But there’s another aspect to advertising which has attracted my attention recently. That is anti-advertising of the specific variety. It’s where activists who don’t like the advert deface billboards with the anti-message. Some of these are usually quite funny, mostly the political kind. But I’m not sure that that these people actually think too deeply about the message they are trying to convey and the impact that their intervention will have upon their target audience. Below is a prime example.
This is from Indymedia where “pro-Palestinians” have defaced advertisements for the Israeli tourist trade. But how is Jo Soap going to interpret that splodge of red paint? Given the media that those activists complain about I would guess it may well conjure up images of blood from “suicide bombers” or doodlebugs suggesting that Israel is not exactly a “safe” place to visit.I doubt that this is exactly the “message” that those activists want to get across but hey, if it keeps Israel off your itinerary what the heck?
There is a famous advertising adage, that only 10% of advertising works, it's finding out which 10% that is important.
ReplyDeleteThat much!
ReplyDeleteVery definitely, why do you suppose companies, governments, charities advertise?
ReplyDeleteDo you advocate a market where someone has a useful/innovative/enjoyable product or service, and sits around quietly waiting for the consumer to seek hime/her out?
Stone Age, here we come again!
Sure, any new product or venture needs to be promoted. But once it is established....?
ReplyDeleteThe margins become less and do not seem to me to justify the enormous sums spent.
I wouldn't mind if advertising was just a simple, harmless means of alerting us to new products and services as some always claim. But it is not.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that most national advertising and PR aims insidiously to manipulate human psychology. The gullible and disadvantaged are especially vulnerable to being talked into buying things that they may not necessarily be able to afford. Things which also may do them great harm, and which frequently pollute and degrade our environment during their production, use and disposal.
Global PR and advertising also seeks to create a social environment where conspicuous consumption is a major goal in life, and where those who do not possess the vaunted products are made to feel like 'losers', inadequate.
There's the likes of de Bernays, the double nephew of Freud, who, in the 1920s persuaded millions of women that it was OK to smoke, glamorous even, thus luring them to protracted and painful diseases and early graves, leaving their loved ones to grieve. This man will pay heavily for his behaviour, if there is an afterlife.
Apply PR to politics, as Herr Goebbels so cleverly pioneered, and you have an armoury of extremely dangerous tools for mass control.
The PR men are now in a panic, as they see many of their old avenues being supplanted by the internet, with its currently anarchic nature, so they're desperately seeking ways to reach into our minds through this medium, as here.
No doubt many cunning ways are already being devised to try to permeate the Web as thoroughly as possible with corporate messages.
And if the powers that be find they need to close it down, they will.
Instancia - what about free will? I am at liberty to ignore any advertising or PR actions, since they are simply a larger manifestion of the ancient market place.
ReplyDeleteWould you agree with me that most religious faiths 'aim insidiously to manipulate human psychology', often far more successfuly than commercial advertising?
Let us by all means educate people, particularly when they are young, to use (and believe in) their own judgement. Let's encourage debate in schools about the herd mentality and how to combat it in all fields, not just when faced with the seduction of the snake oil vendor.
Just let's not further infantilise the public by putting in place so many bans because 'it's for your own good'.
"Would you agree with me that most religious faiths 'aim insidiously to manipulate human psychology'"
ReplyDeleteYes, I certainly would Judith. Sadly, it’s all too like taking candy from a baby, to hoodwink the average punter.
I think that you are drastically underestimating the vulnerability of psychologically and intellectually disadvantaged people, as well as the power and sophistication of the huge range of technologies and techniques that the cunning and unscrupulous now have at their disposal to exploit vulnerable people.
Just look at any news medium any day and you will see stories like this one:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1264731/Cult-leader-Michael-Lyons-rapist-claimed-Dalai-Lama-disciple.html
The man in the story above happens to have crossed the line into breaking some laws, but the really clever, lucrative, and safe, thing is to do as advertising does and exploit people in perfectly legal ways.
Even if education could solve the problem, and I don't think it could (thousands of years of human gullibility would back me on that one, I feel) the leaders of society will never allow proper e-ducation that enables ordinary people to think for themselves - it would be bad for business and employers.
You may not feel that vulnerable people need protecting from the highly intelligent and cunning who will fleece them for every penny they have, given half a chance, but I do. Perhaps you see it in a darwinist survival of the fittest sort of way?
Thanks for your response, Instancia. The following questions are not meant to be aggressive:
ReplyDeleteWho do you define as vulnerable?
What gives you the right to promote yourself as a proto-guardian?
Why do you know better?
Quis custos custodies?
Difficult questions, probably without black&white answers. However, yes I do belong to the school that thinks that once you've done the educating, a sharp dose of nasty actuality teaches a lot too.
Judith,
ReplyDeleteWe are all vulnerable. Some more so than others and in a variety of different ways. We all have blind spots.
No I don't take that as aggressive Judith, although it does seem to be missing the issues.
ReplyDeleteEqually, you might also ponder the following questions:
What gives you the right to ignore and abandon people who are weaker and less able than yourself of withstanding the vicious commercial pressures they are put under every minute of every day by the PR and advertising hyenas, and whose lives, marriages, families and children are often casualties as well?
Why do you know better?
