Consumer driven world of advertising

In 1927 the British novelist Aldous Huxley wrote a brief but remarkable essay entitled "Advertisement". In it Huxley wrote that he had "discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. It is far easier to write ten passably effective sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousands of the uncritical buying public A good advertisement has this in common with drama and oratory, that it must be immediately comprehensible and directly moving No one should be allowed to talk about the mot juste or the polishing of style who has not tried his hand at writing an advertisement of something which the public does not want, but which it must be persuaded into buying."

Advertising is a huge global business. No business can succeed without it, no name products appear on the market without being backed by advertising. Food, clothing, furniture, accessories, cosmetics, books, toys, everything displayed in the store is a result of intensive competition and expensive promotion on the part of each manufacturer to induce the stores to stock and stack his product. Each year billions of dollars are spent in attempts to influence our decisions and to persuade us to spend more.The role that our present-day society holds up to its members is the role of the consumer, and the members of our society are likewise judged by their ability and willingness to play that role. The difference between our present-day society and its immediate predecessor is not as radical as abandoning one role and picking up another instead. In neither of its two stages could modern societies do without its members producing things to be consumed, and members of both societies do, of course, consumer. The consumer of a consumer society, however, is a sharply different creature from the consumer of any other society thus far. The difference is one of emphasis and priorities -- a shift of emphasis that makes an enormous difference to virtually every aspect of society, culture, and individual life.

In our late-modern (Giddens), second-modern (Beck), or post-modern society, pleasure, or happiness if you want, has become one of the main axes of our existence. I say pleasure rather than happiness because the modern concept of happiness seems inspired from the utilitarianism: the maximum of happiness for the maximum of people. There is a modern confusion between joy, well-being and happiness. Our society has pushed the taste for well-being as far as to confuse it with happiness. We multiply the ways of finding the happiness and, paradoxically, it seems further and further away, like if it used these same ways escape. Thus, happiness becomes a ubiquitous obsession of the modern society, a "duty" that all of us have to fulfill.

The consumer society is based on the exacerbation of our desires and needs. The traditional relationship between needs and their satisfaction is then reversed: the promise and hope of satisfaction precedes the need promised to be satisfied and will be always greater than the extant need--yet not too great to preclude the desire for the goods which carry that promise.

As a matter of fact, the promise is all the more attractive the less the need in question is familiar; there is a lot of fun in living through an experience one did not know existed. The excitement of a new and unprecedented sensation--not the greed of acquiring and possessing nor wealth in its material, tangible sense--is the name of the consumer game. Consumers are first and foremost gatherers of sensations; they are collectors of things only in a secondary and derivative sense. As Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen put it, "Desire does not desire satisfaction. To the contrary, desire desires desire." Thus, to increase their capacity for consumption, consumers must never be left to rest. They need to be constantly exposed to new temptations to keep them in the state of perpetual suspicion and steady disaffection. One of the ways to do that is by advertising.

Advertising is, in our natural and cultural space, the most powerful way, by its constancy and its intensity, of spreading the ideology of consumption. It is nothing but a huge machine that manufactures the modern happiness according to the laws of production.

Even if we do not realize that, the main goal of advertising today is not to make us buy certain goods, but to invade our physical and cultural space, the representation sphere, the domain of sings and symbols. Ads for Nike, Calvin Klein, Camel, and Suzuki sell more than products. "Advertising sells values, concepts of love and sexuality, romance and success," critic Jean Kilbourne says. "To a great extent, it tells us who we are and who we should be Advertising teaches us above all to be consumers."

Today, advertising has not only the reason and the willingness to influence our decisions, but also the means to do it. In the United States, for example, advertising is the largest money-making industry; during such events as the Super Bowl, companies pay over two million dollars in return for thirty seconds of air time. Besides, new.

As mentioned earlier a person gets hit with 3000 ad ideas a day. There is of course going to be things that a normal person will see in some of these ads and have a want for. However, advertising is a way for companies to communicate the ideas and products they are selling to the consumer. Can you imagine if there was no advertising at all? How could a company introduce a new product to consumers? They could lay a product in a store and hope people buy it. Of course, it may work for something that looks easy to use and when customers' have seen similar products. What about when it is a new innovative product? Then of course how would they know what it even is if there was no label on the package. Isn't the packaging a form of advertising at the point of sale? As you can see when you view it in simple turns, advertising is needed to sell products. Moving into the 21st century, technology is changing, more companies are popping up, more products are available than ever before, and researchers are developing new ways to advertise each year. Therefore, it is no surprise consumer debt is at the highest level in recent years.

Advertising is increasingly being scrutinized and codes of ethics are being adopted and revamped around the globe.