I heard on the radio this morning Joan Bakewell describing her early employment as an advertising copywriter. She talked of the POINTLESS job of trying to get people to buy things they don’t want or can’t afford. Pointless? Is it really that harmless?
Advertising serves many purposes, of which I will go into more deeply later…
I don’t think you understood what she said.
To be pointless is to broadcast a message which lets the audience imagine its point. That way, you hit as much of a target audience as possible by letting its imagination do the work. You also don’t intimidate it into believing its oppressed like you’re trying to drive it in a particular direction.
The fundamental purpose, even void of any purchasing, is to control behavior.
At least 80% of all entertainment and advertising entering your perception has nothing to do with the conscious business, but rather the business of the subconscious mind, “hypnosis” - “beneath cognitive awareness”.
Mindless and “pointless” consuming of pointless products plays a role in economics and eugenics.
I’m a Studio-manager in advertising and liaise with copywriters, designers, account-handlers and the client - Some ads sell things people need… so it’s seeing what product is best for you, whilst some ads try to lure us into buying a product or service that we can live without, whilst other ads are designed to inform us.
Depends what you mean by pointless, clearly advertisers see rises in profit from advertising their product, clearly then to them it is not pointless. The issue of people buying stuff they don’t need is however so complex that you can’t really pigeon it into the advertisement hole. People buying things they can ill afford and don’t need is the norm. The question I think should be how do we make businesses become responsive to criticisms about encouraging debt, and that I think is not going to happen under the present system.
It’s a bit of a ctach-22 if you believe in a free market and capitalism you expect the market to sort itself out, but this of course does not happen. When freed to do what you want many people will act only in their self interest overpowering those businesses that seek to act in the interest of all (if such a thing exists, but you get the spectrum).
I think your question should not be is advertising pointless, more is does anyone actually care if it is or it is not, if it works for those it serves.
Open, above-board honesty is the issue.
Quite, but is that going to happen?
Not only do the practices involved in advertizing manipulate people to buy products they do not need or want, they also spray a version of normal -which includes notions of what is cool, stupid, hopeless, messed up, great - that hits people, especially children on an unconscious level. They are propaganda that even people smart enough to know on a conscious level are BS are still affected by.
And from a philosophical viewpoint they are also reinforcing and creating cultural norms about ontology, epistemology, ethics and so on.
I think that the power of advertising (like anything else) can be abused and used to manipulate, but I have worked in agencies and companies where the ads they produce are used to inform, and I quite like ads that create a lifestyle for the consumer… which then gives the consumer the choice of whether they wish to peruse that lifestyle or not.
I really dislike celebrity endorsed advertising (the newest fad/tool in the advertising closet) as I don’t hold anyone in such high esteem as to buy a product they promote so as to make myself feel close to or akin to them.
Of course you are correct. The word pointless can have many different meanings depending on context. I would have to ask: did you hear the programme? If you did not, then I think you have little basis for replacing my definition with yours.
I think you’re being a bit too “wide eyed and innocent” - which may have something to do with your being in the business. I mean, you’re not the one who’s going to condemn it, are you? For myself, I’m backing Moreno.
The basis comes from how advertising hits a wide audience.
If advertising is pointed, that narrows the audience down which reduces the target market.
Therefore, it has to be pointless as I described.
Dragon, I’ve always seen advertising in this way… long before I ever studied Graphic-design then subsequently went into Advertising, as my mind has always thought in terms of lifestyle.
I chose to give my view on your op, but not for your backing…
Some advertizing informs, this is true. But these companies are often also using the latest cognitive science to manipulate people. This can be overt shaming or fear spreading, associational ploys - implications you will get layed if you have the product, not get layed without it, associations with manliness, feminity, etc - implications of evidence or results that do not hold up, but are not quite asserted so it is not illegal…
and then there’s the whole complicated tie in marketing and manipulation of children.
A lot of people blame the victim, but this shows naivte about how the mind actually works. Even people who are good critical thinkers can be manipulated to choose products they wouldn’t otherwise, via processes they are not conscious of. And this is apart from the false contruction of reality that underlies much advertizing around cars, clothes, make up, toiletries, detergent and so on. We are being indirectly informed about who we should be, what the other sex wants, what our sex should be like, that the self is a surface and so on.
This starts at an early age and is getting into growing brains at least as much as schooling, if not more so.
Parents supposedly are to counter all this, and should not give in to their kids screaming for McDs since they can get star wars figures there or whatever…
But advertising creates an energy drain on parents. Sure, they have the power. But they also want and deserve peace. What advertizing does is act like a tax on every parent, forcing them to fight all sorts of requests and demands, where there wouldn’t be these demands if the advertisers stopped hiring psychologists and other experts and stopped bombarding children with a bunch of manipulative BS.
<<<<<once the kids have hit adulthood they are well trained about what is real and what isn’t and how they should be in the world via consumption and how they are really primarily surfaces on which products should be placed. Of course advertizing is not the only medium creating this, but it’s a big one.
Advertising is only one form of human engineering. There are many more.
You are taking a very technical approach to the word pointless - an approach which ensures that nobody ever understands anybody unless they are working on the same research project, or accessing the same technical dictionary while they speak.
The radio programme I heard went out to a non-speacilaist audience and was hosted by an extremely well practiced radio presenter. I think she would have been well aware that her audience was understand pointless in the way I have taken it.
I suggest that “lifestyle” is itself an advertising concept which, if taken up by ordinary people, is harmful to their health. The whole idea vastly oversimplifies what a life that can even remotely satisfy a human being needs to be.
PS: no offence was meant by “backing” Moreno. I merely wished to save myself the trouble of having to restate what he’d already said. Having read Moreno’s latest comment, I can only say that I agree with him again.