In this story there are no heroes or villains, just people
who believe they can buy happiness, and advertisers who
support this belief. Consumerism is one of religion's
modern replacements, and, like religion, it actively
encourages, then exploits, dissatisfaction with everyday
reality.
Index to article sections:
History
It is possible to examine nearly any aspect of modern
society — the conduct of war, government, marriage,
education — and find a similar practice, an earlier
version, in history. In most cases, the seeds of the
present can be seen in the past. But this is not true for
consumerism, for consumerism has no parallel in early human
societies.
The closest thing to consumerism — and this is
offered only as a point of reference, not comparison —
is the practice of barter. In barter, two or more
individuals met and exchanged what they had for what they
didn't have. Advertising either didn't exist or was very
primitive, and there was no hierarchy — no natural
division between producers and consumers, because everyone
was both a producer and a consumer.
The motivation for barter was also much more basic —
the point was to avoid being dead. It was very
straightforward — you could trade your surplus of corn
for some arrowheads, or for the services of a mercenary to
guard your cornfield, or simply to avoid an untimely death.
You could instead keep the corn and hope no one attacked
your field, but over time it may have come to you that
hiring a mercenary, or owning some arrowheads, would
increase the amount of corn you actually kept for more than
a few days.
The Role of Surplus
The key change that separates modern from traditional
societies is the concept of surplus, a condition in which
there is more than enough of everything to sustain the
lives of all the members of a society. As it happens,
people are not designed to cope with surplus. We have many,
many strategies to deal with perpetual deficit, some
learned, some congenital, but surplus bewilders us.
As just one example, many Americans are overweight because
we sit down to eat and — for reasons buried in our
collective past — expect to see no more food for a
week or more. Therefore, we eat much more than we should,
if only our perceptions were based on current reality.
Three hours later, we sit down and repeat the performance.
But we never adjust to the surplus, leading many
researchers to the conclusion that deficit behaviors are
very deeply rooted in our characters and are not easily
modified by experience.
This condition — a world of surplus, occupied by
people programmed for deficit — is a perfect setting
for modern consumerism. Modern consumerism is based on the
triple premise that:
-
luxuries are actually needs,
-
what you already have is not satisfactory, and
-
no product is so basic that advertising is superfluous.
Reactive and Proactive Consumerism
I define consumerism as
the voluntary suspension of disbelief in the value of
material goods
. Suspension of disbelief is desirable when viewing a
fantasy world such as a stage play or motion picture, and
it is also necessary in modern shopping, and for exactly
the same reason — the things on display cannot
meaningfully be compared with reality.
Consumerism is itself divided into two subcategories,
reactive consumerism and proactive consumerism. Reactive
consumerism (hereinafter RC) awaits a public demand for a
product and, no matter how absurd the demand, fills it.
Proactive consumerism (hereinafter PC) uses advertising to
create markets for products that have no natural market.
Before going on, I must add that PC isn't always as
parasitic as it might sound on first hearing. Sometimes a
perceived need is created out of nowhere, and this
engineered need leads to a societal advance — a
self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. For example,
education is a form of PC — it appears to convey
knowledge, when in fact its real purpose is to create a
lifelong taste for knowledge. But to the original target
audience of young people (and, sadly, to some of their
parents), the "product" being offered has no
obvious purpose — an acquired taste for ideas makes
young people nearly uncontrollable, rebellious, doubtful of
received wisdom. Only later in life does this fondness for
ideas bear fruit, at a time (in the brief and brittle
lifecycle of the average human brain) when it would be
nearly impossible to instill the taste anew.
RC can exist in times of deficit, because it only springs
to life in response to voiced demand. But PC, the practice
of creating a market and then serving it, can only exist in
times of surplus. In RC, advertising is an adjunct, a
facilitation of the basic process of producing and
distributing goods. In PC, advertising
is
the process — everything else depends on it.
The Big Lie
There is one thing you absolutely must know about modern
advertising. No matter how true any single advertisement
is, modern advertising itself, taken as a whole, tells a
lie — that you need the thing being advertised. It is
a lie because consumer goods of real value do not need to
be advertised — such goods are part of a natural
market that flows "beneath" the PC marketplace,
although as time passes these basic necessities represent a
shrinking percentage of the total flow of goods.
