Definition
Advertising motivates consumption. Its primary purpose has been viewed as persuading individual consumers to purchase products or services by offering, apparently, more telling benefits than rival products. This casts consumption as a rational and evaluative process that the consumer ultimately controls. However, highlighting the symbolic, hedonic, and often irrational elements of people and consumption, advertising has evolved into a more multi-media approach. It uses multiple communication channels to engage with consumers in versions of storytelling and narratives, projecting positive lifestyles and symbolic images that include user-generated publicity to build relations with consumers.
Advertising is one of the most powerful cultural forces at work in the contemporary world, affecting not only consumption but many aspects of human social behavior. In the United States, where over 70% of global spending on advertising takes place, about $300 billion is spent annually. The digital share of this, at about 60% of the total, has been expanding rapidly in recent decades.
History
Advertising historically dates to ancient civilizations in which merchants used papyrus, for instance, or painted advertisements on prominent surfaces. In the modern era, advertising flourished with the rise of the industrial revolution. In the 19th century, it became a major economic force, initially through magazines and newspapers, and later through radio, television, and, most recently, electronic media.
Advertisements of goods were initially based on product characteristics and their unique advantages. In the 1920s and 1930s, advertising methods began focusing on appealing to the psychology of consumers. Edward Bernays was the first to broadly employ symbolism in advertising. In his book Propaganda, he described how the “invisible” people can draw on psychological research to shape the thoughts and values of the masses. His success in “selling desire” made him a highly sought-after consultant to industry and government; even Hitler adopted his methods for spreading political propaganda.
In the 1940s, cultural theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer condemned the increased influence of advertising on consumption and the accompanying expansion of mass production, as leading to the passivity of consumers and the commodification of culture. They called advertising a “hegemonic tool” that can easily evolve into ideological control. In the late 1950s, Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders posited that advertising subliminally evoked consumer desire through hidden or embedded messages, such as inserting “Drink Coca-Cola!” in split-second film frames, ostensibly prompting movie viewers to buy concessions.
Recent studies suggest that consumers are neither passive recipients nor cultural dupes of advertising messages. Consumers actively co-create and help produce consumption to foster human relations and identity formation. For instance, daily shopping by mothers for their families can be viewed as a devotional ritual or labor of love (Miller, 1998); advertising images can be appropriated by consumers for their own ends, such as forming ideologies that create youth subculture identities or launch national identity debates, such as Molson Canadian’s beer commercial, “I am Canadian” (MacGregor, 2003). Advertising continues to evolve with cultural norms, and on social media, using influencers. Examples include healthy living and “body positivity” in Dove’s campaign for “real beauty”; or racial injustice in Nike’s ads with American football player Colin Kaepernick. Advertisers appropriate and reuse these populist innovations, repeating the cycle, and thus resisting social change.
Different Perspectives
On the positive side, advertising can inform consumers about helpful products or new medical treatments, or alert them to public service announcements. It can stimulate economic activity and contribute to consumer well-being (Stafford & Pounders, 2021). As a semiotic enterprise of the firm and culture at large, it shapes the consumption experience and the creation of ideals to aspire to in lifestyles and values (see Social Norms, Values and Consumption). Advertisements become part of our cultural discourse and the exchange of ideas in society, such as Nike’s slogan, “Just do it”, or L’Oreal’s, “Because you’re worth it”. They reflect and instigate how people acquire and share cultural knowledge about products and services, and encourage consumers to become co-creators of meaning creation.
On the negative side, advertising can promote unnecessary consumption, drive rampant materialism, and affect people’s health and lifestyles (including eating habits). By inflaming desire, it also increases dissatisfaction and arouses anxiety (see Hedonic Treadmill, Choice Paralysis). It operates as a “panacea and a pandemic [advertising] giveth and it taketh away” (Sherry, 2008, 88). Consumers receive thousands of messages through multiple media channels, with little regard for their best interests or a product’s usefulness (Malefyt & Morais, 2017). For example, advertising of ultra-processed foods has been linked to a rapid increase in obesity, especially among children, which led to regulatory restrictions on such adverts in several European countries and Canada (though the United States largely relies on self-regulation by industry). Direct advertising of medicinal drugs to patients (illegal in most industrial countries, except in the United States) has been linked to increased use of drugs with few benefits.
Advertising’s effects are indeed questionable. Nevertheless, it has become a powerful economic and cultural force, providing employment for millions and deeply embedded in institutions and culture. For example, public service organizations depend on private advertising dollars for significant portions of their operating budgets. Public radio in the United States is a case in point: 38% of the 2023 budget of the National Public Radio Corporation came from corporate sponsors. While these messages are built around NPR’s social mission, the practice nonetheless supports businesses ultimately seeking to increase sales.
Application
Various forms of advertisements are neither all good nor all bad in an absolute sense. Rather, they are morally ambiguous. Promoting an art exhibit is desirable while showcasing fur for fashion is callous; advertising to children is reprehensible, but advocating dolls that support racial or ethnic identity can uplift young girl’s self-esteem and pride (Malefyt & Morais, 2017).
Advertisers can and sometimes do help to educate consumers about responsible consumption, recycling, and waste reduction (see Education for Sustainable Consumption). They can and sometimes do advertise healthy foods and eating habits instead of ultra-processed foods. Still, although increasing, “purpose-driven marketing” represents only a small portion of the total. Patagonia, whose advertisements focus on outdoor lifestyles and long-lasting, repairable, and recyclable products “that give back to the Earth as much as they take”, famously launched a “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign in 2011. Ironically, the ad increased jacket sales, yet it also established the company as a leader in green marketing and prompted other clothing brands, like fast fashion-oriented H&M, to initiate recycling and clothing return programs (see Extended Producer Responsibility, Product Returns and Right of Withdrawal, Greenwashing).
The practice of mass advertising, which in the United States is a form of constitutionally protected commercial free speech, is unlikely to diminish any time soon. However, certain types of advertising may be blocked through organized campaigns modeled on the anti-tobacco campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s. The public health community campaigns to restrict the advertising of pharmaceuticals (in the United States) and ultra-processed foods. Some cities follow the model set by São Paulo, Brazil, which in 2006 banned all advertising in outdoor public spaces (Clean City Law).
Meanwhile, environmental activists call for bans on ads for fossil fuel products and carbon-intensive services (e.g., cars, flights, and cruises). Starting in 2025, The Hague in the Netherlands will implement such a policy, followed by other cities, like Sheffield, Edinburgh, and Amsterdam. France is the first European country to ban advertising for all energy products related to fossil fuels and recently prohibited ultra-fast fashion advertising. By measuring spending on advertisements for carbon-intensive products and services, the European Climate Neutrality Observatory tracks progress toward the EU goal of climate neutrality by 2050.
Further Reading
MacGregor, Robert M. (2003). I am Canadian: National identity in beer commercials. Journal of Popular Culture; Oxford, 37(2), 276–286. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540–5931.00068.
Malefyt, T.d.W., & Morais, R.J. (2017). Advertising anthropology ethics. In Ethics in the anthropology of business, pp. 104–118. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315197098-7.
Miller, D. (1998). A theory of shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Sherry, J.F., Jr. (2008). The ethnographer’s apprentice: Trying consumer culture from the outside in. Journal of Business Ethics, 80(1), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9448-7.
Stafford, M.R., & Pounders, K. (2021). The power of advertising in society: Does advertising help or hinder consumer well-being? International Journal of Advertising, 40(4), 487–490. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.1893943.