Marketing Madness by Jacobson and Mazur, 1995, Edited Excerpts
Fortune magazine, Nov 1947: The American citizen lives in a state of siege from dawn till bedtime. Nearly everything he sees, hears, tastes, touches, and smells is an attempt to sell him something. Luckily for his sanity he becomes calloused shortly after diaperhood; now, to break through his protective shell the advertisers must continuously shock, tease, tickle, or irritate him, or wear him down by the drip-drip-drip or Chinese water-torture method of endless repetition.
Advertising sells more than products. Taken as a whole, the collective body of advertising sells a vision of the world, a way of life. Each ad is a parable that illuminates the same theme. Advertising is the insistent voice of the consumer culture, and the sheer ubiquity of its messages can drown out other voices, other views. Kids are not so much exposed to as enveloped in advertising. Parents who try to instill other values in their children – such as conservation and thrift – find their voices drowned out by the onslaught of commercial messages.
Knowing that consumers view ads with skepticism, marketers sneak through our defenses by blurring the lines between advertising, news, and entertainment. Video News Release [VNR] are supplied to news broadcasters by corporations, public relations firms, government, advocacy groups – virtually anyone with a product to plug or a spin to doctor. Product placement in films or TV shows is increasingly common.
Television works like a Trojan horse: It gains entry into our homes with promises of entertainment and novelty, then delivers its true cargo of commercial messages. By radically altering our habits of leisure, television has changed our experience of the world.
Outdoor advertising grew from a $150 million industry in 1966 to a $1.1 billion behemoth by 1993. Only defense contractors and the tobacco industry, some say, have a more powerful lobbying force than outdoor advertisers. In the early 1990s, nine out of the top ten spenders on outdoor advertising hawked alcohol and tobacco. Driven from television and radio, purveyors of cigarettes and hard liquor rely on billboards to promote their products. Like TV commercials, billboards reach all age groups.
Books and Film
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolfe compares the contemporary ideal of beauty to the Iron Maiden, a medieval torture device that enclosed its victims in a spike-lined box painted with a woman’s image.
The Skin Game: The International Beauty Business Brutally Exposed by Gerald McKnight
Film
Still Killing Us Softly by Jean Kilbourne, groundbreaking film about images of women in advertising.
