Advertising is a central form of ideology in capitalist society

"Advertising is the most influential institution of socialisation in modern society" (Jhally,

1990:p.1), thus in order to critically assess the view that advertising is a central form of
ideology in a capitalist society we need to understand the social and economic value of
consumer brands.

Hepworth, Lacoste, Coca-Cola, Disney, Virgin Media, and so on, are all brands that "embraced
batch production which provides the infrastructure of mass consumption" (Nava, Black,
MacRury, and Richards, 1997:p.18). Hepworth's tailors was a product that symbolised
economic wealth and class and was a mass-produced cultural product that "projected an image
of both cultural democracy and collective masculinity" (Miller, 2001:p.221).

The 1950's epoch was the beginning of a consumerist culture, as multi-national corporations
were faced with the competing ideologies of 'supply and demand'. Advertising became a
universal phenomenon as it began to materialise in Hollywood film and television. Thus, we all
became passive consumers. Many advertisements in the mass media convinced viewers that
they needed a life that would go beyond regular as consumers were told that to increase on the
social ladder they needed to buy more than just 'regular' products. The commercials implied that
their, cars, clothes and even their soap could show their social status. Often consumers have the
desire to be upper-class. Thus, the commercials informed the consumers that their products
were worth more from every point of the value of the opportunity. By buying specialised
products, viewers believed that they could full-fill their dreams of increasing their social status.
The question is while people think advertising techniques seem silly, "what leads them to care
about and 'buy into', materialistic values and consumption behaviour?" (Kasser and Kanner,
2003:p.13).

It is the idea that capitalism can satisfy our everyday needs, as it prevents the formation of more
fundamental desires, anything radical, though, poses a threat and must be constrained. We
simply buy things because we believe that "consumerism equates personal happiness"
(Zamponi, 2011:p.14), thus, we have desires for materialistic goods: the iPhone, the smart car,
and designer clothes, but we don't really 'need' these commodities. Clothes are absolutely
essential, but we don't 'need' designer clothes: we want them because they make us feel good.
The power of advertising suggests that we become 'better' with these commodities, the problem
here is that these commodities promote ‘false needs’, thus, commodity aspirations become
universally normative.

Our ability to attract others through our sense of humour, creativity, and knowledge, no longer
exists in a modern consumerist culture. Thus, all of that effort to make someone like you, and
all the status seeking endeavours are now challenged by the economy and challenged into the
goods and services that we buy. So the principle of where we are supposed to display our
mental status exists only through the purchases of consumer goods. The economy tries to
capture our efforts into these goods and services and turn them into our props for making
friends or attracting the opposite sex. The Lynx chocolate man advertisement presents the idea
that sweet is seductive, whilst another, shows a man on a beach being chased by hundreds of
women in their bikini's. The advert ends with the caption: 'spray more get more'. This signifies
that if a man consumes this product he will become a 'babe magnet', thus attracting the opposite
sex. Commodities have therefore become a means for promoting ourselves beyond the talking.
Thus, we use them as a signal. Foundations of this behaviour evolved as we gained a desire for
prestige. Thus, we are always looking for ways to require it. Consumer goods, then, "are ritual
adjuncts, as consumption is a ritual process whose primary function is to make sense of the
inchoate flux of events" (Douglass and Isherwood, 1978:p.65). Thus, if we look at modern
society, we can see how capitalism distorts it, as advertising corporations now know that status
is a psychological anxiety.

