-Caveat Lector- From http://www.en.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/05/02bigsellramonet }}>Begin Manufacturing desire by IGNACIO RAMONET "The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement." Samuel Johnson, 1759. Advertising and its tricks are not new (1). As early as the 12th century town criers ran through the streets shouting out announcements. In the 18th century, with the introduction of lithography, the first commercial advertisements appeared and covered all available walls and fences. In the 19th century advertising became a market-centred activity, creating the publicity machine as it conquered the newspapers. "In 1836 Emile de Girardin decided to launch his mass circulation daily newspaper La Presse and to make space available for commercial advertising," says Libération. "In 1832 Charles Havas set up the first international information agency, which was soon dealing with advertising as well. In 1865 classified ads accounted for one-third of newspaper space" (2). In the late 19th century the large companies founded during the industrial revolution began creating mass markets and shaping demand. For there is nothing "natural" about mass consumption. It is a cultural and social construction. In 1892 Coca-Cola already had one of the world's largest advertising budgets. In 1912 the Advertising Club of America declared it to be the best-publicised American product – Coca-Cola's advertising budget for that year i ncluded $300,000 for newspaper ads, a million calendars, 2m ashtrays, 5m lithographic signs and 10m Coca-Cola-coloured matchboxes (3). The company's executives had understood that they had to reach the largest number of p otential buyers. As one put it, "Repetition wins out in the end. One drop of water can pierce a rock" (4). With the rise of the media – electric (cinema and radio), electronic (television) and digital (internet) – advertising, of increasing sophistication, expanded enormously in the 20th century. The drive to shape people's th inking and reach into their homes achieved semi-scientific status. Techniques of persuasion became refined enough to pierce the constant hubbub of communication and deliver precise messages to our brains. The advertising barrage in developed nations is now estimated at a total of 2,500 daily hits per person. In 1999 the French TV channels showed more than 500,000 ads. These sorts of figures mean that any single commercial has very little chance of standing out. One study found that 85% of ads had no effect at all on their intended audience, 5% had a negative effect (they "boomeranged") and only 10% had any positive influence. Moreover, due to the imperfections of human memory, the 10% figure dips to only 5% after 24 hours: 95% of all ads are lost. In the blinking of an eye What must advertising do to influence us? There was an attempt to reduce messages to a single image – subliminal imagery – to make advertising imperceptible. A "parasite" image inserted within the 24 frames per second use d in the cinema (25 per second on TV) circumvents normal retinal reaction time. The eye sees the message and the brain registers it, but only subliminally, below the edge of consciousness (from the Latin limen, threshold) . This is regarded as illegal, but the idea still appeals (5). In France, following François Mitterrand's 1988 election victory, the newspaper Le Quotidien de Paris accused him of having benefited from secret "subliminal im ages" hidden in the credits of a TV news programme aired on the Antenne 2 network. Legal proceedings were brought on the grounds of electoral manipulation but the plaintiffs were unsuccessful. France's regulatory body for telecommunications and broadcasting nevertheless decided to ban all hidden images. Last May an American group accused the film Battlefield Earth, based on a novel by L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, of "containing subliminal images" designed to win converts. Last September, in the middle of the Un ited States election campaign, George W Bush acknowledged that an ad produced by his Republican team contained a subliminal image. The ad was critical of the platform of his Democratic opponent, Al Gore. Superimposed over Gore's picture was the phrase "The Gore Prescription Plan: Bureaucrats Decide." Then, over a black background, the last four letters of the word "bureaucrats" appeared in capitals – RATS – for a fraction of a second, fil ling the entire screen (6). Under intense media pressure, the Bush campaign was forced to pull the ad. Advertising sees itself as the art of persuasion, and its messages are carefully wrought. Consumers and their visual reactions are studied in depth. Prior to distribution, images are sometimes tested using an eye camera – spectators watch an image and their pupil response is recorded by an invisible camera. The path traced by the eye can be statistically determined: what the eye sees first, what it fails to see. This test is the result of research and collaboration between specialists, including sociologists, psychologists, semioticians, linguists, graphic designers, decorators. Such a confluence of expertise made Marshall McLuhan conclude that: "No group of sociologists can approximate the ad teams in the gathering