The fact is that we live in a society where we can still play a part in debating these issues if we wish, and each of us is, as yet, still at liberty to speak of our views. That is the normal process of politics, and it is how we shape and re-shape our society.
As far as I can see I have briefly sketched a perfectly reasonable case for curtailing PR machinations and addressed the objections you put on the 19th and 21st of July.
In return, however, nothing you have written here really answers the case convincingly, in my view.
Just to add for good measure, here's one example of the wider damage that PR does:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/03/london-pr-rwanda-saudi-arabia
Includes the following observations: "The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, in a report last year, found that Rwanda has "excellent public relations machinery" which has succeeded in "persuading the key members of the international community that it has an exemplary constitution emphasising democracy, power-sharing, and human rights which it fully respects". It concluded: "The truth is, however, the opposite." "
“A recent report into the phenomenon in Brussels by Corporate Europe Observatory, a campaign group which researches the power of corporate lobbying, said: "Secrecy among both embassies and consultancies keeps much of this phenomenon out of public sight … some of the consultancies are lobbying on behalf of governments which are directly or indirectly responsible for serious human rights violations."“
And in one country where citizens are actually executed for blasphemy “ according to Amnesty International, "Torture and other ill-treatment continued to be widespread and committed with impunity. Commonly cited methods include severe beatings with sticks, electric shocks, suspension from the ceiling, punching, sleep deprivation and insults."
A director of the company [providing public relations for this country] “acknowledged the country had a mixed reputation and "terrible things happen everywhere", but she insisted the government "deserves to have the many, many positive things emphasised and pushed forward". She said: "Our aim is very much to develop a better understanding,"
Indeed!
And then there’s this everyday story of Euro folk:
“New investment powers, granted to the EU Commission under the Lisbon Treaty, will still allow multinational companies to claim compensation when national laws designed to protect the environment or public health damage their profits, according to proposals put forward by the EU Commission last week. Following an intense lobby campaign from industry and EU member states led by Germany and the UK, the Commission has opted to protect the status quo.”
When it comes to the political field it seems quite blatantly the case that PR and lobbying professionals exist to override the interests of the public in favour of their corporate clients and that their activities are increasingly damaging and undermining democracy.
While Guido also had a very revealing post about Mr PR-man Cameron’s “say one thing and do another” approach in his appointment of Spelman.
And fascism and communism didn't damage and undermine democracy, without the benefit of PR and lobbyists?
ReplyDeleteYes, vested interests like business and politics and religions will do everything they can to protect themselves, and the public has to be vigilant.
What I worry about is the laws and the people behind the laws that you want to 'restrict PR machinations' - who will set the standards, who will prevent mission creep?
I go back to my original point - teach people to think for themselves, encourage them to learn that there is more to life than simple materialism, but please don't nanny them.
You seem to believe that waving the word “nannying” around like a magic wand somehow settles the issue. It doesn’t.
ReplyDeleteYou only have to google the words conman, women, and MI5 (for example) to find a string of men recently who are managing to con women out of large sums of money and reduce them to servile wrecks merely by clever manipulation. For example, here and
here.
I suppose you think that these women need “educating”, while their exploiters should be allowed to go about their business in a “free market”?
The fact is, that protecting the innocent from deception and exploitation by the unscrupulous is one of the functions of the law in a civilised society.
You say you “worry about .. the laws and the people behind the laws”. Presumably you are referring to Parliament and the Judiciary? Well, we should all be worrying about them, and their vested interests, but that is a far wider issue. Worrying about the lawmakers surely doesn’t mean that you wish to scrap all laws …? Or are you an anarchist (nothing wrong with that)?
As for this comment: “fascism and communism didn't damage and undermine democracy, without the benefit of PR and lobbyists?” Indeed they did not. The Soviets deployed agitprop and socialist realism while also using large sections of the Western cultural elite, people such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb, to massage their image abroad.
The Nazis had, if anything, even more successful PR, led by Joseph Goebbels who developed many essential tools that the media manipulator uses today, such as branding and image management.
Frighteningly enough, the tools of PR are even more powerful today; and more insidious. So I have to agree with Weggis that we are all potentially vulnerable, especially in this case, as you point out, to the psychological tools used by totalitarians.
Instancia/Judith,
ReplyDeleteYou both make a good case, but I want to refer you both to an earlier post on this blog.
It would be very nice if we could and did teach everyone to think for themselves. But the nature of human variety would mean that some would be better at it than others – so we would still have a spectrum of vulnerability and the con[wo]men would still target the weakest with ever more innovative scams. Much like the car thieves who now target the car keys. There is no perfect system and that is what we have to recognise. We have to accept that some are gonna get conned just as we accept that some people will be killed on the roads – shit happens as they say.
The problem is how to respond and minimise the impact. Government intervention has a history of being ineffective, counter-productive and expensive. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with “nannying” as Judith and Mrs Weggis know quite well being grandmas.
I would suggest the best way is through collective social, community and family structures where we all look out for each other rather than an emotionless bureaucratic state machine which has in my opinion undermined that approach over the last 50 years or so.
That’s not to say that the state [politicians] should not have a role, it should. It should be there to support and underpin those structures and methods via the Law, as Instancia says, but unfortunately it has done the opposite and in so doing [perhaps deliberately] has increased reliance upon the State which it just does not deliver.