"Until the Second World War excessive indulgence in cigarettes was considered un-lady like,
and those who did smoke were expected not to inhale too deeply" (Hughes, 2003:p.116).
Smoking was not associated with the female etiquette, as women were confined to smoke in the
private sphere of their homes. If a woman was to smoke in public, she would be deemed un-
lady like, thus her social status would be at the bottom. Edward Bernays's Torches of Freedom
campaign was the first major advertising success, as a group of young women marched down
New York's Fifth Avenue to light up Lucky Strike cigarettes. It was a celebration of women
overcoming the taboos of the women smoker in the 1920's American, and juxtaposing the act of
smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes with equality and liberation, as the issues were very much at
the forefront of women's rights at the time. Bernays "was the first to take Freud's idea that we
were driven by our unconscious desires, and use them to manipulate the masses, thus, he was
the first to show American corporations how to make people want things they didn't need by
linking their unconscious desires to mass-produced goods" (Gable, 2010:p.108). Bernays found
ways of exploiting the unconscious desires of the consumers innermost feelings by offering
solutions to our repressed desires. Women were told that the cigarette was a symbol of the
penis. Thus, this masculine sexual power was given to the cigarette in order to challenge the
existing male-dominant authority, hence, if a women smoked, it made her feel in control. "The
idea that smoking made women free was irrational, but it made them feel more independent.
This meant that irrelevant objects could become powerful and emotional symbols of how you
wanted to be seen by others" (Curtis, 2002). Advertising should not attempt rational or logical
explanations of a product's usefulness, on the contrary, it should deal entirely on the level of
feelings and emotions. Bernays argued that consumer products should make us feel better by
engaging with hidden and irrational emotions, and so, "manipulation of public opinion was
necessary to overcome the chaos and conflict in society, thus, the manipulation was for our own
good, and the only way that democracy can work efficiently" (Bernays, 2005:p.37-41).
Cigarettes have become a mass-produced commodity for a mass audience, and now, "the
cigarette marks the convergence of corporate capitalism, technology, mass marketing, and in
particular the impact of advertising. These forces induced new modes of individuality and group
behaviour, thus with the rise of consumerism, a new behavioural ethic was defined." (Hughes,
2003:p.118).

Consumer products were now not about their usefulness. Instead, the commodity becomes a
symbol to represent another's identity or uniqueness which then turns a want into an emotional
need. "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture, and people must be trained to
desire and to want new things. Even before the old have been entirely consumed, we must shape
a new mentality in America" (Haring and Douglass, 2012:p.17). This signifies that the novelty
of advertising is no longer about watching someone consume a product, or what the product can
do, but rather it's about "social manipulation creating inferiority and false problems that could
only be resolved by submission to purchase" (Haring and Douglass, 2012:p.12). Having a
celebrity consume a product used to be enough to make anyone buy the product, now,
corporations were selling an idea of a particular lifestyle. Nike is a sports company that doesn't
compete in the commodity market. For Nike, it wasn't about their clothing, their trainers, or the
Nike swoosh. They wanted to sell an idea that was symbolic of the nature of sports and pure
athletic capability, and so, Michael Jordan "became a Nike guy" (Katz, 1994:p.6), a metaphor of
the American dream. "The Nike commercial 'Jordan flight' was replayed often in 1985, as
Michael Jordan became more famous as Air Jordan: the Nike guy who could fly" (Katz,
1994:p.7). Nike was selling a brand that presented the consumer with the idea of invincibility,
and a lifestyle of athletic capability. Thus, if you purchased a Nike product, you would become
a Nike kind of person like Michael Jordan. Multi-national corporations were selling a product
by connecting a belief, or action to the product: the community was used to sell Starbucks,
revolution and the idea of doing things differently was used to sell Apple, and peace and love
were used to sell Coca Cola. These American brands became powerful because "they
understood that a brand wasn't just a mascot or a catchphrase or a picture printed on the label of
the company's product: the company as a whole could have a brand identity or a corporate
consciousness" (Klein, 2000:p.7). What advertising did was think about what the consumers
were thinking and experiencing whilst consuming the product. When car companies advertised
to a younger generation of drivers they discovered that it wasn't the act of driving that
fascinated them, but more to do with the act of listening to music, going to the drive-in's, and
spending time with their friends. Thus "branding was not just a matter of adding value to a
product. It was about thirstily soaking up cultural ideas and iconography that their brands could
reflect by projecting these ideas and images back to the culture as extensions of their brands"
(Klein, 2000:p.29). Car commercials, then, would show a group of teenagers driving a car
whilst listening to a house beat, at the drive-in, or signing along to a cheesy pop song. The idea
was that you consuming the product, was being sold back to you.

Theodor Adorno argued that cultural corporations "manipulated the masses, as popular culture
was identified as a reason why people become passive because the easy pleasures available
through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content" (Adorno and
Horkheimer, 2002:p.63-94). Popular culture may seem to offer the freedom of choice in aid of
self-expression, but for Adorno, this is an ideological illusion: a phenomenon he terms pseudo-
individualisation. Whilst is consuming products, like buying a new outfit, for instance, we enjoy
the feeling that we are finding self-expression for our own individual emotions. However, we
are merely imitating the ideas and lifestyles from someone else, hence, why we are vulnerable
to manipulation. Thus, the power of advertising plays on our insecurities, fears, and anxieties.
Douglas and Isherwood propose that "goods are neutral, their uses are social" (Chan,
2010:p.248), suggesting that cultural products can be used build bridges or fences between
social relationships as they can be used to make an individual statement about identity or to
suggest that you're the same as everyone else for social and cultural acceptance, as it "seeks to
give shape and substance to dominant social meanings to anchor social relationships" (Jhally,
1990:p.7).

