Why can't we advertise our way out of the recession?

If advertising worked the way many people seem to think it works, then why can’t we advertise our way out of this recession? Over the years, advertising has been given such a bad name for being manipulative and highly persuasive. If there is any basis for such claims, then surely it has the power to manipulate and persuade people to consume, even under these present circumstances. But instead of going after us consumers, according to a March 11 article in The Wall Street Journal, advertisers are going after each other. The article refers to a style of advertising called “comparative advertising” in which one advertiser utilizes some piece of data in order to claim superiority for their product or brand. The Pepsi Challenge is a good example of comparative advertising. The article refers to the ways in which advertisers utilize misleading or incomplete information to make a claim, like when Campbells attacks Progresso or when Dominos attacks Subway or Pepsi attacks Coke. I guess you could call this attack advertising as one marketer attempts to claim a superior position for the product by directly diminishing an attribute of another. Well, it’s not atypical to attack a competitor’s product, but in many cases it’s done implicitly. In this latest round of comparative advertising, marketers explicitly depict the competitive product along with their own in order to make their point. This type of advertising began around 1978 when the FTC actually began to encourage use of such comparative data. The FTC thought that comparing one product to another would actually clarify differences between products with the net result being that consumers could make more informed decisions. It’s a shame it never turned out that way. I guess when the going gets tough….well, you know the rest. But is this kind of backbiting going to help us out of this recession? Seems to me like a waste of resources based on the serious economic situation at hand. A comparative advertisement may sell one more hamburger, one more bottle of soda and one more can of soup, but brand advertising is usually atmospheric in nature, and as such I think there is greater opportunity to provide an upbeat atmosphere for consumers to encourage them to buy more. I like the ads, for example, from that insurance company that sponsors the “aha moment.” Those commercials feature average individuals who have had an epiphany that changed their lives. Very uplifting. I hope others join this bandwagon. Because if advertising works the way many people think it works, it could be of great public assistance to brighten our lives and affect our attitudes toward a more positive outlook. Do I think it works this way? Not a chance. But under the circumstances, even I think it’s worth a try.

Tattoos and the Commodification of Self

It is perhaps ironic that we just finished a class discussion on tattoos as a means to “mark” one’s identity both physically and metaphorically. This discussion took place in the broader discussion regarding fashion and identity. Tattooing is an art form. Tattooing is a fashion statement. Getting a tattoo is a significant act imbued with all sorts of meaning. It’s not cheap either. I brought up a point that I think was difficult at that time to digest: the idea that young people mark their bodies because they do not feel they are likely to leave a mark on this world. The tattoo is permanently yours, no one can take it away from you, and it is something you’ll likely die with (although we acknowledge the possibility of laser removal). When I said that young people feel they will not likely make a mark on this world, one student was able to clarify better than I what this might mean: she referred to a friend at a large university who was known only by his student number. Yes, we live with growing anonymity in this postmodern world where identity is shape shifting on what seems a constant basis: who I am in class is not who I am at my internship, etc. etc.

Tattooing is a way of temporarily fixing identity, of grounding it in something that is physical – you can look at it, although often times we hide tattoos from others, and it is meaningful; quite meaningful we learned as people get tattoos to mark moments in time (travel abroad), as a statement of belief, in memory of someone lost, among other reasons. Of course, once you have one tattoo, you have to get another one, because that is the only way one can create “difference” and in that individuality. The more anonymity grips us, the more we grope for difference. The New York Times (2/18/09) reports on the phenomenon of renting one’s body as a commercial billboard, in this case with a temporary henna tattoo advertising Air New Zealand. This strikes me as interesting, first because I’ve read about this in the past. Indeed a few years ago I read of a woman who offered to rent her bulging pregnant belly to an advertiser. And another young man offered to rent his forehead for a commercial message.

This commodification of the body seems to me to represent the final blow to the tattoo trend, LA Ink notwithstanding. Here I mean to reflect another point that came out of our discussion: that tattooing isn’t as popular with Gen Y as it was with members of Gen X. Trends are like that, eventually they all get flushed through the system. But that doesn’t mean that this current generation of teens and young adults has found an antidote for social instability, of which I think the recent tattoo trend is emblematic. Rather, there may be greater significance to renting out one’s body to an advertiser: it may mean that the commodified body is one that is totally devoid of personal meaning. It may be the ultimate statement of anonymity. To give one’s self up to a corporation renders the body meaningless (George Orwell, where are you when we need you!). When I think of this state of affairs it saddens me until I realize that culture is dynamic, and another trend will ultimately replace this one. What the next generation of youngsters will move on to is anybody’s guess. But how they will deal with a society that increasingly treats them as a number and not a person is another matter entirely.

Celebrity apologia: Springsteen, A-Rod, Phelps say I’m sorry

Blender Burner: Springsteen: Hard to Be a Saint in the Rock & Roll City @ Yahoo! Video

The fan-celebrity relationship is a complex one, especially so in an age of instant communication: A celebrity driving drunk on Santa Monica Blvd. crashes into another vehicle and the video is quickly available on TMZ.com. The information about celebrities’ comings and goings is the stock and trade of Perez Hilton, whose website for many of my students is the first one they go to upon waking each morning. Celebrity gossip fuels our very being, it would seem. At the same time, such relationships—imaginary as they are—are dynamic; subject to negotiation. That is why marketers are so fearful of celebrity spokespeople to the point that several marketers have opted in recent years to employ the images of dead celebrities, including Steve McQueen, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Audrey Hepburn, among others, in their advertising campaigns.

This has been a banner week or two for celebrity gossip mongers: Chris Brown allegedly beats up Rihanna, Phelps' photo appears in a British tabloid with lips pressed to a bong, and A-Rod admits using banned substances. And, I don’t want to leave out Bruce Springsteen, champion of the working-class union worker, who apologies for two things: first, for the exclusive deal he made with Wal-Mart to sell a greatest hits CD (Wal-Mart is not known for its union friendly policies); and, many fans who wanted to obtain tickets to his upcoming concert tour were, upon learning that a concert was sold out, were re-directed to a ticket re-seller (use to be called scalper) who offered tickets at a much higher price.

All of this not only gives us pause to think, it requires that we invest a lot of energy in making up our own mind regarding the behavior of these media figures - good or bad, right or wrong. One could suggest that it is time wasted, but I am suggesting that it is through the processing of these kinds of instances they we make sense of our world, where we find common ground with others, and in the process seek terra firma – solid ground upon which to stand our values. That is the way pop culture works and the work we do with it. It requires a lot for us to stay engaged in this system. I guess that’s why my students upon waking go directly to the Perez Hilton web site.

The dictionary defines the word fanatic as someone “marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion.”

The question remains: will Chris Brown’s fans abandon him, or will people shun Michael Phelps because of his substance abuse, or will fans stop attending Yankee games because they think A-Rod is a fake? We’ll have to pay attention as fans negotiate their relationship with each of these media figures. As for Springsteen, if you’re a devoted fan, are you really not going to go into a Wal-Mart to purchase the CD if you really want it? John Fiske, the cultural theorist, said that pop culture is contradictory to its core. As the fan-celebrity relationship is part of that complex system, so are we.