The Advertised Life According to Vanderbilt
In Vanderbilt's The Advertised Life, he argues that in our culture, full
with traditions and values, has assimilated to consumer culture, which is
full of marketing persuasion and buying trends. The idea of freedom of
choice, where one can make a decision for oneself without any biased
third party, is long gone. The modern version of freedom of choice is in
which the individual can only between "Brand A" and "Brand B". In this
life, every choice, purchase, attire, and lifestyle is supersaturated and
bombarded with advertisements compelling consumers to make products or
the lifestyle behind the product essential to the consumer. In today's
society every sort of public space like billboards, walls, Internet, and
radio waves are used to assimilate people into this advertised life. We
identify ourselves only as consumers. Every aspect of our lives is
intertwined with advertising; therefore, we live the advertised life.
"Get fat on Lorings Fat-ten-u and corpula foods"; ...
Advertising
Banana AdvertisingThe
power of advertisement has modified the mind of society in which
advertisement has the control of the mass culture even if the consumer
has no previous knowledge of this action or willingly or unwillingly to
accept this. Advertisement does this through the means of alternation of
demographics, perpetual idea, passive consumers, consumerist democracy,
and branding.
Using demographic analysis and trends of consumers, advertisement can
alter or influence trends and demographic groups in order to suit the
corporations through the use of advertisement. If the latest demographic
trends do not favor drinking hard liquor the companies who are involved in
hard liquor production will not easily take a decrease of annual sales.
Rather companies will spend a multi million-dollar campaign, including ads
in magazines, and sampling events. (131) These tactics will convert the
trend to favor liquor-related companies. Another technique corporations
use is to expand to larger...