Advertising is good for the 'humanity?

Résumé du document

Advertising executives and branding gurus have perfectly understood the power of a man's beliefs, and to what extent his eyes, misled by persuasive arguments or suggestive images, can alter the perception of what stands in front of him. From a mere plasma screen to a symbol of social position, from a sophisticated MP3-Player to a token of 'coolness', or from a luxury watch to a sign of virility, it seems that advertisement can turn anything we look at into something much brighter and meaningful. In a world full of undistinguishable products, what could be more important than giving its leading toothpaste a real tangible personality?

Extraits

[...] The advertising frenzy is arguably building lie as a central pillar of our society. Needless to say that it is morally condemnable, but it is above all giving people a wrong sense of the way the world goes. Advertising is drawing a reversed image of the companies' atmosphere, turning them from greedy faceless entities to big shiny familiar and friendly groupings, and so letting naïve people enter defenseless and unprepared the labor market. Thus, going through the flow of warm and reassuring images and facing the grimmer reality of everyday life in a giant company seem to have led 35 France Telecom employees to commit suicide between 2008 and 2009. [...]

[...] On the contrary, I am firmly convinced that the companies of the second type are responsible for the economic downturn, precisely because of their full-advertisement policies. Their whole ad production is aimed at making people believe they absolutely need these leather gloves, this sport car and this huge loft at Central Park that they have to get them at all costs, because they are signs of a successful life. The trick is that these wonderful items are sold with a soul, which is named a in marketing vocabulary, and this soul has a price, a non-negligible price. [...]

[...] For all this compelling frenzy, should we definitely be satisfied with this dogma of the almighty marketing? To say the least, this remains to be seen As Naomi Klein wrote in her logo” book, what is to be drawn from the 1993 Marlboro Friday is definitely not the brands' brush with death but the fundamental distinction between two types of companies: those which provide everyone with the cheapest good because their business is about selling people what they need to live decently, and those which provide their consumers with the pleasure of buying something that increasingly looks like a “cultural” good, and is therefore much more expensive, if maybe less essential. [...]

[...] Invading every wall, every corner of every street around the planet (except probably in North Korea and Iran) being filled with ads for Coca-cola or MacDonald's, advertisements are suffusing every aspect of our life: public washrooms, piece of fruits and maybe even soon the NASA space station. We are surrounded by an ever-increasing clutter which is nurtured by the desperate attempts of the advertising executives to break through and to catch a little of our attention in the midst of the slogan storm. [...]

[...] Advertising executives create every single day new absolutely necessary needs, so that we can only feel satisfied after buying these brand new products. They shape our dreams, and by doing so they not only lie to us about the reality that surrounds us, but ultimately they lie about ourselves, attempting desperately to convince us that all we want is this 150 $ Levi's jean. As a conclusion, advertising is undoubtedly one of the most important sectors of our economy, and this cannot be considered as a great achievement for humanity, to the extent that it twists our economy, damages our environment and undermines our lucidity. [...]