Can We Escape the Culture of Advertising?

The pages in Economix that really caught my attention were 168 and 169 that wonderfully illustrated the cyclic process (see the last frame on page 169) of consumer response to advertising and the culture that has arisen because of the perpetuated pattern of thought. Perhaps the most attention-catching frame on 168 is the fourth one in which Mike states that, "Demand is high partly because these ideas are part of our culture," followed by some arguably accurate truths into what the vast majority of Americans hold true about diamonds. Mike quickly adds that these same ideas, "originated in advertising, paid for by De Beers." What I am particularly interested in with this section is the overcasting suggestion that the culture we've accepted and embedded ourselves into is something that has been sold to us by those who virtually are not in it for satiating the interests of the people but rather their own self gain. And at what point did this process get so out of the people's hands that the advertisers began crafting wants we didn't think we had?

I will say that much of what I have learned in both this class and my communications classes have been pretty disturbing to me—someone who wants so badly to believe that there are and can be large corporations, who have a large anchor of wealth, interested in and operating on behalf of the genuine needs of people. However, as many will spectate and sometimes study more in-depth, this is generally not the case. What we have been talking a lot about in this class is condition branding and how supposed professionals in the industry are literally creating problems that we didn't even know we could have as means to generate profit from their faux, made-up solutions. The rhetoric used throughout the marketing and advertising industry, I think, creates such overbearing whirl of confusion and pressure on consumers that we're generally more inclined to make brash decisions based on what appeals to us at face-value and what immediately resonates with our values, whether they are defined by ourselves or society at large. Much of the methods we employ in these situations (that we don't have the time, interest, or agency to think thoroughly) are called "heuristics" which are rules of thumb we follow to maximize our efficiency as consumers.

What is interesting for me to think about is whether us humans have been forced to develop and employ these tactics in our daily lives because of the overstimulation by the works of advertisers and marketers or are these tactics part of our natural human behavior? I'm looking to get into marketing and advertising and what I've noticed is that a lot of the agencies and corporations that I've looked into are seemingly shifting towards basing their practice on "human-centered behavior" and "human-centered design." Not only are these companies marketing themselves as innovative people championing human behavior, but they are also selling the idea of humanity without really getting into the science of how that works with their practice. And for the most part, I can't help but feel that it WORKS for me. This is the way I've navigated myself through a complex culture of advertising merely in one aspect of my life and yet I'm still playing right into their hands despite thinking that I am a more conscious consumer and person of society.