world (through advertising or however) is hardly more life-affirming than encroachment by bureaucratic red tape. *Both* are problematic in that they deny us the most valuable aspects of our human experience. And both are, if the existing community-oriented societies are any example, mostly unnecessary.
Expansion of the modern market is in no way compatible with the development of (or, if you prefer, the return to) "healthy communities," which are such a major component of our positions here on this website. I apologize if this seems disparaging, but your perspective reads a little bit like Randian objectivism.
we agree there...
Lobbying should be illegal - I agree with that. But this doesn't require new legislation. Lobbying for political purposes clearly designates fraud on the American people, and denying them of their government. Corporations can afford to lobby; the private citizen cannot, so we're essentially selling our politics. This is just common sense. Why lobbying is ever allowed, it's just wrong. I agree that corporations are corrupt, I just think the government can do a lot more damage, and the two of them together? Well, that's why we're in the mess we're in now.
My sentiment isn't "pro-market", meaning "pro-profit machine"; it's simply "pro-free market", or the best way our economy ever existed in America: limited government involvement, maximum ability for the free market to determine prices (this isn't an expansion of the modern market; we do not have a free market today so this idea would replace the modern market, not expand it - we don't even have capitalism anymore, it's more appropriately called "debtism"). It's as close to living within the best economic theories we have, and therefore it makes sense. Even Corrupt (as far as I know) admits there's a place for capitalism in society, but when our entire value system revolves around it, we become slaves to the dollar instead of the dollar simply being a symbol of trade and everyone living out their lives barely ever thinking of how much money they can make. We can't really regulate that though, at least w/ the current system of government we have.
I also saw a special on LBJ the other night, about how he just signed bill after bill after bill into law which created federal agencies, oversight committees, etc., and how proud he was of that. Obviously the tax dollars were flowing in and he was also fighting in Viet Nam - our government was involved in so many things it had no business being involved with, and now the sheep in the herd just expect the government to step in and give them whatever they want. It's like the bird feeder analogy: you put out a feeder, and keep filling it with good food, and suddenly the birds are nesting there and pecking at your hands as soon as you're out there trying to fill the feeder, then shitting all over the place. Time to remove the feeder! This is the idea behind social welfare: it breeds a certain attitude, and so does the idea that the government should be involved in everything.
My perspective is that of a Massachusetts resident sick of extremely corrupt politics and red tape (Big Dig, oversight committees that no one ever checks up on and meaningless paperwork no one ever looks at, which chases out small businesses, squeezes the middle class more, etc.). My state is finally going bankrupt and people may even vote Question 1 (eliminating state income tax) into law (even though our speaker, Sal DiMasi, has publicly stated that our State House will IGNORE the vote if it passes!). So, of course, I'm very skeptical of government, and I think both gov't and huge corporations working together creates the kind of abuses and fraud we see today. If we just leave business alone as yet another institution and it has little political swing, as well as reining back government from business, I think we'd be in a better position to pursue better values.
In the absence of:
I understand your disdain for American bureaucracy, but you have to remember that much of what the government enforces is socially desirable: laws against murder, wildlife preserves, etc.. Perhaps if you lived in a more conservative area of the US---these days, conservative politics is synonymous with the ideology of market expansion---you would have a different perspective, as there would be less government meddling in market affairs, resulting in a whole lot more corporate gluttony. The natural logic of the market is to grow; in the absence of *some* kind of pressure, I don't see how that growth could possibly be kept in check---barring massive social disinterest in what these firms might be selling, but then they may simply adapt and alter their practices until everyone is buying again. Regulating growth by government certainly would not entail the generation of entirely new government agencies, but rather a change in policy in existing institutions, institutions that are largely necessary anyhow. So in the barring government participation, how do you propose the scaling back of the market should occur?
understood, but there's still major issues
I understand what you mean, and I accept that my disdain for the liberal, corrupt politics of Massachusetts affects my mindset. Here's the problem, though: The Constitution laid out a system of government which only existed to protect liberties of the people. This creates an interesting puzzle for predators, sociopaths, and corporations: "damn, we can't limit the freedom of anyone else and can't affect their property (via pollution)...we can't defraud people either...so we might have lots of wealth in gold, but it doesn't give us any real power because of that damn Constitution". The market can therefore only expand legally, and when enough competitors saturate the market, they start to cannibalize themselves or buy each other out. And if those corporations work together outside the government to defraud people, eventually they get exposed, the value of their companies become zero, and honest business takes over for fear of being caught. This is generally the cycle of real world economics in a free market. And based on all the mishaps we've had along the way *despite* government regulation, I don't think it would have been any worse without those regulations.