When I was young, if you wanted a candy bar and you could
afford a good one, you bought a Hershey's Bar (as they were
called when I was a child), because they were known to be
the best. But, whatever the source of this perception of
quality, it certainly was not because of advertising,
because Hershey Chocolate Company did not advertise before
1970. They were the best, everyone knew it, why waste the
company's money asserting the obvious? Founder Milton
Hershey said, "Give them quality. That's the best
advertising in the world."
By 1970, the world had changed, and products of obvious
value were being advertised alongside goods of no intrinsic
worth, thus leveling the playing field and making it
difficult to distinguish goods of actual worth from
make-believe goods designed to fill make-believe needs. And
in that year the Hershey Company began to advertise.
To put this another way, modern advertising spends vast
sums trying to make the buying public aware of products
that it also portrays as a necessity of life — an
obvious contradiction. After all, how could our loyal
consumer have survived to the present moment without this
crucial product, to be in a position to witness its
advertising?
The truth is, by the time an advertisement fills a time
slot on your television set, or plays on the radio, or
appears in print in your newspaper, chances are you already
have all you need to live comfortably
. The global purpose of modern advertising is to make you
forget this fact.
Advertising does this in two ways:
-
By creating an atmosphere of dissatisfaction with
everything not purchasable, or already purchased. More on
dissatisfaction
here
.
-
By telling lies, appealing lies, lies nearly everyone wants
to hear.
All the little lies support the big lie — that no
product is so valuable that advertising has no purpose.
The Little Lies
Here are some examples of the minor lies that are included
in advertising to support the big lie:
-
"New!" How can something be simultaneously new
and absolutely essential to survival? Or, given the thesis
that new is better, the advertiser should honestly list the
ways that the old new product failed us, thus setting the
stage for inevitable disenchantment with the new new
product.
-
"An exclusive offer!" This nationally televised,
prime-time advertisement excludes only the dead, and those
too penniless from responding to previous exclusive offers.
-
"It costs more, but it is worth it." By
implication, things that cost more are worth more, and by
negation, things that have no price also have no value.
This is an appeal to reject the entire natural world out of
hand.
-
"You deserve the best." A questionable premise,
one intended to cloud your mind and distract you from the
more practical question of whether you can afford the best,
or whether the product is in fact the best.
-
"Everybody has one of these." Except you. Yes
— we spent 30 million dollars on a national
advertising campaign to reach the last holdout — you.
Now buy our $5.95 product and redeem our investment.
-
"Protect your children with
" A pitch often
seen on television. Ironically, television itself threatens
your children in ways too numerous to list. There is no
advertisement telling you to protect your children from TV
itself. I should add that, taken as a whole, the Internet
is probably worse.
-
"Want to know what women really like?" ad
infinitum. This class of advertising exploits the fact that
men and women either do not talk to each other, or, if they
do, do not understand what the other person is saying. As
to the latter, when a man says, "I love your youthful
appearance and spirit," he does not add, "When
your youthful appearance wears off, your spirit by itself
won't be able to sustain our relationship." When a
woman says, "I treasure your moments of sensitivity
and vulnerability," she does not add, "but you
must never appear weak or indecisive. You sort it out
— you're a man." These examples show we are so
completely saturated by the language of advertising with a
sexual angle, that we no longer remember how to speak to
each other in a way that doesn't mimic advertising. And we
are progressively less likely to talk to each other to sort
out reality — we expect the advertisers to tell us
what the other sex wants. Instead, and inevitably, we only
discover what the advertiser wants.
-
"This car is not for everyone." But it certainly
is for the 98% of the male car-buying public our team of
psychologists has identified as possessing the conceit that
they are unique. You are entirely unique in the world, yet
you are going to line up and choose one of the three colors
this car is available in, then drive this cookie-cutter
symbol of your uniqueness off into the sunset.
-
"I'm not a doctor, but I play one on television."
I didn't make this up. This opening pitch was followed by
an endorsement for a patent medicine. This particular
example shows the advertisers' contempt for the consumer's
intelligence, a contempt almost always justified by
subsequent events.
Products that require Products of Their Own
Once advertising has delivered the product into your hands,
other aspects of consumerism then come into play. These
aspects rely on connections between products, real and
imagined. Here are some examples:
"Protect your investment in A with B."
Examples abound — I will use insurance. The entire
insurance industry is based on a lie — that purchasing
insurance is a better strategy than keeping your money and
personally replacing the insured item in the event of loss.
