Practices of looking
Chapter 7
Advertising, consumer cultures, and desire
Summary
Because consumers are so accustomed to the presence of brands and ads and see so many ads over the
course of a typical week, they tune ad messages out.
In today’s media environment, advertisers and marketers are compelled to constantly reinvent the ways
in which they address and hold the attention of increasingly jaded consumers.
Ads make promises
Aim to present an image of things to be desired, people to be envied, and life as it should be.
Consumerism is deeply integrated into the daily life and the visual culture of the societies in which we
live, often in ways we do not even recognize.
Consumer societies
The concept of consumer choice is central to capitalist consumer cultures.
In a consumer society there are great social and physical distances between the manufacture of goods
and their purchase and use. (Workers live far away from fabric and cannot afford)
Mobility and concentrations of populations in urban areas are aspects of modernity that have
contributed to the rise of consumerism
In a consumer society, there is a constant demand for new products.
Consumer societies are integral to modernity.
Online commerce (started with mail-order catalogues for people living in rural areas)
The distance between the public sphere of work and commerce and the private sphere of the home
increased. Women and men two distinctive kinds of consumers who should be targeted through
different kinds of marketing strategies.
The source of concepts of the self and identity are constituted in a larger realm than the family.
The rise of consumerism thus took place within a context of shifting values. -> Therapeutic ethos (shift
from protestant work ethic etc. to ideas of leisure, spending and entertainment)
The idea that consumer products will offer self-fulfillment is crucial to marketing and consumption.
Modern advertisements were able increasingly to speak to problems f anxiety and identity crisis and to
offer harmony, vitality and the prospect of self-realization -> products offered as solutions
Chapter 7
Advertising, consumer cultures, and desire
Summary
Because consumers are so accustomed to the presence of brands and ads and see so many ads over the
course of a typical week, they tune ad messages out.
In today’s media environment, advertisers and marketers are compelled to constantly reinvent the ways
in which they address and hold the attention of increasingly jaded consumers.
Ads make promises
Aim to present an image of things to be desired, people to be envied, and life as it should be.
Consumerism is deeply integrated into the daily life and the visual culture of the societies in which we
live, often in ways we do not even recognize.
Consumer societies
The concept of consumer choice is central to capitalist consumer cultures.
In a consumer society there are great social and physical distances between the manufacture of goods
and their purchase and use. (Workers live far away from fabric and cannot afford)
Mobility and concentrations of populations in urban areas are aspects of modernity that have
contributed to the rise of consumerism
In a consumer society, there is a constant demand for new products.
Consumer societies are integral to modernity.
Online commerce (started with mail-order catalogues for people living in rural areas)
The distance between the public sphere of work and commerce and the private sphere of the home
increased. Women and men two distinctive kinds of consumers who should be targeted through
different kinds of marketing strategies.
The source of concepts of the self and identity are constituted in a larger realm than the family.
The rise of consumerism thus took place within a context of shifting values. -> Therapeutic ethos (shift
from protestant work ethic etc. to ideas of leisure, spending and entertainment)
The idea that consumer products will offer self-fulfillment is crucial to marketing and consumption.
Modern advertisements were able increasingly to speak to problems f anxiety and identity crisis and to
offer harmony, vitality and the prospect of self-realization -> products offered as solutions