Without retreading old ground here, all I can say is that I don't trust the government involving itself in business, and I don't trust business involving itself in government. As such, I have no faith that the government would be able to adequately regulate advertising, as this was the original point, and I wouldn't legislate such a matter. I would only hope that enough people wake up and realize that they should ignore images and focus on reality, and that, to me, is outside the ability of any government.
Mistaking the Chicken for the Egg
In the Ontario countryside, billboards are illegal. You can put them up in cities. In the US, however, anywhere is fair game.
I don't see how enforcing the Constitution (which is itself a government document) would help people to realize that they live in small communities. Communities are something that you will experience on a direct personal (even sensory) level, and the absence of this immediate personal experience of community is a more likely reason for their decline than "ideology." My grandparents can point to a lifestyle that they lived that is enormously more community-centered than anything I've ever even seen---and they did it wholly without recourse to some ideology. It was simply how they lived. See "Bowling Alone" for an excellent empirical analysis of this.
Advertising has a decidedly global character---this is the logical direction of postmodern consumer capitalism---and so I say that insofar as it imprints itself on the public consciousness, it will assist in the destruction of community. Are you seriously saying that if today's communities were glued back together then they would naturally just decide to stalwartly reject advertising?
As for your disdain for so-called regulation of the market, this comes pretty close to endorsing wholesale expansion of the mass market into an ever greater range of social life, which is probably one of the main factors behind community destruction (land use planning, architecture, education all fell victim to this to various degrees and now look where we are). There are some regulations that we would do away with, that take the bureaucratic morass that you condemn---but there are others that I am glad we have, such as the public ordinances against littering, laws against murder, et cetera. I don't mean to sound like I think that government should be getting bigger or more complex, but where the power exists and can be turned to desirable ends we should take advantage of it.
But more importantly, don't you realize that it is regulation that allows the market to exist in the first place? Are you advocating for a shrinking back of government, regulating only those aspects of the market that allow business to expand? Or are you advocating for a removal of government altogether? To be honest, it sounds like you would prefer that the market have more power, not less.
what's really scary...
...is that Coca Cola is only the world's 12TH biggest advertiser at $1.9billion.
yes, waste is waste
While I'm not so sure about the validity of the statistic, waste is waste, be it mental (advertising), physical (ripping resources out of the earth and burning them for fuel instead of using a renewable source), or otherwise.
I would disagree that any form of legislation is the answer. Whenever the government gets involved, they essentially fix prices artificially for certain goods or services (this leads to corruption) instead of allowing people (the free market) to do the work for them. No politician or group of politicians is intelligent enough to set prices via regulation or direct price fixing. Government, for example, has said "fluff is okay" in advertising via court decisions. So instead of competitors naturally settling on truthful advertising about their products after a short period of a LOT of fluff that people end up cutting through on their own, the government states "fluff is okay" in corporate advertising, and so it doesn't go away, and now all we have in advertising is bullshit fluff.
Advertising, like stupidity, is going to exist in ANY society. What we need is a way to build a society grounded in realistic values and seeking goals and culture; advertising wouldn't nearly by the monument of waste it is today if we didn't promote managed "free" trade and globalism.