"High levels of consumption are within reach of even the average person living in Western
society" (Kasser and Kanner, 2003:p.11). This suggests that the promise of choice no longer
exists, as advertising is hard to ignore because of its ubiquitously. American culture is a global
phenomenon, and our normal day-to-day experiences are bombarded with advertisements:
public transport, newspapers, radio, television, the sidewalk, and even in public toilets. Thus,
there is just "no escaping the fact we live in a culture of consumption" (Kasser and Kanner,
2003:p.3). Everywhere we go we are influenced by advertisements that have an ideological
message to persuades us to 'buy mass-produced commodities. It is clear that our capitalist
society is shaping our culture, and identity, as "there is no aspect of our lives that isn't being
used in the theatre of the brand" (Klein, 2003:p.8).

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer looked at how culture becomes commodified using
Marx's idea of use 'value and exchange value'. "Exchange value refers to the money that a
commodity can command to on the market, whilst use value refers to the usefulness of that
commodity to the consumer" (Jones, 2009:p.12). For Marx in a capitalist society, "exchange
value will always dominate" (Strinati, 2004:p.51) because the cost of things will always
dominate people's real everyday needs. For Adorno, "the real secret of success is the mere
reflection of what one pays in the market for the product, as the consumer venerates the price"
(Strinati, 2004:p.50). For instance, we pay good money for a concert ticket because this is how
we know it will be a good concert. Therefore, culture is tainted by capitalism, hence, why we
become "victims of commodity fetishism: whereby social relations and cultural appreciations
are objects in terms of money" (Jones, 2009:p.12).

The capitalist and consumerist society are full of dominant ideologies which oppress the
working class, as third-world countries are exploited by businesses in the wealthy capitalist
society for maximum profit and little wage. "Nike exploited the working class and paid them no
more than six cents an hour" (Klein, 2000:p.368). Thus, capitalism saw the working class as a
'free' agent. When we pick up a pair of Nike shoes we have the story of globalisation in our
hand but alienated by productive labour, we only create an image of what looks good and never
question who made it. Multi-national corporations go to poverty striking countries because
workers will sell their labour for a starvation wage. This signifies that the means of production
do not allow them to sustain life, thus by exploiting the consumer they increase their profit.
Marx could not understand why the working class were accepting their oppression, and why
people were committing to jobs, they hate so that they could buy things they didn't need. Thus,
consumers of popular culture are brainwashed by the elite ruling classes into conforming to
hegemonic ideologies, as we are then led into a state of false class consciousness. "Advertising
is thus ideological in obscuring economic inequality at the level of production by creating
images of free and equal consumption" (Barker, 2008:p.69).
Advertising is ideological in its approach. Thus, it often questions whether or not it is ethically
justifiable to be so pretentious, and thought to provoke. By manipulating the masses, it raises
issues within society and becomes a central form of discussion and cultural debate. "Every time
we spend money we are casting a vote for what kind of world we want" (Vierck and Hodges,
2005:p.152), thus by buying branded products we become conformists of a society that
perpetuates the ideologies of sweatshop labour, and the myths that are associated with prestige
and identity for social and cultural acceptance. In living in this capitalist society, one might
wonder why we have this culture and why we conform to it. "An economist would say that a
culture of consumption is a necessary outgrowth of the advanced capitalistic economic system
under which most westerners live, as these systems require the production and purchase of the
ever-increasing amount of goods" (Kasser and Kanner, 2003:p.12). Market liberalists are firm
believers in capitalism and democracy as on ongoing method of providing personal freedom to
citizens to encourage individualism. Thus, they believe in economic pluralism, in that diverse
competition makes a better economic system. All we want is the right to be the creator of our
own destiny and democracy, but with popular culture being at the centre of ideology and
cultural forms, it becomes difficult to integrate outside of the existing social order.