The insurance schema on its surface is very simple —
you pay premiums to the insurance company, in exchange for
which the insurance company agrees to replace your property
in the event of loss.
The dirty secret of the insurance business is that, on
average, the insurance company has collected much more than
the value of the insured property by the time it pays a
claim. This is called "making a profit," a trait
considered desirable in a company, and insurance companies
are very profitable. The profit comes from two sources:
-
Your premium payments, and
-
The return on the investments made, with your money, by the
insurance company.
Instead of paying the insurance premiums, you could invest
the money as the insurance company does, and simply pay to
replace the valued item in the event of a loss. On average,
you would come out very far ahead using this strategy.
There are two categories of consumers for which this
strategy won't work:
-
People who can't actually afford the insured item, who are
purchasing with borrowed money (these individuals are
usually required by the lender to carry insurance), and
-
People who slept through economics in school.
But most consumers don't know this basic truth about the
insurance business. Most people think buying insurance is a
smart investment, the action of a mature, responsible
person. It isn't — the only time insurance can be
justified is if you are buying something you can't afford
to replace, and then only when it is required of you. This
discussion doesn't apply to liability insurance, where the
potential losses are quite beyond imagining, and only the
wealthiest individuals can afford to pay direct costs.
"A implies B."
Virtually all consumer products, above a rudimentary level
of complexity, have accessories and
"enhancements." One can easily imagine a graph of
products with the simplest (fewest accessories) on the left
and the most complex (most accessories) at the right.
At the very left of our imaginary graph is a screwdriver.
Not a Phillips screwdriver, just a plain old-fashioned
straight-slot screwdriver. If you buy one of these
carefully, you will have it decades from now. Your children
will inherit it from you. From the standpoint of marketing,
this is a nightmare — any number of advertising
executives start up from their pillows in terror, having
just imagined that screwdriver in reliable service over
years and years, its original brand name slowly wearing off.
The reason I didn't choose a Phillips screwdriver for my
example is because as time passes there are more and more
"standard" Phillips screw head sizes, so even
though a screwdriver is very basic, in this case you can
find yourself looking for a perfect fit for a Phillips
screw virtually forever. This assures our ad executive a
sound sleep. By contrast, even if you wear out the tip of a
standard screwdriver, you can recreate it at home with a
file (okay, one possible accessory).
At the middle of our graph, let's put a car. A car is a
virtual playground for accessories. There is nothing that
someone, somewhere, hasn't considered adding to a car. Wet
bars. Saunas and hot tubs. There is even a car product
whose purpose I haven't been able to figure out. I don't
dare name it (since I intend to ridicule it), but it is
described as "satisfying" and it comes in a spray
can. It has something to do with pretending your car is
shinier and newer than it is. In any event, I am always
suspicious of advertising where the purpose of the product
is left out and the emotional effect of its use is
described instead.
Even the most basic car, a car you might try to hide from
your friends, has some accessories — certainly plastic
floor protectors. Once I looked into a car at a dealership
and saw the usual floor protectors, and over the protectors
I spied a plastic sheet. As I gazed, I wondered if some
demented consumer might allow the sheet to wear completely
through, thus jeopardizing the plastic floor protectors
— for shame!
At the right of our graph — remember, this is supposed
to be the most accessorizable thing imaginable — let's
put marriage. Some may object that marriage, strictly
speaking, isn't a consumer item in the same sense as a
house or car. But it is! Modern marriage is a packaged,
advertised, promoted consumer item, in fact in some ways it
is the prototype for all other consumer items, also it has
the largest "tree" of dependent accessories and
potential replacement items — including the marriage
partner — of any product.
Marriage has the advantage that there is an innate desire
for the product built into the buying public, therefore
promoting it only makes people go crazier. And if a
particular marriage fails to please, the average consumer
will gullibly listen to promoters' claims that it was that
particular marriage, not marriage itself, that was at
fault. This degree of gullibility is present to a degree
not seen in any other product except religion.
Now imagine our completed graph, which even the Internet
cannot meaningfully contain. Product complexity and
accessorizability increases from left to right. The
"trees" of dependent accessories stretch upward
from the baseline of the graph. At the left is our lowly
screwdriver, with no essential accessories above it. At the
middle is a car, with a rather impressive tree of
accessories growing out of it. At the right is marriage,
with a vast tree of dependent products reaching up higher
than any practical finite paper size or computer graph
could contain, including nearly all the items to the left
of it on the graph itself. Thinking about this graph, you
will realize why you almost never see an advertisement for
screwdrivers.
