In their book practices of looking, Sturkin and Cartwright claim that “it is

an essential element of advertising that it promises to us an abstract world

which we will never experience”. This assertion is based on the idea that
advertising creates a kind of fantasy world which promises to fill the void
in our lives as we endlessly search for completion. Indeed the term
advertising denotes more than merely conspicuous information presented
through various media’s with the intent to sell. Today the science and art
of advertising involves a complex dance of corporate branding and
marketing. These new adjuncts to modern advertising don’t just sell
products but sell ideas, dreams, ideologies, and desires. Much of these
‘thought products’ are indeed, abstractions of actual corporate products
and practises. The images they produce are not realistic depictions of the
truth, but are often in complete contradiction to the real world. This is
because corporations such as Shell and Nike use the ancient and
somewhat abstract art of ‘branding’ to lure and manipulate their
customers and potential customers.

The concept of branding isn’t new, humans have used various methods of
brandings since our tribal beginnings. In Scotland people used fabric
designs to identify their various clans, while in Japan, Samurai families
used clan insignias on flags, uniforms and formal letters. Our history is
rich with the use of symbols and emblems to create a means in which
people can identify with particular groups within a society. In these
examples branding isn’t abstract; it is a very real and effective way for
groups in a culture to make identifications, which was very useful in
activities such as war. However modern corporate branding used in
advertising is somewhat a different story, brands have basically become
‘famous products’, and rarely used to signify real cultural connections.
Rather we find ourselves in an “ad-filled, media-created contemporary
mindscape” (Davidson 1992, P.198). No ‘reality’ other than appearances
where images are not related to experiences but to brands.

The main role of advertising is to turn a product/commodity into a brand.

This magical transformation from product into brand takes place through
the process of signification. This is where ads assign chosen meanings to
various products, just as we assign certain meanings to particular words.
The point is to associate the product with meanings that are desirable to a
particular target audience and create brand value, and in a world of
competing brands, brand status also becomes very important. Advertising
does this via two ancient traditions: the language of rhetoric and the
language of symbols. Symbols such as the sun are very powerful, Freud
refers to the language of symbols as the language of the soul (Freud 1953,
p28). They speak directly to and from the unconscious. Freud also
discusses how much of our desires spring from the unconscious, while
modern ‘mem’ theory suggests that all decisions are also processed in the
unconscious. Hence in our modern ‘hyperreality’ (Davidson 1992, P.198)
it is our minds that are being branded. To understand the impact this has
on the evolving and ‘socially constructed self’ (Crockcroft 1992, P.23) let
us consider Lecan’s psychological theory.

The theory states that the moment a child discovers itself (ie. in a mirror)
as a whole unity it also loses itself as a whole unity. The child wholeness
is abstracted by the very thoughts it uses to identify itself. He argues that
from this stage on our identity will always be defined by some other and
that completion of our identity never occurs because our circle of desire
which looks outwards never meeting itself (Shirato & Yell 1996, P.188).
Supposing this theory is true, if we would look at the mirror of
advertising the first thing advertising tells us via its very address is that
regardless of wealth or race we all share the same common status as
consumers. This “consumerist address imprisons the subjectivity it
projects” into an abstract world where all our needs and desires have a
commodity to satisfy them (Wernick 1991, P.35).

For example in the Coca-Cola ‘Pump’ ad, (appendix) bottled water has
been branded into ‘Pump’. It has been signified with happiness and fun
etc, hence re-coded into a desirable ‘psycho-ideological’ sign (Wernick
1991, P.30). What this does is prevent us from just looking at a picture of
water and unconsciously relate water to its essential functions in. Instead,
because of its consumerist address, we now associate water as something
to be purchased.
The ad’s caption, ‘can’t keep still water’ is somewhat ironic considering
that the happiness conveyed in the ad is also still. The link between the
ideological image in the controlled photo connected to the brand ‘Pump’,
and real happiness is abstract and fictitious. However what happens to
this abstract world, when brands such as Nike attempt to validate the
ideological signs associated with their brand by becoming a matter of
cultural fact.

