Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [74]
Would the logical outcome of anti-consumerism be, as the University of Florida professor James Twitchell has written, “a return to the sumptuary laws of ancient Rome and medieval times,” where the upper-class leaders of government regulated the habits of consumption, often to keep a rising lower class in check?
Then there’s the libertarian view of anti-consumerism, which basically is: Who the fuck is anyone to claim the right to decide for me what good or service is necessary, or what is wasteful, or even offensive?
Then again, historically, the behavior of many advertisers has been reprehensible. Packard’s book made me recall the 2001 PBS documentary The Merchants of Cool, which chronicled marketers’ attempts to capitalize on the all-powerful, all-consuming teen market, often by appealing to adolescents’ lowest desires, glorifying, for instance, violence, sex, and antisocial behavior. The Hidden Persuaders also made me recall in a new light a meeting I once had with my yogurt clients in which I was told that they were going to make a shift in the target for their drinkable children’s product. For years they had focused their message toward moms, playing up the yogurt’s appeal as a nutritious snack that would help their kids grow big and strong. But in the meeting they told me now they wanted to target the kids, to focus on taste and fun, and to have animated characters disseminate their message. The reason? Research had unearthed something called “the nag factor” where, if kids see messages for something they desire often enough, they will nag Mom into consumer submission. And that was an easier behavior to trigger than having a rational conversation with busy moms. Surely it wasn’t illegal, but was it unethical? And if so, why hadn’t I called them on it?
I read most of the book the night before I left for Chicago and finished the rest in flight. I was supposed to be prepping for my meetings at Leo Burnett, but my thoughts were with Packard. In fact, the more I thought about his book as I rode the Blue Line train from O’Hare to State and Lake, the more I believed that even more sophisticated versions of the methods described in The Hidden Persuaders are still being employed today. But today, nobody seems to care.
The first question I wrote in my notebook was, why?
I am the center of the culture. I am genesis, herald, harbinger. The absolute germinal zero point—that’s me. I am the sun around which all the American else orbits. In fact, I am America, I exist more than other Americans. America is the center of the world, and I am the center of America. I am fifteen, white, middle class and male. Middle-aged men and women scurry for my attention. What Internet sites I visit. What I buy. What my desires are. What movies I watch. What and who I want; when and how I want it. People get paid a lot of money to think of how to get to me and mine. Everything is geared to me. When you see those herky-jerky close-ups in action movies, where the camera jumps and chops its way in rather hyperly to the close-up of the hero, that is not for anyone but me … Don’t worry if you don’t get it—that’s the point. You are excluded.
—Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document
What Makes the People Tick Whose Job Is to Figure Out What Makes You Tick?
In 1935 Leo Burnett did what ambitious ad folks have done since the industry began: he jumped ship from his current job and started his own agency. His first client, which had left his former agency with him, was the Minnesota Valley Canning Company.
His first campaign for the canning company? The Jolly Green Giant.
Perhaps based on this formula, Burnett went on to create some of the