Let Them Eat Lifestyle

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The point I'm trying to make is not that advertising somehow tricks us into ignoring our problems, but that the culture of consumerism has undergone an enormous change. Dissidence has been channeled into the marketplace; existential rebellion is becoming just as powerful an element of brand loyalty as the 12 ways in which Wonder Bread built strong bodies ever were. When we talk about nonconformity, we're increasingly talking about those particularly outspoken entrepreneurs who are detailed in Wired magazine. When we talk about breaking the rules, we're talking about the people who are in their offices all night but listen to alternative rock while they're there. This is a point that French advertising executive Jean-Marie Dru makes explicitly. Every brand must have an identity, he says, and the most effective identities are those that take on the trappings of social justice: "The great brands . . . have succeeded in conveying their vision by questioning certain conventions, whether it's Apple's humanist vision, which reverses the relationship between people and machines; Benetton's libertarian vision, which overthrows communication conventions; Microsoft's progressive vision, which topples bureaucratic barriers; or Virgin's anticonformist vision, which rebels against the powers that be." The Body Shop owns compassion, Nike spirituality, Pepsi and MTV youthful rebellion.

With its constant talk of liberation, the advertising industry is filling a very specific niche in the cultural spectrum of the Republic of Business. As business replaces civil society, advertising is taking over the cultural functions that used to be filled by the left. Dreaming of a better world is now the work of marketers . We used to have movements for change; now we have products. As American politics become ever more deaf to the idea that the market might not be the best solution for every social problem, the market, bless its invisible heart, is seeing to it that the duties of the left do not go unfilled.

If capitalism's only problems were soul-deadening conformity and lack of authenticity, then it could solve them very effectively -- as it has been since the 1960s. But if your idea of capitalism's problems swings more heavily toward sweatshops and downsizing and union busting, then you're talking about something else altogether. This is a critique that advertising will never embrace. No matter how hard up Reebok gets, it will never use the fact of Nike's Indonesian sweatshops to improve its market position. No, it'll just keep talking about how its shoes let U.B.U.

Advertising has real trouble solving concrete social prolems. Not that it doesn't try. Various get-rich-quick schemes are being sold as solutions to unemployment in a recent spate of ads. And then there's the famous Pizza Hut commercial in which management has pizzas delivered to a picket line. The strikers drop their signs, grab a slice, and look up gratefully at the benovolent boss' office window. Problem solved.

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