In defense of advertising
Peter taunted me below to have fun with this quote by Galbraith:
It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.
Well, at the risk of pulling a stream-of-consciousness Kerouac routine and risking some Capote to tell me this isn't writing, it's typing, here goes, without editing or revising:
It would almost spoil my reaction to know the context, so I won’t google. But on the face of it: codswallop! First of all, everyone is hungry before they are fed; everyone is cold before they get warm. But even if we’re talking people whose navels scrape their backbone and are keeping themselves warm over trash fires fed with fish skeletons and Temperance League tracts, they still need advertising: as in, the food can be found here. Come and get some. Coal for the cold. Balloons for the kids.
If you mean that the hungry don’t need an ad campaign to tell them they need food, that’s true - but let’s say there are two kinds of food. One is full of meaty goodness, like Spam or Treet or Prem or any of the other goo-swaddled compressed pig-loafs. The other is made entirely of vegetables, and it’s organic, too! (Read: fertilized not with chemicals but good ol’ night soil.) Even the hungry might want to be aware of the distinction, and that’s advertising, brother.
But even if you assume that people are hungry but not destitute, peckish but not malnourished, advertising still has a role. It adds something supernumary to the purpose, but essential to being human. It adds a story, however inconsequential; a meaning, however evanescent; a distinction, however unimportant.
In the early part of the 20th century advertising was straight-forward and dull - it consisted mostly of smiling people who were smiling because they had tried Botcher’s Laudanum or Fister’s Brass Polish or Dr. Tweaquer’s Liver-Gas Oil. In the 20s ads became more sophisticated, introducing class and aspirations and worry and sex, and by the 30s it was perfecting the art of calibrating the pitch towards the needs and interests of a audience that had come to see advertising as a ubiquitous public narrative. Cigarettes did it best, of course. You could say that a man with a nicotine itch needs no advertising, but if you offered a hobo a Chesterfield or a Lucky in 1937, he’d have a reason for choosing the one he chose. No: the one he wanted.
Cold people don’t need ad campaigns for coal. But once they have a place to heat, they might want to know which coal is best. You could either have the National Coal Administration send out pamphlets that ranked the coal - Fancy, Super Fancy, and so on - but no one would pay them heed. People bought coal based on their own experience, price, and yes, advertising. Matchbooks of the era were more likely to advertise a particular dealer than a brand, but every week people gathered around the radio to hear the adventures of the Shadow, brought to you by Blue Coal. (Here’s an example of a Blue Coal ad, to show how they hawked it back then.)
No one needs advertising, but advertising is not about needs. It’s about the intersection between your own identity in a capitalist world and the requirements of commerce to move the goods. It’s inadvertent sociology; sometimes - lots of times - it’s art. And it’s a tonic to the quotidian grind of life, too. As Don Draper said in “Mad Men” -
Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK. You are OK.
I can understand why people don’t like it, or prefer to argue with all the time, but I don’t understand those who don’t find it interesting. It’s one of the American contributions to the world, along with skyscrapers, movies, cartoons, and jazz.
Okay, let’s find the context. . . Hmm. Well, there’s this, from wikipedia:
Although little appreciated at the time, the actual power Galbraith wielded (as head of the Office of Price Administration in Roosevelt administration) was so great that he joked later that the rest of his career had been downhill. Indeed, congressional and business backlash against the OPA meant that Galbraith would be forced out in 1943, eventually replaced by advertising executive Chester Bowles.
Well, there you go. Here’s another quote:
Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.
Yes, because there were only about 19 things to have. Once people had the money to buy #20, an industry was born. At least he had the sense to grasp this:
A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.
Wonder why?
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: In defense of advertising
It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.
In pre-socialist countries like the USA (I haven't read the news today, I'm assuming) it's still necessary to advertise wholesale food, bulk fuel, and properly-zoned buildings to those charitable organizations that feed, warm, and house the homeless. In America, there's always somebody to sell to. Always.
May '10
Re: In defense of advertising
Wow, that was great. Your woodpile's loss is our gain.
A lot of the Left's resistance to advertisings stems, it seems to me, from two sources: (1) a general antipathy toward competitive marketplaces; and, (2) gross overestimates of the gullibility and malleability of the typical consumer. Citizens as lambs to be led is a pretty handy construct if your intentions are to enlighten your fellow citizens about social policy, but is anathema if the objective is for someone else to sell a good or service.
Jun '10
Re: In defense of advertising
Some years ago a friend is walking through Amsterdam’s red light district, when a hooker approaches advertising her wares—and we ain’t talkin’ cockles and muscles here. My friend, being curious, asks her price in dollars. She answers “a hundred bucks American”. Unlike today that was when the dollar had some value.
“What do I get for twenty-five?” asks my pal the smart aleck.
The hooker flips him the bird and they part company leaving the bargain unconsummated.
The next night finds my friend walking the same street with his wife on this arm. The hooker spots him walking past and says with a sneer, “See what you get for twenty-five bucks!”
