The Battle for Your Mind (2001)

From the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does happiness reside in a bottle of perfume? Is your only concern the sweat under your arms? We take a look at the world of advertising

In 1969 the American Association of Advertising Agencies estimated that approximately 1,600 advertisements were aimed at each individual every day. That may seem a ridiculous number at first but the individual is not aware of most of them. The average person is likely to take momentarily notice of about 60 to 80 commercials a day with only 10 to 13 making a conscious impression. The number of advertisements hitting each individual today is certainly higher. You can now find advertisements regularly covering taxis, buses, toilets, envelopes, phone boxes and golf balls. In order to maintain sanity amongst this constant bombardment each individual has to erect a sort of sensory screen that can detect the oncoming signal and reject it.

On rare occasions advertisements are clever, entertaining and creative. Advertisements of this variety are few and far between, but they do exist and it would be incorrect to say that all advertising is “bad”. However, success in advertising is dependent upon the ability to manipulate the emotions, thoughts, and intelligence of the target audience to achieve the desired reaction—to get them to buy your product or service over that of your competitors. Typically, ads concern themselves with fantasy; a constructed world usually beyond the reach of our everyday experiences. They offer a vision of a world where happiness resides in a bottle of perfume, where your only concern is the sweat under your arms, and where a a low calorie drink could change your life (as part of a well-balanced diet of course).

Advertising has conditioned generations to accept it as an inescapable part of the landscape, as ubiquitous as night and day. There was a time, however, when advertising was widely considered an unwanted distraction. For example, editors initially thought ads were an intrusion upon the reader and would segregate all the adverts to the back of their magazine where they were out of the way.

“Fluff”

The roots of mass advertising lie in magazines and took off over 100 years ago when industries began producing vast amounts of consumer goods. Since broadcasting didn’t exist and newspapers were largely local, magazines were the only national advertising medium. The fact that you could produce high quality colour graphics on heavy paper, unlike newspapers, meant that magazines were much favoured by advertisers.

As soon as advertising revenue became important, at around 1890, ad agencies insisted that ads be moved from the back of magazines to the front. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before major advertisers were demanding that their ads appear opposite the opening pages of major articles. But it didn’t end there. Editors were soon selecting articles based not only on the basis of their expected interest to its readers but for their influence of advertisements.

As mass advertising grew, “liberal” and “radical” ideas in editorials became a problem. So did serious articles. A reader in an analytical frame of mind was unlikely to be enthusiastic about an advertisement for a trivial product. An article about genuine social suffering would certainly interrupt the “buying mood”. What was the solution? Easy, change the content. Better still, just fill the publication with material that will attract the readership the advertisers want. Before television emerged in the 1950’s, successful magazines were 65 percent ads. By that time, most magazines were fundamentally designed for advertising rather than editorial matter (see Vogue, Talk, Here’s Health, etc). Pick any random magazine off the newsagent’s shelf today and you’ll have a tough time trying to spot the difference between an article and an advertisement. Compare the differences between the styles, content and ideas. Most of the material claiming to be an “article” is in fact product promotion. Some writers call this “fluff”, a term used to describe material which is not news in any real sense but is non-advertising material supporting advertisers (see promotion sections in Vogue, Marie Claire, Woman’s Own, Muscle and Fitness, etc). Advertsiers want “fluff”, to create a buying mood.

One of the best examples to demonstrate the level of influence major advertisers now have over the contents of magazines is Vogue magazine. The January 2001 issue totalled 186 pages. Of those 186 pages, 87 were full-page ads. (In the first 66 pages there are 50 full-page ads.) Another 21 pages could be described as “fluff”, product promotion. The first “article” comes in at page 33. 17 pages consist of travel, food and horoscope sections. That leaves 61 pages out of 186 for article space. Of those 61 pages, 43 are full-page photographs. The main article entitled “Stars In Their Own Eyes” totals 28 pages, 27 of which are full-page photographs with 1 page of text. Richard Shortway, editor of Vogue, has said, “The cold, hard, facts of magazine publishing mean that those who advertise get editorial coverage”.

Another good example is Talk magazine. In the first 48 pages of the premier issue there were 46 full-page adverts! Unlike a few decades ago where editors would segregate ads to the back of the magazine on the grounds that it was an infringement upon the reader, the of bulk of adverting now appears in the opening pages—just where the advertisers want them.

Garbage

Advertising’s greatest effect on the mind is not so much its detail, but the mass conditioning attempted by the same basic themes occurring over and over as we slouch in a chair and uncritically listen to the garbage emitting from the box everyday.

