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.

Advertising and Postmodernity

 

Nowadays we here the word "postmodern" everywhere. It sort of became a way of thinking about and dealing with things. And advertising has been influenced by that in the first part. But what is it exactly? A philosophy? A stage of social development? New cultural paradigm?

Wiki explains postmodernism (also know as Po-Mo) is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. (And by the way Wiki itself seems to be a very postmodern thing - knowledge accumulated on an openly-editable basis).

Postmodernism is a whole yet scattered concept, and it is considered to be rooting from the DaDaism movement in the 1920s, and later incorporate the ideas of Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson and others. Let's look at the postmodernism categories described by Frederic Jameson in his work Postmodernism and Consumer Society and then analyze how these notions may influence advertising.

• "the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture" (Jameson, n.d.).
• Pastiche and parody of multiple styles: old forms of "content" become mere "styles"
• stylistic masks, image styles, without present content: the meaning is in the mimicry
• "in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum" (Jameson, n.d.).
• No individualism or individual style, voice, expressive identity. All signifiers circulate and recirculate prior and existing images and styles.
• The postmodern in advertising: attempts to provide illusions of individualism (ads for jeans, cars, etc.) through images that define possible subject positions or create desired positions (being the one who's cool, hip, sexy, desirable, sophisticated...).
• "our advertising...is fed by postmodernism in all the arts and is inconceivable without it" (Jameson, n.d.)
• Po-Mo as late capitalism: transnational capitalism without borders, only networks and info flows.

So based on the categories and ideas described by Jameson, I want to try to analyze how is advertising different if viewed within the framework of postmodernism, and what features of Po-Mo it can use to make the messages more effective.

Postmodernism believes that the world is mediated by and relies upon consumption. And consumer society is based on the principle that people build their identities and even make political choices by purchasing goods. Advertising unarguably plays a huge role here creating (or supporting) the desire to do so. Still, however, the question is how to make it relevant in such a diverse world? Is it harder to break through clutter of a postmodern world?

REFERENCES

Irvine, M. (2009) Approaches to Po-Mo. In The Po-Mo page: Postmodern, Postmodernism, Postmodernity. 

Jameson, F. (n.d.). Postmodernism and consumer society. In Athenaeum library of philosophy. Retrieved from http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/jameson_postmodernism_consumer.htm

Retrieved form http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html

Postmodernism. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved rom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism.

86 TV's, Or What Is It All About

Advertising is a powerful tool and is everyday life.
It is magic, and it is a giant money machine.
It is annoying, charming, inspiring - at the same time.
It is a monster.
It makes you smile.
It mesmerizes and drives you nuts.



But no matter what we think of it, it is an inseparable part of our culture. And culture, in turn, is embedded in all the advertisements we see, hear and encounter.


In this blog I want to look at how people perceive advertising, how these perceptions are affected by our cultural norms, values and how these attitudes influence advertising effectiveness. 



The name comes from a song by Esthetic Education and is supposed to symbolize the power of advertising and how we buy into it. If we want to. Or when it wants us too?
The actual web address is taken from a song by I Am Kloot - 86 TV's - like 86 mirrors we look in every day to see millions reflections of ourselves. It is meant to refer to the ubiquity of advertising in our life, and all the clutter we go through.


The intricate relationship between advertising and culture - this ephemeral symbiotic twist in the middle of postmodern chaos is the question I am going to investigate.