Practices of looking: Chapter 7 - Advertising, Consumer Cultures, and Desire

Advertising, Consumer Cultures, and Desire

• Logos - signs, pictograms, or characters that represent a brand
• Consumers are now accustomed to looking at the imagery
• advertisers have to create new ways for consumers to look at imagery so it is absorbed
• Advertisements could be presented as art pieces
• Attempt to bridge social gaps between consumers
• Consumerism is deeply apart of daily life

CONSUMER SOCIETIES

• Consumerism grew out of capitalism
• Capitalism depends on the production and consumption of large amounts of goods, even beyond daily living
• Consumer choice
• choosing among different types of a similar object
• Consumer culture grew from late 19th and early 20th century rise of mass production in the industrial revolution
• Increased industrialization in late 19th century meant decrease in number of small entrepreneurs and large increase in manufacturers
• people traveling farther to work
• some items the workers are making they can't afford to buy
• Consumerism is tied to mobility of people and the growth of urban centers
• Constant demand for new products
• The capitalist economy is dependent on overproduction, which requires desire but not necessarily need
• can increase the image of a person to own an item 
• Consumerism and people living in proximity to one another as well as the growth of online shopping go hand in hand
• online shopping for brands like Victoria's Secret
• Stores like Walmart
• And trade sites like Craigslist
• The growth of the separation of workplace and home created a larger gender separation between man and woman.
• Man in the work place is one consumer
• Woman at home is another consumer
• In consumer societies: people gain identity and self worth from the items they purchase
• denotes a value shift
• T.J Jackson Lears "therapeutic ethos": from a work ethic, civic responsibility, self denial, saving to ideas of leisure, spending, individual fulfillment, and betterment through goods.
• Advertisements increasingly speak to problems of anxiety and identity crisis and offer a solution through their product
• The product offers "therapeutic ethos" when someone purchases the product for us to relieve some anxiety / stress
• Different societies have different consumerism holds
• Postwar Japan - loss of imperial monarchy and security
• China - self fulfillment but it conflicts with societal ideals (socialist society)
• The shopping arcades that were created in Paris, Milan and Berlin to separate the shopper from the outside world and create it as an experience helped shape the consumer experience and culture
• The rise of the "department store" late 19th century
• a designed experience for consumer shopping
• Visual codes for pleasure are born - window shopping
• Flanuer - a figure who moves through a city in an anonymous fashion and who's primary activity is looking. The female word is flaneuse, which happens later because of societal views
• The rise of panorama's, dioramas, and photography grow at this time to increase the action of looking
• Billboards increased now with the necessity of the automobile for transportation, the billboards grew beyond the urban city
• Billboards during the Great Depression were incorporated into documentary photographs
• Margaret Bourke-White - African American victims of a flood line up in front of a billboard showing a happy, white, consumerist family in a brand new car
• Catherine Gudis - the billboard was designed for the consumer on the move - quick
• Advertising grew from the industrial cities to the suburban landscapes to get the attention of people on the move
• The growth of the idea of being a good consumer, is to be a good consumer
• Lizabeth Cohen; "consumers republic" economic and social context. Consumerism is understood as the primary avenue for achieving freedom, democracy, and equality
• Consumerism is a paradox -  the needs of commodities are never truly fulfilled and the market lures us into wanting more

ENVY, DESIRE, AND BELONGING

• Advertisements speak language of transformation
• the consumers lives will change through purchasing something
• alleviate dissatisfaction
• Attachment of art can give connotation of prestige, tradition, and authenticity
• people must have cultural knowledge to understand the reference
• Cultural capital - cultural knowledge that gives you social advantages: Pierre Bourdieu
• economic capital - material well and access to goods
• social capital - whom you know
• symbolic capital - prestige, celebrity
• value is awarded in capitalist societies not through money but forms of knowledge that are apart of an elite social contexts
• Advertising relies on consumer relationships
• signifier (the product)
• signifier ( its meaning)
• using cultural significant images like the concept of America would make the person feel like a good citizen
• the idea of a happy family being held together by a product
• Ads establish norms or un-norms
• racial boundaries of skin color
• the mix of racial boundaries can bring a cultural sophistication
• Jacques Lacan - the lack 
• something missing from our lives that we seek from the moment we realize that we are separate from our mothers. 
• this lack can never be fully filled - advertisements play into the roll of consumerism and try to help us fill the "lack"