Advertising likes to tell us how to think and how not to think. Some of the criteria we are told to use include how one should judge what is credible and incredible, what is success and failure, and how we should judge ourselves against others. Even though the advertisers are at war with each other for viewers’ and readers’ attention, the same themes keep cropping up again and again. That is because all advertising is born out of the same system, capitalism. Advertising does not exist in a vacuum; it is part of a system. Forget the three R’s taught in the education system; it is the 3 C’s in advertising that count—consumerism, conformity and competition.

Some advertisers aren’t shy to declare their support for capitalist ideas:

• “Business is the engine of society. Without it there would be no jobs. No products. No competition. No advancements.” (A 1996 Microsoft ad)
• “Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.” (Mead Coated Papers)
• “You don’t win silver, you lose gold”. (Nike)
• “Identify yourself”. (Mitsubishi)

There are many researchers who believe subliminal advertising is being employed by a number of major advertisers to influence the subconscious mind of its viewers and readers. (Subliminal advertising is defined as images and messages that are below the threshold of conscious perception, but which will nevertheless affect the viewer on a subconscious level). The use of subliminal advertising may or may not be a reality. That is not the important thing. What we have to look at the reason for the existence of advertising in the first place, not necessarily the techniques advertiser’s employ.

Hype

The Vice President of Proctor and Gamble made a statement over 20 years ago which is truer today than ever. He said, “We’re in programming first to assume a good environment for advertising“.

In 1965 the Federal Communications Commission held hearings to determine how much influence advertisers had on non-commercial content of television and radio. Albert N. Halverstadt, then general advertising manager of Procter and Gamble, was particularly interested in the image of business and business people. He gave the FCC formal requirements for television programs:

“There will be no material on any of our programs which could in any way further the concept of business as cold, ruthless, and lacking all sentiment or spiritual motivation. If a businessman is cast in the role of a villain, it must be made clear that he is not typical but is as much despised by his fellow businessmen as he is by other members of society”.

The manager of corporate communications for General Electric has said, “We insist on a program environment that reinforces our corporate image”.

Far from being content with dominating the pages of popular magazines, major advertisers—BP, Pepsi, Levi’s, Cadburys, Ford, Nike and the rest—have set to conquer the almighty task of controlling the messages that emit from the black box in the corner of our rooms. Without doubt TV is the most effective advertising medium. Viewers don’t have time to examine or judge the messages. You sit and listen as the TV talks at you. Far from taking a passing interest, advertisers want to know exactly what time of day and in-between what programmes their ads will be shown because that will define the audience population they are buying. And there is no shortage of time. A double episode of the highly popular American sitcom “Friends” airs about 18 minutes of ads in one hour, which is nearly a third of the programming time. But don’t be mistaken in thinking the scripts of programmes are devoid of advertising influence. The ad agencies aren’t going to let them off that easily. TV executives (like editors) have surrendered to the altar of profit and are forced into the competition for viewer’s attention. Michael L. Buchenbeth has said: “The scripts are written to build tension before the commercials to hold the viewers attention during the commercials“. The basic strategy in programming is not merely geared towards satisfying the audience’s tastes but what is perceived as the most likely to attract advertisers. Like magazines, the difference between ads and programming becomes blurred. Flick the TV on . . . is it soap, a documentary, the news, an ad . . . who knows?

The motion picture has obvious advantages in immediacy, sound, colour over the still image. There is no end to the image and sound creation and manipulation possibilities; the ads with Steve McQueen in are a good example. However, the problem as far as the admen are concerned is the fact that you can only broadcast one message on one programme at a time. If an audience finds an ad boring, too long or too offensive they’re likely to commit the ultimate sin that haunts every ad agency and TV executive—they’ll switch the TV off.

The correct atmosphere is essential for advertising; which is a buying atmosphere. Short, half-hour programmes that are trivial, non-political and humorous are much favoured by advertisers. Coronation St, Star’s in their eyes, GMTV, Neighbours, She’s got to have it, Friends, TOTP, Blind Date (etc, etc) fit the bill well. Richard Lesser, then Vice President of the Grey Advertising Agency, in an article in Advertising Age (12 December 1957) wrote, “Advertisers for years have been studying the integration of the show and the commercials to see how the two can be married to each other“. It is no coincidence, for example, that Rachael and Monica from the American sitcom “Friends” have never appeared on air with anything less than perfect and immaculate hair since they have advertised L’Oreal hair products. Which ads most frequently appear in-between each episode? That’s right, L’Oreal shampoo ads that feature both Rachael and Monica.