A Warning
I think you misunderstood what I was getting at. When I suggested legislation against advertising, I wasn't talking about price-fixing, nor was I talking about the "fluffy" content of advertising. I was talking about the volume of advertising. So I advise you to consider two important points:
1) Be wary of the counter-cultural trap: to dismiss legislative or enforced strategies in favour of exclusively cultural strategies. There are a ton of counter-cultural programmes out there today that seek to defeat advertising through such cultural strategies as counter-advertising, counter-education, and et cetera. None of this has made an ounce of difference. The counter-cultural mistake is to reject political tactics where these would hold real power for accomplishing a goal. Sheer cultural tactics don't often work. As I will explain, however, legal tactics (in this instance, at least) might do the trick:
2) Passing governmental legislation to restrict advertising could indeed reduce the volume of advertising in the environment. Imagine a law banning junk mail. Or consider that in the city of Boston, there are severe legal limitations on the amount of ads that businesses can put on their storefronts. This results in a city environment not sullied by advertising. In Ontario, Canada, highway billboards are hugely restricted, and this results in FAR fewer countryside billboards than anywhere in the US. Consider also that advertising is a tax-deductible business expense right now; if the government did away with this policy, the volume of advertising would have to go down for sheer cost purposes.
As far as building a society based on "realistic values," this gets into a chicken-and-egg miasma. I maintain that advertising is largely *responsible* for fostering unrealistic values, and to remove it (and therefore to lessen the load of artificiality placed on all of our minds) is to increase the chances that realistic values can emerge.
whenever the government gets involved...
..all hope is lost. Look at the monstrosity of a federal government we have; all the regulatory agencies, tax codes, etc. etc. Look at the FDA; they're not an army of scientists bravely protecting our freedom; it's just a regulatory paper-pushing agency - I know, I'm in the pharma industry.
Adding more paper to the pile won't do any good - in fact, the supreme court has already upheld the legality of using fluff in ads, and on what basis would you challenge the legality of junk mail? What type of legislation would you propose, exactly, to solve this problem? It's when government and industry combine that you get the two self-regulating and ignoring the people instead of both doing their jobs separately and working FOR people.
I don't blame advertising for anything. I blame morons who can't stop watching TV and are actually sold on what they see on TV. Any intelligent person can see right through it; to blame advertising instead of the real source of our problems (multiculturalism is a big one, which reduces everyone to a consumer), I feel, ignores reality.
As for Boston, I live there - they've done an OKAY job keeping up the historical feel of the city by not allowing it to become a billboard, but there are always exceptions in corrupt massachusetts politics (such as the ridiculously large gun control ad that's been owned by the same goons for well over a decade now, that you can't help but see on your way to Fenway Park or off the Mass Pike), as well as a huge Citgo sign that's ugly but has somehow become "a part of the city" since you can see it from Fenway, etc. etc.). That annoying light used to shine right in my window when I was at Boston University, though in fairness, they did turn it off around midnight each night. Still, a Dunkin Donuts in a nice Massachusetts community which has to have a brick face on it instead of an ugly neon border still serves the same nasty coffee and sugar-filled donuts inside...lipstick on a pig.
Enforcement of Property Rights
Your point seems to be more about the infeasibility of government-oriented solutions, rather than their ineffectiveness if properly designed. Remember that it is the government in the first place who enforces the system of property rights by which advertisers are able to do anything at all. This is structurally true regardless of how unified the goals of corporate America and government may be. To ignore this fact is to succumb to complete ideological indoctrination by the market: what firms do is "natural," and any regulation by government therefore constitutes tampering. But the reality is that the whole market rests on a system of property rights that is itself *enforced* by governments! So if there was enough social momentum, insider sympathy for the cause, or other political pressure on the government---what political scientists call "political will"---then the government's technical authority over the market could surely put some sort of pressure on advertisers.
Since we are speaking in the theoretical domain, it is irrelevant that you point out that up to this point government has refused to do anything about the advertising problem. I seek to point out the value of policy-oriented solutions in principle, then we can talk about practice. We are not on the same page regarding principle. But if you would still insist on my pointing out explicit policy suggestions, I feel like I did that in my last post, though I will re-iterate and expand here:
(1) illegalizing billboards has worked in Ontario and in much of Canada;
(2) illegalizing telemarketing has largely been successful across the United States;
(3) Many particular industries are regulated not only in their content but in the particular media legally available to them: consider that cigarette companies can't advertise on TV or the radio.
(4) You raise some valid points about Boston, but then compare Boston to New York City. Surely NYC is far more inundated with advertising semiosis than Boston.
From which some ideas that I have are:
(1) illegalizing junk mail.
