Oh Mad World: Advertising in Postmodern Blues

In a mad world, only the mad are sane

Akira Kurosava

Thinking more of the topic of the previous post, I started questioning: What is advertising in contemporary culture? How is it different in postmodern era? Does it foster creativity or make it more complex to reach the desired audience?
And to begin with, can we say do we really live in postmodern blues?


For the answers I turned to Lucy Atkinson, Assistant Professor at the Department of Adverting at the University of Texas at Austin.

In our Advertising, Sustainability and Conscientious Consumer class we talked a lot about postmodernism. So my question is: Do you think we are living in a postmodern era? Do you believe in it after all the research you have done?

You know, I am really ambivalent about it. I don’t know. I think it’s a fascinating topic, and some days I think: Yes! We live in this postmodern world, we have all our own identities and our narratives are so malleable, and today I wanna be this, and tomorrow I wanna be that. But… other days I think it’s just all bullshit.  There is no change. It’s a useless way of thinking of becoming a civic person, it’s just about buying more crap. I don’t know, I am really ambivalent about it. I think it’s a fascinating topic, but I haven’t decided what it is.

And when you think about it as a “yes”, how do you think advertising is different right now in comparison with modern era? Do you agree that advertising in our postmodern times reflects the trend that the signifier no longer corresponds to the signified?

I teach History of Advertising to the undergrads, and it is interesting to see how advertising has evolved, and it goes in little cycles, but it has evolved generally from this very literal form of communication: You know, a boat would come from Europe and the newspapers would say “We have all these things, come and buy them”. Now it’s all about image, and associations, less about what the product does. You know, “This is a car, and it goes X amount of miles per hour”. It’s much more about selling the image, selling sex, or selling status. So I think advertising definetely has become of a more postmodern kind, but we still see a lot of crappy advertising, really basic, and not very exciting. And we can also say that really postmodern advertising isn’t really that effective. Does it actually make people go and buy the product? You know, we can look at it and say, “Oh that Old Spice ad is really enjoyable, I really enjoy that campaign”. And their sales did go up after the campaign, but they cut their prices, they gave a lot of discounts, a lot of deals, a lot of offers, and would that have happened anyway, without the campaign? And would have sale been that high if they didn’t offer discounts?

Do you think it easier/harder for advertisers now to communicate their messages to the consumer?

Definitely harder. There is so much more out there to compete with in terms of messages…

Just because lifestyles have been so crucial in terms of advertising?

Yes, I think it is harder in terms of that people can TiVo through their commercials, consumers are almost immune to it. Kids have grown up with marketing being so prevalent, that it is really easy to tune a lot of it out. But I think there is a plus side to that, which is that consumers are really sophisticated, and if you can appeal to them in a way that they like, maybe you will be more effective. If you treat your consumers respectfully and understand that they are intelligent and smart consumers of media messages, maybe they’ll get it a lot faster.

So, turns out it is really hard to find a definite answer how applicable the concept of postmodernity is to our contemporary culture. There is a lot of ambivalence even among the researchers about it. But there is no doubt that advertising being a part of the culture, is influences by it, and have an influence on it in a reciprocal way. As Martin Peter Davidson talks in the introduction to his book The Consumerist Manifesto: Advertising In Postmodern Times:

[Advertising], "As a commercial practice, it has a history, a culture and a methodology all its own. And as a key-hole on our world, it offers a fabulous and voyeuristic on our cultural values, both good and bad. It is morally ambiguous, an expression of impulse as deep as any in us – the love of trading, hustling, selling and persuading; but at the same time, it is shameless, exploitative and garish. But it is only when armed with a sense of this ambivalence that I think we can get much of a handle on it, by being prepared to explore both aspects of its divided cultural posture.

REFERENCES
Davidson, M.P. (1992) The Consumerist Manifesto: Advertising in postmodern times. London; New York: Routledge.