Much of Nike’s success can be proportional to its success in

associating/signifying its brand or with concepts surrounding ‘Pure
Sports’ athleticism, perseverance, transcendence and Graeco-Roman
ideals of the perfect human form (Klein 2000, P.51). Nike paid millions
to sports stars such as Michael Jorden wear and endorse their products
and hence turn abstract associations into a kind of cultural fact. This
resulted in their ability to turn a $20 basketball shoe (what it cost Nike to
produce) into a $150 status symbol. Nevertheless, in doing this Nike
rather than reflecting the real world has managed to abstract our reality
further. Now people have become brands and brands have become culture
(Klein 2000 p21). All of which allow ads to wriggle out of the true/false
dichotomy by posing as games, things we participate in rather than
interrogate (Davidson 1992, P.155). Things we should we interrogating
when considering that thousands of both adults and children were and
still are payed below a living wage to manufacture various Nike products
in third world countries, yet pays sports stars in excess or $20 million per
year.

Nevertheless, in a recent ad ‘Nike Women’ (appendix) Nike is now

signifying its brand with spiritual disciplines such as Ashtanga Yoga. The
ad is predominantly white the denotative meaning relates to purity and
spiritualism. The ad maintains some of its traditional fetishes with a slim
waste line and taunt buttocks taking a central position in the ad. The four
gorgeous women depicted in the ad are nothing less than a picture
perfect. Emphasis on the 6am class adds a disciplined dimension to these
four angles in serine poses. They offer an ideal mirror image for any
young lady adapting to the ‘new age’ where one not only desires a perfect
body but an enlightened mind. The Nike corporation that promotes
commercialism, materialism and self-objectification, to signify its brand
with purity and spiritualism, brings Nike’s advertising campaign to a
contradictory climax. It also shows how advertising doesn’t always
mirror how people are acting or in Nikes case paid to act, but mirrors how
they are dreaming” (Leiss, Kline and Jhally 1990, P.200). This is
exemplified in marketing trends that show that more people are dreaming
about a world that cares for the environment and a world that encourages
ethical and spiritual growth. Corporations such as Shell are quick to
create such associations with their logo if it means an increase in profits
(A logo is the brand of a company/corporation, rather than a brand for a
specific product or product line).

Firstly we need to consider that Shell is responsible for huge amounts of

environmental degradation like most multinational oil corporations. It has
also been indirectly responsible for horrific crimes against humanity,
such as those which occered in 1995, when African ‘Ogoni’ people were
slaughtered for protesting against the Shell’s drilling practises that were
polluting their village. In 1997 the U’wa people of the Columbian Andes
threatened mass suicide if shell went ahead with proposed drilling plans
(Klein 2000, P.385). Shell’s practises regarding the disposal of deep-sea
oil rigs was exposed by Greenpeace a few years back and these are just a
few of the things that have actually been brought to the public’s attention.

Interestingly though Shell’s recent advertising campaign associates itself

through clever imagery and rhetoric with a very different reality. In
Shell’s year 2000 ad ‘cloud the issue or clear the air” (refer to appendix)
they signify their logo with clear air and a rich blue sky. They mention
that they claim to be committed to sustainable development,
environmental care and social responsibility. In 2002 they continued a
simular format in their ad ‘wish upon a star or make a dream come true’.
This time their emphasis is to signify their Logo with life’s most
powerful and profound symbol, the sun. Shell becomes the light of the
world, committed to renewable energy, despite the fact that Shell’s
primary business is in selling unrenewable energy sources. Shell’s current
television ad appears at first to be a documentary about an
environmentalist, who as it turns out is actually a Shell employee. Their
advertising campaign prodominantly targets investors and shall holders,
its intent is to maintain and increase their economic value, via their
corporate image.

