"Advertising exists only to purvey what people don't need."
-- Jerry Mander from the book Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television
Only the supremely naive believe they are not affected by television advertising. The entire medium of television is
"Advertising exists only to purvey what people don't need."
-- Jerry Mander from the book Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television
Only the supremely naive believe they are not affected by television advertising. The entire medium of television is based upon advertising. The multi-billion dollar mega-corporations that run TV networks -- News Corp., Comcast, Viacom, Walt Disney, General Electric, AOL/Time Warner, AT&T, Bertelsmann, Liberty Media Corporation, Sony, and Vivendi Universal -- would not have been able to grow to their present size without television. It is impossible to talk about television without talking about advertising.
What is the purpose advertising? Put simply, advertising is creating a desire for a brand name or product. The idea of an ad is to connect to some phase of the consumer's purchasing experience. When people buy things, they go through many critical decisions about the need, cost and value of product. One of the generally accepted models of consumer behavior break down the decision in the following steps:
Good advertising will attempt to connect to one of these phases. In the modern world, advertising is not for "food," "clothing," "transportation" or "shelter." Ads are for "Campbell's" soup, "Levi's" jeans, "Nissan" cars or "Century 21" realtors. Former ad executive Jerry Mander, author of "Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television," says that advertisers sometimes argue that they are "only fulfilling the needs of people by providing an information service about where and how people can achieve satisfaction for their needs."
In his book, Mander asserts that people looking for food, clothing, or companionship will search out such things without the presence of ads. Hungry people will find food. Cold people will find warm clothes and shelter. Lonely people will find others. Human beings are resourceful enough to find what they need without ads. "Consider the list of the top twenty-five advertisers in the United States," says Mander. "They sell the following products: soaps, detergents, cosmetics, drugs, chemicals, processed foods, tobacco, alcohol, cars and sodas, all of which exist in a realm beyond need. If they were needed, they would not be advertised."
The television industry blossomed in the 1950s when affordable TV sets made their way into people's homes. Along with some short commercials, often entire programs were funded by a single sponsor. For example, NBC's The Firestone Hour and Colgate Comedy Hour variety shows were fully funded by a single sponsor. The wildly popular I Love Lucy was sponsored by Phillip Morris. As television grew in popularity and power, the force of TV ads became more respected. Airtime became expensive and ads were reduced to shorter and shorter lengths. By the mid-1950s, TV ads were brief and punchy with catchy phrases and songs. In 1955, NBC sold advertising on the show Queen For A Day at a rate of $4,000 per minute. Millions of television sets were sold each year and TV programming and advertising worked together to sell their products.
In 1965, the TV turned colorful and in the 1970s everyone was singing "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke." In the 1980s with the addition of widespread cable TV and ESPN, CNN and MTV, commercial television boomed. Throughout these three decades, television commercials became less real and more fantasy. When football player Mean Joe Green tosses his dirty t-shirt at an admiring little boy, Coca-Cola created another advertising coup. Coke does it again in 1984 when pop-star Michael Jackson's hair accidentally catches on fire during the filming of a commercial. Apple Computer strikes it big with it's famous "1984" commercial for it's Macintosh computer -- which ushers in the Super Bowl commercial phenomena. Commercials with dancing raisins, cartoon characters and talking candy bars are seen constantly.
All these commercials, with football players, pop stars, songs, cartoons, fast cars, beautiful women and snappy phrases ("I Gotta Make The Donuts" and "Where's The Beef") have nothing to do with the products. People singing a song on a hilltop says nothing about where Coca-Cola is manufactured or the nutritional value of the ingredients. The dancing frog who helps the cheerful little girl eat her Sugar Smacks cereal may actually say that it's "part of a balanced breakfast" -- and notice it says "part of" and does not specify which "part" (most likely, the sugary part). TV advertising is not about the truth -- it's not about the facts. Television advertising is appealing to something else. TV sells a lifestyle -- it sells choices -- even where there are no choices.
"The job of the television commercial is to promote'special' qualities a product doesn't have, and to cloak its defects in a smokescreen," states Donna Woolfolk Cross in the book MediaSpeak: How Television Makes Up Your Mind. "If there is absolutely no need for a particular product, t