"A is replaced by B."
This is a very common pitch. A trivial change is made in
the formulation of laundry soap, and suddenly you are the
last holdout with a clearly inferior product. Your children
will be roundly jeered from the playground. But there are
more robust versions of this pitch, guaranteed to drag the
majority of consumers, kicking and screaming (but still
buying) into the advertiser's future, if not their own.
One very effective method is to tie several products
together in a dependent relationship, so that, if any one
of the products changes, all of them require replacement.
Example: the personal computer. As time passes, incremental
changes in computer hardware can be accommodated without
starting over, but from time to time an irresistible
technological breakthrough comes along that sweeps all
prior hardware out the door.
There have been two such sweeping changes so far. One was
IBM's decision to introduce an "entry system"
that it hoped would be a steppingstone into that company's
principal business, large systems. But IBM cast such a long
shadow on the computing landscape (in those bygone days)
that even their deliberately crippled design became the de
facto standard personal computer and eclipsed several other
contenders.
The second change was the introduction of graphical
environments such as Windows, which first required a great
deal more computer power than its predecessors, and
eventually obsoleted all but the most powerful systems.
The reason these changes swept away entire architectures
was partly fashion, a theme in all of consumerism, but also
because of the interdependent nature of individual
computers and networks of computers. To a marketer, this
gives computers a mixture of attractive and terrifying
qualities. Attractive because a single change can create a
huge wave of system replacements — all you have to do
is figure out how to ride the wave. Terrifying because no
individual — not even Bill Gates — can foresee
the technological breakthrough that will trigger the next
wave, or its timing.
Sweeping changes like this are so attractive that one sees
valiant attempts to create them out of nothing.
Quadraphonic sound is an example. Unfortunately, the
American public rejected the thesis that they needed four
speakers instead of two, and the idea died.
The next visible change of this kind, one supported and
encouraged by the American government, is called
"High-Definition Television" (HDTV). Basically it
constitutes a technological scheme that will improve
picture quality and flexibility, and finally replace the
oldest and least satisfactory method for encoding a
television picture still in use, NTSC (supposedly this
stands for "Never Twice the Same Color").
Unfortunately for consumers and fortunately for TV
manufacturers, this change will eventually require the
complete replacement of every TV set, every TV camera and
studio, TV transmitters, cable networks, everything. Even
more interesting is that the schedule of changes is
mandated by the government — beginning with a mixture
of old-style and new-style broadcasting, ending with a
complete replacement of NTSC programs with HDTV programs,
in the communication pathways that are administered by the
government. According to this schedule, about ten years
from now, barring unforeseen events, the transition will be
complete — all commercial broadcasting will be based
on the HDTV standard. Consumers will either have new
receivers or will have some sort of converter box that will
allow them to see some fraction of the size and quality of
the new standard's TV image.
With all the committees meeting around this issue, it is
surprising that no one has asked if the content of TV will
be improved along with the image. I think I know the answer.
"B shows the folly of A."
This is a marketing position dearly to be wished for, and
it doesn't happen very often. But the examples are
memorable: FM radio compared to AM radio. Personal
computers compared to typewriters. Calculators compared to
slide rules. Transistor radios compared to tube radios (an
older example). But the majority of real-world examples are
an illusory, not real, replacement of a prior product on
the basis of overwhelming merit: Electric toothbrushes.
Anti-lock brakes. Automotive Air bags. Electric bug zappers
(they don't work against mosquitoes). Sonic bug repellers
(they don't work at all).
The Role of Dissatisfaction
I earnestly believe that some degree of dissatisfaction is
innate in people, and absent our modern society, the chance
that someone would fall to his knees in wonder at the sight
of a wildflower is marginal. But I can say with assurance
that modern advertising makes this possibility disappear
entirely, for most people in most places, because in order
to consume as we do, we must first be programmed to regard
everyday experiences as completely unsatisfactory.
This aspect of marketing has a lot in common with
traditional religious practices:
-
The truth is hidden from view.
-
Your reward lies in the hereafter.
-
True happiness is only available to the initiated, the
"insiders."
-
Everyday reality is a sham, a waste of time, an illusion.
