Are we really mindless victims of consumerism and advertising run amok?
The pontiff certainly thinks so. In his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si,” a blazing indictment of capitalism, Pope Francis proclaimed, “Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism is one example of how the techno-economic paradigm affects individuals.”
The anti-capitalist Noam Chomsky similarly criticizes the advertising industry. Its goal, Chomsky said, is to trap people in consumerism in order to indoctrinate and exert control over them.
Similarly, critics of the advertising industry see marketing companies as omnipotent. They foster the impression that consumers are mindless victims in the advertising industry’s clutches. According to this narrative, advertising companies use their propaganda to convince people to buy meaningless products, with rampant consumption affecting the environment at an unprecedented pace.
To prove the advertising industry’s omnipotence, critics have been repeating some myths for more than half a century. One is based on Vance Packard’s 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders, which generated a great deal of media coverage when it was first published. The book reported one particularly manipulative advertising method, which involved a cinema flashing split-second advertising images onto the screen during film showings. These images appeared and disappeared so quickly that audiences did not even consciously notice them. The press referred to subliminal advertising as the “most hidden, hidden persuasion,” those who used such techniques as “invisible monsters” responsible for “brainwashing.”
Whether the method really worked as claimed or that the alleged success was merely the result of false measurement techniques remains unsubstantiated. Of course, advertising can work, but it is not as omnipotent and insidious as its critics make it out to be. Far more frequently, it is actually ineffective.
Henry Ford is credited with once stating that “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” And David Ogilvy, the great advertising guru, repeatedly ridiculed the advertising campaigns created by other advertising professionals in his book Confessions of an Advertising Man. He accused them of being too inefficient, usually doing nothing to increase sales, and serving to entertain rather than inform. Ford accused other advertisers of being more concerned about increasing their fees than with selling their clients’ products.
Twenty years ago, Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, said that it was difficult even then to launch a product through consumer advertising because people don’t pay as much attention as they did in the past or believe the message. He said he was surprised that clients still believed they were getting a good return on their investment. In January, American advertising experts Bradley Shaprio, Gunter Hitsch, and Anna Tuchmann published a study based on their meticulous, scientific analysis of TV advertising for 288 consumer goods. Their shocking finding: Not only did advertising not pay off for 80% of brands, it even had a negative return on investment.
One might argue that targeted online advertising via social media is far more effective today. Still, there are even doubts about that, too. Just a few years ago, Procter & Gamble and Unilever reduced their online advertising spend by 41% and 59%, respectively. It had no negative impact on their bottom lines.
Put simply, advertising is not as omnipotent as advertising agencies and anti-capitalists would have us believe. The idea of a mindless consumer being seduced by ingenious advertisers into relentlessly buying unnecessary items is silly. If anyone is being cheated, it is more often than not the companies that spend so much money on ineffective advertising and who only join in the advertising game because their competitors are doing so, too.
When I picture a world without advertising for products and services, I think of the dreariness of socialism, where boring posters dominate the streets, proclaiming the propaganda messages of the party. I much prefer advertising under capitalism, which, at its best, has achieved the status of art, as was the case with Andy Warhol, who was himself a commercial artist by profession.
Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist and the author of the book The Rich in Public Opinion.