COMMODITY CULTURA ND COMMODITY FETISHISM

• Consumer culture = commodity culture
• culture in which commodities are central to cultural meaning
• Commodities - things that are bought and sold in a system of exchange
• we construct our identities through consumer products
• Stuart Ewen "commodity self"
• constructed through the use of commodities
• Advertising encourages customers to think the objects show their personality 
• through branding
• Commodities are given meaning and value
• general analysis of role of economics can be understood through Marxist theory
• capitalism is a system of values that most societies understand
• Marxist theory
• Commodities have both use value - the particular use in society-  and exchange value - the cost of the item -
• capitalist society is based on the exchange value over the use value
• the ticket over the experience
• Items we can not live without - food
• mass produced loaf of bread costs less than the nice artisan bread but have the same use value
• clothes, probably created in the same place, have the same use value but different exchange values
• now the ideas of commodity self must be taken into consideration for ideological thoughts
• Commodity fetishism - emptied with the meaning of production and filled with new meanings to mystify the product to become a fetish object
• linked with logos and advertising
• Productions of goods have become increasingly outsourced to developing nations around the world
• price of shipping goods fell with the outsourcing of labor
• most of the clothing sold in the US is made in countries like China, Korea, Indonesia where working conditions are poor
• Fetishism
• a Miata ad - promotes masculine affirmation, speed, fantasy of mastery of control through commodity self
• Nike ad  for women's shoes - they will help you look good while you are working out and looking "bad"
• Nike outsourced labor to poor conditions and went against what they were as a company, caused an outcry 
• corporations have been forced to pay greater attention to consumer critiques 
• Coca-cola - created programs to help the worker
• the effects the outsourcing had on the chocolate industry and children labor laws and enslavement during 2005
• American Apparel keeps the labor in the country and paid well.
• Also known for scandals in sexual ad campaigns
• Abercrombie & Fitch has the same lawsuit issues only hiring white models
• Critics look at consumption as symbolic of pop culture
• illustrators in the industry
• Stuart Davis work Lucky Strike - comments on culture using cubist style to bring a modern aesthetic to cubism
• Andy Warhol - the Campbell's soup cans
• banality of pop culture with familiarity of the Campbell's logo
• Roy Lichtenstein - blowing up comic images

BRANDS AND THEIR MEANINGS

• Brands are product names that have meaning attached to them through naming, packaging, advertising, and marketing
• promotion under brand names - become symbolic of the companies services
• trademarking to protect companies from infringements or knock offs
• Artists can be employed by advertising agencies to promote a product and change the meaning of the product, denote high class
• A brand is a product name we know about, and can change meaning over time based off of advertising campaigns
• Logos and visual style are crucial to overall meanings of brands - can be shown through visual motifs
• ex. ipod silhouette campaign
• Consumers create deep, sometimes emotional, connections to their brands - the identity is no longer the signifier, the identity is the product we consume
• the brand is irreplaceable
• over branding so that is all we think of when using a specific item
• a kleenex

THE MARKETING OF COOLNESS

• Advertisers began to see themselves as creative professionals in the 1960's and not as scientific minds
• emerging emphasis on youth culture and the increased mobility of consumer culture
• using counter culture to help give advertisements attitude
• association with youth culture and branding to give a sense of coolness 
• creation of constant turn over of goods - blurring mainstream and marginal subcultures
• devices become dated in short periods of time so the consumer can move to the next youthful / cool item
• changing advertising - the Ketel One ad that comments on itself
• the idea of being "environmentally savvy" or being socially aware through advertising
• the person who buys these products becomes an advertisement for these ideas, makes them feel the "lack"
• Using the web as a form of advertising - most media attention comes from the internet
• Guerilla Marketing - "stealth" marketing
• Now the focus is utility over goodness - how to connect with others, how does something benefit the consumer further

ANTI ADS AND CULTURE JAMMING

• Artists can use their abilities to critique popular culture - Hans Haacke
• Culture jamming - legacy of situationist artists and writers in France in 60's - political interventions of daily life to counter the passivity of alienation of modern live
• "detournement" - rewriting messages 
• doing this on billboards