1. Film notes

2. Mental Environment  Are ads trivial?  The average person in North America sees 1500 per day. (We have to get the fish out of the water).  Ads are so effective because no one believes it affects them—propaganda that is not seen as propaganda.  Advertising is a form of education—so what does it teach us?

4. The three messages in ads:  1) Happiness can be bought  2) Instant solutions exist to our problems  3) Products can fulfill us

5. Happiness can be bought

6. 2) Instant solution exist to our problems

7. Products can fulfill us

8. In the beginning  Before 1920 ads were informational. They assumed people were rational, and therefore made claims based on reason.  This shoe polished gets your shoes cleaner than that one. You were expected to judge the claims being made.

9. Psychology  With the advent of WW1 (1914-1918) people began to study how people could be persuaded. At the same time, psychologists like Freud were demonstrating that people were influenced by unconscious parts of their minds.  People were no longer seen as being only rational. The best way to persuade them to do something (join the army, shoot people, buy hairspray, etc.) is to appeal to their unconscious desires, beliefs, values, etc.  As a result, starting in the 1920s ads began to speak less about products and more about the lives of the consumer.

10. The Image  This means that it doesn't matter if you tune things out—you're still being influenced. It is not about whether what the ad claims is true or false; it is about the image or the aura your brain associates with the ad. This is why images (more direct and less rational than words) are so important.  The Marlboro ad, for instance, does not make any claims about cigarettes at all; instead it uses the symbols of the cowboy so that you will associate a mythology of freedom, independence, and autonomy with those cigarettes.  What information do ads leave out? What do they expect us to simply accept?

12. Mass Production:  With the advent of mass production, more products could be produced than there was demand for. By the 1950s this meant that there was not too little being produced, but too little being consumed. As a result companies began to work to produce consumers. We have more cheese than people who want to buy it, so…

13. The purpose of Advertising  To manufacture discontent: The function of advertisements is to produce discontent in people. Ads tell you that you are not okay, that you need help. Ads create a problem, and then offer a solution.  This is the opposite of therapy, as you are always a few steps (products) away from happiness. You are conditioned to feel like a failure.

14. Beauty  There has always been an ideal of beauty. The Greeks for instance created beautiful statues honouring male and female beauty. There are two differences though:  1) Those images were not mass produced and shot around the world. Essentially, there is only one image of beauty now that people are told to strive for.  2) The sole purpose of the modern ideal of beauty is to sell products. This is achieved by making us feel that although we are not the ideal, by buying that skin cream, we will be closer.

15. Pavlov  if you ring a bell the dog will salivate— association. We are the dogs which the ads make salivate.

16. Objectification  Ads work to turn people into objects. Think of women in beer commercials, deodorant ads, etc. Once you begin to think of something as an object (something not fully human) it is easier to do violence to it. The more we come in contact with objectified representations of people (on ads for instance) the less we value human life.  The image becomes the dominant force because it is more direct, and less filtered. As humans we think in symbols. These symbols are always related to power.

18. What we really want:  1) Good social, family, and romantic lives, 2)Leisure time, 3) Work we can enjoy  Individual autonomy (freedom) Can you buy any of these things? Ads inject values into objects (pop, sneakers, jeans, etc.) so that we associate something we really want with that object. This is where symbolism in ads is used.

19. Consumption  One of the key things ads teach is that it is beautiful (and good) to consume. All ads tell us this on some level.  The problem is that if the entire world consumed the same way we did human civilization would rapidly collapse. Our way of life is not sustainable or accessible to the whole planet.