Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.” – Chuck Palahniuk
I saw this quote from Chuck Palahniuk on my friend’s blog earlier today.
To a certain extent, yes, the core purpose of marketing and advertising is to influence behaviour – and in our capitalist society, that usually means to buy shit we don’t need. In no way, however, should advertising’s role be thought of as limited to just getting people to mindlessly purchase and consume. After all, there are many PSA’s that come in the form of advertising, as well as NGO’s who advertise their services which benefit communities.
Seems to me like advertising agencies have become the scapegoat for the excess and greed in our world today, much like Marilyn Manson was the scapegoat for the Columbine shootings. To blame advertising for people’s desires for luxury seems a little ludicrous to me though. Before the internet, tv, magazines, radio — people have always desired that which they can’t have. Back in the medieval era, didn’t everyone want to be just like royalty? And, surely, that was before tv commercials telling us what we should want, right? The only difference between then and now, of course, is that credit cards and loans make it a whole lot easier to buy shit we don’t need — and can’t actually afford.
In Japan, the problem of young girls prostituting themselves so they can buy Louis Vuitton purses has been an issue for several years now. Surely, that can be blamed on the shiny, glamourous advertisements put out by Louis Vuitton featuring beautiful models doing beautiful things with their monogrammed purses, right? Unlikely. Louis Vuitton advertises in magazine publications whose readerships are comprised of older, professional, affluent people – a group which doesn’t include 14 year old Japanese schoolgirls. So if we can’t blame media and advertising, then what is causing these teens to have sex for money so they can buy designer goods that they probably won’t truly appreciate in the first place? Well, one group in Japan says it’s caused by lack of self-esteem, among many other factors — none of which seem to be related to buying shit we don’t need.
With that said, of course I know advertising amplifies people’s desires for unnecessary luxury goods and services – because, yes, a massage at a spa is as much a luxury as an Hermes handbag – we need to keep in mind that advertising is simply a tool, and that the root cause is from a greater societal issue that places such high importance on face value instead of actual self-worth.