We live in a world in which a corporation such as Shell can transform

their corporate image and influence the way they are represented in our
minds. This indeed supports Vance Packard concerns in 1957 when he
said “the manipulating being attempted is disquieting, particularly when
viewed as a portent of what may be ahead on a more intensive and
effective scale.” He uses the term ‘professional persuaders’ to identify
those whom search for more effective ways to sell us their products,
ideas, attitudes, goals and states of mind. The ‘efforts being made to
influence our habits, our purchasing decisions and our thought processes’
that Packard identified in the 50’s have only continued in sophistication
(Packard 1981, P.11). Some advertising agency use facilities such as
moisture detectors, which they use to measure children’s subconscious
responses to food advertising (Hunter 2002, P.16). It is likely that future
children’s only means to identify themselves and their desires, will be in
only relation to some brand or advertising image.

The underlying politics/ideologies in advertising and consumerism have

already become so unconsciously familiar to us, a game, rather than a
tragic reality, that it is very difficult separate our own ideologies and
theirs. The advertises address to us as mere consumers has be so
successful, that few can function outside of this paradigm. As soon as an
aware voice within the crowd screams out I won’t support greedy profit
driven corporations, the corporations are all ready prepared to launch the
next campaign in which they are able to represent themselves as caring,
sharing and service orientated. This has disabled true hegemonic
interrelationships because “It is no longer clear what consumer dissent is
in opposition to” p195). Psychological theories, critical analysis’s of how
images transmit power, and exposure of unethical corporate practises
only seem to supply advertising agencies with a more sophisticated
knowledge of how to abstract reality for their own devices.

The subject-position of those who inhabit our abstract postmodern world

is primarily that of aspirational consumers. (paraphrase p203)

“In the comodification of language and culture, objects and meanings are
torn free of their original referents and their meaning become a specticle
open to almost infinite translation.”p200

“Will we reject advertising in favour of a lifestyle that isn’t glamorous,

instantly gratifying, obsessed with bigger, better and more. Consumption
is now the basic mode for all activity in our society, not reading not
using, not appreciating, not participating, not producing but consuming. It
is now how we appropriate the world around us.” P203

Hunter, B.T (2002) Marketing food to kids: using fun to sell; the appeal
of crazy colours, flavours and more. Consumer’s Research Magazine,
March v85 i3 p16.

Freud, S (1953) The interpretation of dreams. Starchy (Ed.) Vol 4.

London: Hogarth.

Leiss, Kline, Jhally (1990) Social Communication in Advertising.

London: Routledge.

Klein, N (2000) No logo : no space, no choice, no jobs. London :

Flamingo.

Robert, C (1992) Persuading people : an introduction to rhetoric.

Basingstoke : Macmillan.

Bois, J.S (1973) The art of awareness : a textbook on general semantics

and epistemics. Dubuque, Iowa : W. C. Brown Co.
 Wernick, A (1991) Promotional culture : advertising, ideology and
symbolic expression. London : SAGE.

Packard,V (1981) The hidden persuaders. Harmondsworth : Penguin.

Shirato, T & Yell, S (1996) Communication & Cultural Literacy: An

Introduction. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Williamson, J (1978) Decoding advertisements : ideology and meaning in

advertising. London : Calder and Boyars.

Davidson, M (1992) The consumerist manifesto : advertising in

postmodern times. London ; New York : Routledge, 1992.
“our culture is full of potential and contested meaning; so advertising co-
opts the ones it wants and makes anything offering you meaning without
consumer gradification redundant and boring.”p201
misleading, deceitful, exploitative, demeaning, irritating and wasteful.
Yet it has been able to shrug these things off, as the anti-enttrepreneurial
elite that no one listens to.p195 Marxism, psychoanalysis and feminism
use to be able to define more clearly the manipulations various
hegemonies at work.

Questioning foundations : truth/subjectivity/culture / edited by Hugh J.S.

New York : Routledge, 1993
As Jean Baudrillard puts it “In What you see is what you get… Once
seduced we are in the postmodern world of pure floating images –
hyperreality… first images reflected reality, but now the images bear no
relation to any reality.” p198-.