Comments on: Fighting for the self: the advertising industry against the educational system

By: crocus

crocus — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:02:29 +0000

I may have touched on this in another post awhile ago, but I think that in some ways the recent move towards environmental consciousness is due to advertising. It is hip and trendy to be green…. unfortunately the other side of the coin is that business is still pushing a product. So while buying organic clothing and energy saving devices are better than the alternatives, it is still a promotion of consumption when really the goal should be to reduce (non-consumption).

Perhaps instead of advertising telling us that “identity [is] dependent upon (and formed by) what and how much [we] consume”, the new fad can be that we are a collection of what and how much we do not consume. However, that would presuppose that the merits of the person (integrity, generosity, meaningful work, etc), could be valued over that new, way-cool, super popular, (fill in the blank).

By: Jones

Jones — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:09:14 +0000

I think Merle has hit upon an imporant point here. I am becoming convinced that we are not cynical enough when we consider the role that corporations play in moulding our lives. A great book is ‘Information War’ by Nancy Snow, which touches briefly on the ideas Merle raises in this post. The thrust of her book is that the exact same techniques used in marketing to promote products and make us believe we need them are being used in many other spheres such as war propaganda (selling America as a desirable product to those who are being bombed). I think the degree to which we have been shaped and are currently being shaped by other interests has not been appreciated, and may largely be unknown. Much of the mind-control is subtle and inconspicuous.
Should we borrow a page from marketing techniques and promote our ideas through subtle, and not so subtle, forms of propaganda?