Chapter 26: Image Based Culture Advertising and Pop culture Article Summary

The society we live in today is primarily based around the media and the advertising industry. Many refer to our society as a market society. A market society is guided by the principle that satisfaction should be achieved via the market place. Or in other words, through the institutions and structures who sell products to customers. With this attitude, markets think that if goods themselves aren't the focus of perceived happiness, then they need to be connected in some way to the things that are. To do this, advertising promotes images of what the audience perceives as "the good life" when advertising their product. This type of advertising works by drawing upon and rechanneling concerns that the target audience already shares. Advertising will knit a company's product into the fabric of social life and cultural significance in our society. In a sense, advertising itself has become not manipulation, but instead "partipulation", where the audience participates in their own manipulation. The article also talks about how advertising has turned into a commodity-image system. Advertising as a commodity-image system provides a particular mode of self validation that is integrally connected with what one has rather than what one is. It is so strong that commentators have said that advertising is almost a new religious system in which people construct their identities through the commodity form. They refer to commodities as almost a super magical power that makes anything possible with the purchase of a product, and these commodities play an influential mixture on the psychological, social, and physical roles in its relations with people. The advertising world propels us towards physical things as means of satisfaction, and that happiness lies at the end of every purchase. People in our society today are turning to products to make them happy rather than the life experiences that bring them true happiness. Advertisers understand this and use it to their advantage when selling their product. They now appeal to the emotional side of customers, and instead sell emotion to a consumer rather than the product. They convince the consumer that they cannot live without the product, and that the product will bring them happiness and a good life. People unconsciously believe these advertisements and purchase products for the feeling associated with the product. This method is extremely affective for companies and their profits. However, advertising has a profound effect on our society and how people value the things they have versus the people they are.