(2) ending tax subsidies for advertising.
(3) illegalizing corporate advertising in schools.
I do agree with you that these would only be feasible through the introduction of wholly new legislation, which could be done not only at the federal level but at the local, county, or state level.
It may be true that government is somewhat impenetrable as you say, but we don't know because WRT this particular issue, it's never really been seriously tried!
If you are aware of any successful strategies for mitigating advertising that do not involve the legislative/political approach that I have pointed out, I'd be very interested. It's just that after studying the "anti-consumption" movement for several years, I have arrived at the conclusion that exclusively cultural approaches either don't work at all, or are weak unless backed up by some "muscle" in the policy domain. The only exclusively cultural approach that I can see as succeeding is the introduction of critical curricula in schools (this was done in my elementary school, to some effect).
Complaining about the supposed idiocy of the masses does not bring us any closer to a solution. Some people possess great intelligence, others very little. That's the way it is. Insofar as advertising plays a major role in fostering or perpetuating a culture of gross materialism in both the intelligent and the unintelligent (but especially and greatly moreso in the latter), it is enormously destructive to our environment and to our culture. A cultural strategy relies on reaching out to those who are stupid enough to be duped. Try showing an Adbusters magazine to your local ORV-driving beer-drinker at the local redneck bar and see how far it gets you. But if we legally force advertising right off the air, then it's a non-concern right from the get-go, regardless of peoples' intelligence.
again, lipstick on a pig
The solutions you speak of still haven't really changed anything. And still, I'm failing to see how legislation has somehow made anything better? I've been to Ontario too and they have some of the largest electronic billboards I've ever seen.
In response to your other points:
- telemarketing legislation has worked how, exactly? a lot of people are on cell phones now anyway. and they never had access to those numbers to begin with. so I dont' get a call at 6pm during dinner anymore, this has changed what, exactly?
- I have no problem with cigarette companies, pharmaceutical companies. etc. advertising in magazines, that's my whole point. Allow the market to decide what is allowed and what is not allowed, and allow private consumer groups to pressure companies not to do peddle crap products. This is the best way for consumers to voice their preferences to the market. When the government gets involved they just artificially eliminate one medium, and allow resources to be diverted to another. How does that help...? It doesn't, in fact, it helps the companies focus on how to get more people to smoke via more focused campaigns. I guess the market would have eventually taken care of that, too, so we're back to where we started.
- you speak of NYC but you're really talking about a couple of blocks - Times Square - where the zoning regulations are different than in the rest of the city. Most of NYC is not an insane freakshow of neon lights. Never mind even Manhattan; some neighborhoods in Brooklyn are actually still quite nice.
I still feel the solutions you offer are band aids and that only a more healthy society would willingly get rid of these things. Continuing to legislate these things just gives the government more power which only leads to more corruption. Decentralizing power by more closely following the Constitution would help wake people up to the fact that they live in small communities, not one big one that spans coast to coast, and people would begin to care more about local elections and local legislation. I realize it sounds idealistic but I believe it's the only real solution - getting the federal government out of the business of regulation would be a great start.
Petroleum Cost of These Ads
"Advertising Age estimated global measured advertising expenditure of$1.9bn in 2006, making Coca-Cola the world's #12 advertiser."
If it is true that for every dollar we spend, we combust about 1/2 cup of petroleum fuel (I don't have the particular study that showed this on hand, but if anyone is really interested then contact me and I can dig it up), and we did indeed spend $1.9 billion on advertising in 2006, and there are about 1152 cups of petroleum in a barrel...then according to my quick calculations, that's about 1,649,305 barrels of oil every year on advertising alone. To say nothing of the junk people have bought largely under the influence of that advertising.
Note, however, that intensive research in the academic fields of advertising and mass communications have revealed that about 1/3 of all advertising conducted today is a complete waste and does not incite people to buy the product it's selling. I would add, however, that it does have the effect of making our environments quiet ugly, and serving as a crass form of cultural suggestion.
Simple restritctions on advertising---brought about by simple legislation---would likely have a huge impact on this problem. Consider that corporations can write advertising off as a tax-deductible business expense. This is absurd!