and processing of exploitable social data. The ad teams have billions of dollars to spend annually on research and testing of reactions, and their products are magnificent accumulations of material about the shared experience and feelings of the entire community" (7). Children are a favourite target audience. France's Syndicat national de la publicité télévisée estimates that advertisers in France spent more than $140m in 1999 on advertisements aimed at children under 14. The Institut de l'enfant estimates that approximately 45% of French families' spending ($70bn a year) is directly influenced by children's desires. "The opinions of kids between four and 10 have a major influence on purchases of food, sweets, textiles and toys," says Joël-Yves Le Bigot, the institute's director, "but they also influence 18% of automobile purchases and 40% of decisions relating to holiday destinations" (8). Paper moon Advertising always promises the same things – well being, comfort, effectiveness, happiness and success – and delivers assurances of future satisfaction. Advertising deals in dreams, pointing out pathways to trouble-free social ascent. Advertising constructs desire and shows a world on perpetual holiday, relaxed, smiling, carefree. A world filled with happy people clutching the miracle product that will make them feel beautiful, clean, fi t, free, attractive, fashionable. Advertising sells everything to everybody without discrimination, as if mass society were class-free. In the view of semiotician Louis Quesnel, "In the face of a harrowing world, which TV shows us all, advertising evokes a vision of a utopia cleansed of tragedy, a world without under-developed countries, nuclear weapons, overpopulation or wars. A world of innocence, full of light and smiles, optimistic, heavenly" (9). By the power of repetition, ads lend credence to the great myths of our time: modernity, youth, happiness, leisure, prosperity. Women are confined in a system that mostly recognises them only as sexual or domestic objects . They feel guilty, under relentless surveillance, accountable when their home and laundry are less than spotless, when their skin and body start to decline. They are answerable for their children's health and hygiene, th e state of their husband's stomach, their household's finances. At the office, in the kitchen, on the beach, in the shower, women are still dependent. Men will judge them whatever they do. Even if a woman gets freedom thr ough work, men will still scrutinise the shade of her suntan, the smell of her armpits, the shininess of her hair, the freshness of her breath, the shapeliness of her bosom and the colour of her tights. William Zimmermann, the former anti-Vietnam war activist, believes that there is no shame in using advertising to get one's message across: "Today the progressive class in America has no choice: either be destroyed by the system or, as we have now come to understand, destroy the system with its own weapons" (10). But the situation is not quite that simple, since advertising's goal is to recycle everything. Symbols like the hammer and sick le (as in ads for Self-Trade, the European e-broking group) and revolutionary figures such as Marx (used by UFF, the leading French bank), Lenin (in ads for Liberty Surf, the French internet service provider), Mao (UFF), Zapata (Liberty Surf) and Che Guevara (Liberty Surf), have all served as foils for the internet "revolution". Frédéric Beigbeder writes: "In the past dictatorships feared freedom of expression, censored political opposition, locked up writers and burned controversial books. … In order to subjugate humanity, advertising has kept a low profile, preferring flexibility and persuasion instead. For the first time we are living within a system of human domination against which even freedom is powerless. Indeed the system stakes all it has on liberty, an d this is its masterstroke. Any criticism works to the system's own advantage, and anti-advertising diatribes only reinforce the illusion of its sweetly smiling tolerance. The system obtains one's submission with elegance . It has achieved its goal since disobedience itself has become a form of obedience" (11). As a structurally reductionist force, advertising offers a compressed and oversimplified view of the world. It relies on stereotypes to dictate our desires. Worst of all, it forces us to accept our own enslavement. (1) See the exhibition "250 Years of Advertising", Musée de la publicité, 107, rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris. (2) Libération, 24 March 2001. (3) See Richard S Tedlow, New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America , Harvard Business School Publishing, Cambridge (Mass), 1996. (4) Ibid. (5) See Propagandes silencieuses, Galilée, Paris, 2000. (6) International Herald Tribune, Paris, 13 September 2000. (7) Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass), 1994, p 228. (8) Télérama, Paris, 12 April 2000. (9) Communications, no 17, Seuil, Paris, 1971. (10) Le Monde, 4 May 1980. (11) Frédéric Beigbeder, 99F, Grasset, Paris, 2000. Translated by Luke Sandford ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2001 Le Monde diplomatique End<{{ T' A<>E<>R Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