Sometimes the best advertising is price.
May '10
Re: In defense of advertising
I was checking out a design blog the other day geared toward children's decor, parties and toys. They often feature photos and info from children's birthday parties readers/parents send to them. What cracks me up is the common assertion that the parent is trying not to be "too commercial" with their party. For instance, they'll spend $400 for a princess party and claim superiority for not being "commercial" for spending $200 on a Disney princess party - as if there is something wrong and so bourgeois with buying party products of licensed characters. I say, what's wrong with being commercial? The exchange of money for goods and services is commerce, right? The genius of this marketing to class consciousness is that the consumers have convinced themselves that they can not only spend their way out of the middle class, but buying certain products can make them more sophisticated and averse to advertising trends. It's crazy.
May '10
Re: In defense of advertising
"Some years ago a friend is walking through Amsterdam’s red light district, when a hooker approaches advertising her wares—and we ain’t talkin’ cockles and muscles here."
Are you sure about that?
"I say, what's wrong with being commercial?"
Hear, hear!
I appreciate good advertising. The amount of time and creativity that goes into a good ad campaign is every bit the equal to that spent on a fine painting or a well-crafted short-story. I like that someone pours their creative juices into a vessel intended to impress me so much that I'm willing to give them money. In that sense, I think I like advertisers more than artists or snooty novelists. At least the advertiser is honest about what they want from me.
Jun '10
Re: In defense of advertising
Both insightful and amusing as per your usual, James.
I was inoculated against advertising back in my Bohemian days by a comment from one of my friends: "Advertising convinces the poor to buy fashions they can't afford, the middle class to buy cars they can't afford, and the wealthy to buy homes they can't afford." The only thing I can add to his comment is that advertising remains powerful enough to this day to convince Bohemians (aka stoned slackers) to buy five dollar lattes they can't afford.
Jul '10
Re: In defense of advertising
or sunrises to the sleeping, or coffins to the dead.
May '10
Re: In defense of advertising
The constant theme of a lot of advertising is "Eliminate the Middle-man!" But if you stop and think about it, advanced free societies are all about middle-men- and that is the very embodiment of the richness of freedom and market capitalism: choices, born of abundance. When all you can buy are commodities, there is nothing to choose. When you are not at subsistence level, you choose what you want, and advertising is the education that helps you make those choices.
In microeconomics graphs, there is a price-demand curve for each good, and a gray region, the cost of distribution/advertising, and defined usually as "inefficiency". Huh? What a lousy description- it should be "the benefit of choice", because advertising is what reduces cost and improves quality- turning $100 WQestern Electric black dial phone handsets into tiny $50 video cell phones.
All advanced societies see the cost of production drop continuously- all due to the need to prove value as demonstrated by advertising- and turn us into an "information economy" where most of the information could be defined as advertising.
On the 4th of July, "Viva la middle-man!"
May '10
Re: In defense of advertising
The constant theme of a lot of advertising is "Eliminate the Middle-man!" But if you stop and think about it, advanced free societies are all about middle-men- and that is the very embodiment of the richness of freedom and market capitalism: choices, born of abundance. When all you can buy are commodities, there is nothing to choose. When you are not at subsistence level, you choose what you want, and advertising is the education that helps you make those choices.
In microeconomics graphs, there is a price-demand curve for each good, and a gray region, the cost of distribution/advertising, and defined usually as "inefficiency". Huh? What a lousy description- it should be "the benefit of choice", because advertising is what reduces cost and improves quality- turning $100 Western Electric black dial phone handsets into tiny $50 video cell phones.
All advanced societies see the cost of production drop continuously- all due to the need to prove value as demonstrated by advertising- and turn us into an "information economy" where most of the information could be defined as advertising.
On the 4th of July, "Viva la middle-man!"
Jul '10
Re: In defense of advertising
The advertising I hate: government sponsored. You see it all over NYC lately. Foodbank, Census, Did-you-know-you-could-turn-someone-in-for-touching-your-bum-on-the-subway-advertising, smoking is bad for you, MTA is working to improve your experience, "you glorious creatures called NY'ers have a smaller carbon footprint than the rest of the country" (advert on the back of Metrocards). The list goes on. Why?
Should the government be supporting the advertising industry indirectly, in this manner? when is government advertising appropriate? Where? Maybe it should be restricted to advertising on walls of or on government buildings? Is the onus on the citizen to seek out info on his/her government, or on the government to find and educate the subject?
Re: In defense of advertising
On my old radio show, which took place in a diner, we used to talk about how the management had eliminated the middle-man, but had hidden the body so well no charges were ever filed.
Yes, that and the Ad Council stuff, which is the Mad-Av version of pro bono. It's all spinach.
May '10
Re: In defense of advertising
I vaguely remember that particular "Diner" (from one Saturday noon?), now that you mention it. I am fervently hoping that I didn't (unwittingly; I am terminally witless) plagiarize anything from it in my comment above. Please say that I did not, Sir James.....