-
We are all defective, our personal experiences have no
legitimacy without the validation of priests.
When I was young, this kind of talk was perfect — I
already held everyday experience in contempt (meaning I was
already a trained consumer). Each new belief system that
came along seemed more sophisticated and promising than the
last, certain to show how the seemingly random events
around me actually fit together into a coherent whole, a
whole that I could perceive if only I underwent an
initiation ritual.
Finally I realized that each of the belief systems I
sampled were simply examples of modern product packaging
and marketing: Your individual, direct experience means
nothing. Join up. Get with the program. Oh, by the way, we
are going to need some funds to cover our legitimate
expenses in showing you the True Path to Enlightenment.
This doesn't mean I suddenly saw the value of direct,
personal experience, but I certainly did see that the
packaged version was not innately superior. For me, this
was a big step forward.
But for most Americans, rich and poor, the packaged version
is still innately superior, and this is tangible evidence
of the triumph of marketing. For us, a personal view of a
field of sunflowers is quite ordinary, but a painting of
that same view can fetch millions. Even the paintings of
sunflowers rejected by the artist, then used by his maid as
rags to clean up his studio, are prized beyond any
imaginable real-life scene of sunflowers. Why? Simple: the
real scene cannot be packaged and marketed — it can
never be "more" than an individual experience.
Pablo Picasso realized the importance of marketing, late in
his career. At that time, he began churning out works that
had as their only distinguishing characteristic a
resemblance to the works of an artist named Picasso. The
subject meant nothing, the style meant everything. Pure
marketing.
We distrust our direct experiences, and require a
commentator — an authority — to interpret our
experiences for us. This is why Americans believe nothing
is real until it has been on television. In this sense,
television is the product package, as well as a vehicle for
the ultimate comment on all contemporary reality —
advertising.
When the "pet rock" was first introduced, when a
completely ordinary rock became valuable by virtue of its
package and advertising, I imagine some advertiser on
Madison Avenue saying, "Yes! Now we have them! They
will buy absolutely anything!"
Coping Skills
Here are some common-sense suggestions to minimize the
negative effects of consumerism in your life:
-
It is very likely that most of your dissatisfactions are a
carefully engineered preparation for consumerism. So
examine your dissatisfactions — keep only those that,
if discarded, might kill you. Toss the rest.
-
The first rule of advertising:
if it is advertised, it is not a necessity.
So start out by saying "I don't need this product.
Now, do I want it?"
-
Ask yourself how much of an advertisement appeals to
reason, and how much appeals to emotion. If the primary
appeal is to emotion, you should expect to feel another,
stronger emotion after the purchase: disappointment.
-
Ask yourself if the advertisement describes a product, or
instead describes you in unrealistic ways. After all, it is
the real you that will be paying for the product, not the
fantasy you that "deserves the very best."
-
Apply common sense to advertising. If you are being offered
a book that is guaranteed to make you millions and costs
$39.95, you should wonder why it didn't work for the
author. Real millionaires don't promote get-rich-quick
schemes on late-night TV
unless
the actual get-rich-quick scheme is to sell millions of
copies of a worthless book.
-
Above all, recapture an appreciation for ordinary reality.
Two reasons quickly come to mind:
-
Fields of flowers don't lie, and
-
If you postpone a walk in the flowers for long enough, the
next time you check, they will be gone.
In my view, if a person can't sit down in a forest, look
between the trees at a sunlit meadow and say, "This is
all I really need," then that person is more than
slightly bent. But that's only my opinion — I could be
wrong.
A Closing Comment
In your life, how many print articles have you read that
portray consumerism and advertising in this way? Chances
are, very few or none. Why? Is it because the author is
spectacularly original, possibly inspired by genius? Or is
it simply because television, magazines and newspapers
reject this kind of writing out of hand, for fear of
offending advertisers? Even though I am the author and
would like you to believe the first premise, the second is
actually correct — articles like this are almost never
seen in print, and ideas like these are almost never aired
on TV. They are deliberately excluded.
In the commercial publishing business and in television
network programming, articles like this are tantamount to
treason or suicide. Small-circulation scholarly journals
are another story, but their readership is so small and
specialized that they do not represent a threat to mass
marketing. For various reasons the Internet, although
increasingly commercial in content, is also the best source
for anti-consumerist sentiment.
To access some of these resources, submit the search string
"anti-consumer" to your favorite search engine.
Further reading