U.S. Advertising and The American Dream
Marshall McLuhan took advertising quite seriously.
“Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.”
To McLuhan, advertising could have cultural merit if and when it was ‘faithful’. Scholars might complement the study of historical fact with Madison Avenue’s parallel vision of The Way We Live Now.
In other words, ads could be valuable as primary documents: how did corporations and their agencies tell stories to the masses — stories of our dreams, failures, anxieties — in order to profit from us?
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How does modern marketing reflect our tumultuous times? What might it tell future intellectuals about the American people — and our Dream — in the waking nightmare of Q1 2017?
Despite increases in productivity, real wages have stagnated for decades; income has not kept pace with the cost of living.
In 2015, the Economic Policy Institute found “in the past few decades, the American economy generated lots of income and wealth that would have allowed significant living standards gains for every family.”
But that didn’t happen. Recently published data show that the bottom 50 percent of the population (that is, ~117 million people) “have been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s.” Meanwhile, fruits of the post-recession recovery went disproportionately to the top one percent.
The hollowing-out of opportunity has left us materially and spiritually destitute.
According to a 2014 McClatchy-Marist survey:
- 68 percent of Americans believe that people who work hard still have a hard time maintaining their standard of living.
- 85 percent think that there are different rules for the wealthy and well-connected.
- 76 percent say it will be even harder for the next generation to advance.
“Hard work leads to success; anyone can get ahead; life will be better for our children.” These are the mantras of the Dream. To most people, they’re cruel jokes.
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The best of times
To follow McLuhan, history remembers marketing that reflects contemporary life — its beauty marks, its tumors.
However, the usual industry impulse is to depict life at its rosiest. We reason that we must portray “aspirational” situations: not how people live today but how they’d like to live someday. Products signal progress as consumers ascend — cheerily, ineluctably — up the ladder.
But does this make any sense in time present?
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As long as folks believe in the good life, aspirational advertising is fine and reasonable. But when prospects dim, it follows that brands should temper themes of unmitigated aspiration with measures of realism.
However, such nuance is the exception, not the norm. Most mass marketing makes life look effortless, as if it were the nostalgic 1950s, just with doper detergent and elite refrigerators.
Tone-deaf, hackneyed, fantastical bourgeois scenes abound. Upper class people: alone, puzzled, forcing smiles.
Ex. 1: “Revolutionary” fitness, moving up and away and off the street to the great indoors
Ex. 2: Traditional wife, anxious husband and a threatening lantern-jaw named Garcia who definitely lifts
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There are, however, signs of life.
- In its new campaign, Ikea — a store for the American ur-aspiration, the happy home — acknowledges that the conditions of the Dream have changed. A print ad wonders ‘Where Did the American Dream Go?’, questions the notion that ‘bigger is better’ and identifies barriers to prosperity like ‘sky-high college tuition’. TV spots portray the home as respite from exhausting daily life, rather than a gallery of objects. Where many brands exaggerate — or ‘hero’ — their products, Ikea cedes the spotlight to hardworking folks supine on sofas. Aglow, Ikea’s affordable furniture is more inviting. Leave it to the Swedes, I guess.
- The financial startup SoFi, meanwhile, offers a refreshing view of another Dream pillar — higher education. “Student Debt: worth getting into, worth getting out of,” reads one cogent line. In a video, ‘Danny’ tells of a modern rite of passage: taking out a six-figure loan to go to school. For its part, SoFi saved him $20,000 in interest and connected him with his current employer. In the U.S., Danny’s predicament is the brutal reality. Millions of people saddled with student debt can relate to his story, and SoFi’s plainspokenness adds credibility to its apparently good suite of products.
Humility unites these campaigns. The goods-for-sale play reduced roles in cautiously hopeful human stories. Ikea and SoFi acknowledge struggle without wallowing in it; they empathize with the customer without talking down to her.
These ads aren’t perfect — but they’re an indication that some mass marketers are reading the news.
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Beyond the deceptive theology of consumption, however, lies actual politics. [Ephemera, 2013]
It’s a classic liberal fallacy that consumption is politics. It’s not. Politics is politics. [Felix Biederman on Chapo Trap House, Episode 67.]
When we analyze advertising for its cultural seriousness, we must always note — there is but a fibril between thoughtful consideration and callous appropriation of a person’s economic despair.
Especially now:
- Just eight years after the financial calamity and Wall Street bailouts, Donald Trump has installed a murderer’s row of rabid bankers and corporate ghouls in his government. Just a random example: hedge fund czar Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, is flouting ethics laws by touting Lego Batman (a film he financed) in public. You can’t make this stuff up.
- The political project of business-friendly, dehumanizing neoliberalism is still the global consensus. From Reagan to Bush I to Clinton to Bush II to Obama to Hillary and Donald; Thatcher, Blair, Cameron, May; Deng Xiaoping → Xi Jinping — neoliberalism has held court in halls of power, lining the pockets of elites and eroding the security of the working and middle classes.
- Despite all of this misery, fewer and fewer people conceive of the world through the lens of Marx’s “materialist” political economy. One might ask, “how do corporations and governments fool us to mask their draconian project of upward redistribution of resources?” Or, to lose the terminology and paraphrase the great Thomas Frank — “why, in the wealthiest nation in history, are so many people’s lives so lousy?”
Advertising is a guilty party here. It is optimistic corporate speech where the optimism is usually unwarranted. It distracts us from praxis, or the daily practice of struggling for liberation, community and meaning in our lives; it annoys us and gets our identities horribly wrong; it portrays culture’s lowest common denominators; it saps our cognitive energy.
How might advertising change?
In these times of upheaval, spirited marketers might tell meaningful stories about human beings in a social context.
Advertising might depict people together, not alone. On the bustling avenue, not 50 floors above it. Speaking to neighbors, not spying on them from behind paned glass.
In so doing, advertising might inch closer to McLuhan’s ideal: a useful, critical (and perhaps hopeful) representation of our modern world.
