Advertising, at its simplest, can be defined as the market communication of sellers of goods and services. Much of the early attention to advertising came from economists and was based around the key concept of information operating within a national market structure. A great deal of empirical research has been conducted on the effectiveness of advertising in raising product demand (both for individual campaigns as well as aggregate market consumption). The overall results have been inconclusive with regard to the economic effectiveness of advertising (Albion and Farris 1981).
Among the first theorists to develop alternatives to the concept of information were Marxist economists, who stressed instead its persuasive and manipulative functions. Advertising was viewed as a key component in the creation of demand, upon which capitalism increasingly came to rely as its productive capacity outstripped the provision of basic needs. In this view advertising is an indispensable institution to the very survival of the system, solving the growing difficulties of ‘realization’ in late capitalism (the transformation of value embedded in commodities into a money form) (Mandel 1978).
The location of advertising within this broader set of factors has prompted a great deal of historical work on the origins of the institution of advertising. Stuart Ewen (1976) pioneered this field, arguing that advertising fulfilled a key double function for capitalism at the turn of the century: both creating demand for the unleased industrial capacity of industry, as well as attempting to deflect attention away from class conflict at the workplace by redefining identity as being based around consumption rather than production. It was seen as a new and vital institution as capitalism transformed from its industrial to its consumer stage. Many other critical social theorists continue to see this as the most important function of advertising for capitalism. The cultural theorist Raymond Williams (1980) called advertising ‘a magic system’ that deflected attention away from the class nature of society by stressing consumption. In much of this literature advertising is seen as being the chief vehicle for the creation of false needs.
In this shift away from seeing the effects of advertising solely in economic terms, research space was opened up for a view of advertising that stressed its much broader and general effects. Leiss et al. (1990) argued for locating advertising within an institutional perspective (mediating the relations between business and media) in which the question of advertising’s role in influencing sales was seen as much less important (and interesting) than its role as a vehicle of social communication (how it tried to sell goods by appealing to consumers along a whole range of dimensions not directly connected to goods—individual, group and family identity; the sense of happiness and contentment; the uses of leisure; gender and sexual identity, etc.). Advertising here was described as an important part of the ‘discourse through and about objects’ that any society has to engage in. In this extension beyond a strictly economic orientation to a cultural perspective, the power of advertising was redefined also. Its influence was seen as being based on its ubiquitous presence in the everyday lives of people, stemming from its privileged position within the discursive structures of modern society. It is an institution that not only reflects broader cultural values but also plays a key role in redirecting and emphasizing some of these values over others. In this regard it was seen as performing a function similar to myth in older societies (Leymore 1975). Viewed from this perspective, advertising became seen as an important historical repository for shifting cultural values during the course of the twentieth century. Social historians (e.g. Marchand 1985) as well as anthropologists (e.g. McCracken 1988) used the data provided by this repository for their own broader historical and cross-cultural analysis.
Much of the recent (academic and social) concern with advertising is based on this view of it as a vital component of popular culture. The most sustained social science analysis of advertising has concerned the role it plays in gender socialization. Based largely on the methodology of content analysis, it has been conclusively shown that men and women are portrayed in very different types of social roles in advertising: women are represented in much narrower and subordinated ways (largely as sex objects or in domestic activities) than men (Courtney and Whipple 1983). There has been much speculation on the link between commercial images of gender and the subordination of women within society. The most advanced theoretical work on gender came from Erving Goffman (1979) who argued that the visual subordination of women was based on advertising presenting ‘real-life’ subordination in a ‘hyper-ritualiziatic’ form—again reflecting dominant cultural values as well as powerfully reinforcing them.
Another important area of concern around advertising is the effect that it has on children’s socialization along a broad range of dimensions, especially health (in terms of nutrition) as well as the development of intellectual and imaginative capacities. In the most comprehensive analysis of its kind, Kline (1994) has argued that the marketing of children’s toys has had a severe negative impact upon the kind of play that children engage in (limiting imagination and creativity), as well as inter-gender interaction and child-parent interaction.
Advertising is also connected with health concerns to do with the marketing of products such as alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs. In particular, a great deal of attention has been paid to the relationship between tobacco advertising and tobacco addiction, with critics arguing that the nicotine industry uses advertising to maintain present markets by reassuring smokers about possible health concern, as well as drawing new users (largely children) into the market.
Increasingly, the techniques learned from product advertising have extended their reach into other areas of social life, such that more and more of the discourses of modern society are mediated through a commercial lens. Modern political campaigns are run the same as any other marketing campaign for a consumer good. Commentators have wondered about the impact this may have on the nature of democracy and the types of candidates that the process brings forth. Public health campaigns (e.g. for AIDS education) are also using the techniques and the services developed first in the advertising industry (leading to the field labelled as social marketing).
There has also been much concern about the effect that global advertising will have on the cultural values of traditional societies hitherto outside the communication influence of the market, as well as the influence on media editorial content (entertainment and news) of income revenues that stem from advertisers (Collins 1993).
Sut Jhally
University of Massachusetts
References
Albion, P. and Farris, M. (1981) The Advertising Controversy, Boston, MA.
Collins, R. (1993) Dictating Content, Washington, DC.
Courtney, A. and Whipple, T. (1983) Sex Stereotyping in Advertising, Lexington, MA.
Ewen, S. (1976) Captains of Consciousness, New York.
Goffman, E. (1979) Gender Advertisements, New York.
Kline, S. (1993) Out of the Garden, London.
Leiss, W., Kline, S. and Jhally, S. (1990) Social Communication in Advertising, New York.
Leymore, V. (1975) Hidden Myth: Structure and Symbolism in Advertising, London.
McCracken, G. (1988) Culture and Consumption, Bloomington, IN.
Mandel, E. (1978) Late Capitalism, London.
Marchand, R. (1985) Advertising the American Dream, Berkeley, CA.
Williams, R. (1980) ‘Advertising: the magic system’, in R. Williams (ed.) Problems in Materialism and Culture, London.
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