Advertisement, Consumers Cultures and Desire

Envy Desire and Belonging

The language of transformation they sell the promise that their loves will change if they buy a particular product. They use figures of glamour that consuers can envy and wish to emulate. Attachment of the value of art to a product can give it a connatation of prestige tradition or authenticity and cultural value.

Eg. Grey goose vodka advertising

Ads such as these construct consumers as having cultural knowledge – cultural capital. French sociologisht Pierre Boudueau identified different forms of capital in addition to ecocnomic capital, social capital, symbolic and cultural capital.

Social capital = whom you know, your social network, +plus the opportunities they provide you.

Symbolic capital = prestige celebrities

Cultural capital = the forms of cultural knowledge that give you social advantages. It can come in the form of rare taste, connoisseur and competence in deciphering cultural relation and artifacts.

Commodity Culture

Commodity Fetishism- commodities are emptied of the meaning of their production (the context in which they were produced)

- Marx = Social theorist (19^th the first to write about capitalism as a social structure element. Sometimes “use value” is outweighed by “exchanged value”( the more experienced the better)

Decode the ad – Who is the “commodity self” of the 4WD

The commodity self is aimed for the mucho men (men that like hard labour). In Toyota ad, “Born from the earth” because the jumping thing is cliché and embarrassing …they just placed the shadow of people jumpy. Clever techniques.

To do spoof ads – look at spoofad.com Look at the ad buster magazines