What about the News? The fact that the Newsreaders’ scripts are interwoven with the advertisers’ interests is deliberately ignored. We are supposed to think that the ideas are the independent work of professional journalists detached from commercial bias. If the audiences were told that the ideas represented explicit demands of advertisers, the message would lose its impact. Sure, they can say what they want; as long they don’t conflict with the advertisers’ interests. The major advertisers can actually demand they report along certain lines by threatening to pull out their advertising.

Politics too

Advertising has also been used as a tool in the struggle for political ideas. Politicians, leaders and political parties alike have for some time exploited this effective medium. Political campaigns are increasingly looking and sounding more like advertising campaigns with each successive election. Sound-bites, slogans and style are very important considerations in any campaign now. The fact that a political party needs to spend thousands and thousands on advertising campaigns to improve its image just shows how shallow their message is, or the lack of one. Capitalist parties have long since ran out of anything intelligent to say and their only hope is to either re-hash old ideas or change the packaging they sell them in (see “New” Labour). Of course, the problem does not lie in the fact that they promote their political agenda but rather that they have nothing useful to say. Take away all the style and sloganeering and all you are left with is a bunch people who say very average things about very average politics; not worth voting for (see New Labour, again).

Would advertising still exist in with a society based upon common ownership? No. The inhabitants of a socialist society may well decide to have images and messages in the cities and outer environment but instead of being under the control of a profit seeking minority, they would be under the democratic control of the society, and will therefore benefit society instead of retarding it. When everyone has an equal say in what is produced and free access to it, there is no need to seduce people to choose one product or service over other. Of course, there may be a range of products which serve the same function but people will make choices free from the distortion and manipulation of advertising. The need for advertising only exists when different companies are competing over the same market for a bigger cut of the profit. A socialist society won’t require cities, towns, magazines and newspapers to be plastered with images and messages that serve no useful social function but contribute only to pollute the mental environment. There will be no profit to accumulate, no companies to exploit the workforce and no leaders to follow. Creativity, free from the constraints of profit making, can flourish and can be used to benefit society, and not be wasted on the anti-social aims of advertising agencies. Ideas, concepts and solutions will not be judged by their ability to realise a profit but by their value to its people.

T. M. Jones

The Magazine War (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Three million pounds is spent every day in this country by young unmarried people up to the age of 24. There are plenty of industries—cosmetics, clothing, and so on—which are eager to help them spend this money: the magazine publishers also are after their share. 

Young girls, for example, can choose from an increasingly wide range of picture papers with names—Roxy, Valentine and so on—which indicate that they are very different from the magazines which used to be read by young girls, full as they were of tuck-shops and winning goals scored at hockey. The raw material of these magazines is the weakest of love stories, sometimes— incredibly—involving a famous singer. Some of the strips are said to be inspired by the title of a song hit, although it is usually difficult to discern the connection. Pop singers are prominently featured, giving advice, reviewing records. All of which probably helps to sell the latest products of the recording companies. The characters in the strips have invulnerable morals. Every girl, like a piece in a jig-saw puzzle, must find her boy. Of course, there are obstacles, but love—innocent, chaste and eternal—solves everything in the last picture.

Who publishes this twaddle? On the one hand, Fleetway Publications Ltd. puts out Roxy, Valentine and Marilyn. On the other, Odhams Press Ltd. is responsible for Mirabelle, Date and Marty (named after a rock and roll singer). At the moment, Odhams are setting the pace; Mirabelle and Marty are glossy, with some of the stories told in photographs: Fleetway are trying to catch up with the saucy (and pricey) Honey which, like Date, was introduced last month. Of course, the magazines kick off with a free gift—Marty gave transfer portraits of current heart-throbs, which could be ironed on to a blouse or headscarf.

The picture romance magazines are a sideshow in the war between the two great publishing houses. Fleetway is the result of the Daily Mirror, in December. 1958, paying about £16 million for Amalgamated Press Ltd. (Womans Weekly, The Autocar, Marilyn), which had been owned by the Berry family. Odhams, which was already publishing Woman, John Bull, Picturegoer, etc., paid nearly £2 million in April, 1959, to absorb Hulton Press (Lilliput, Housewife) and a month later bought—for £12.7 million—their bitterest rival, George Newnes Ltd. Newnes had published Womans Own, Tit Bits and the Practical Householder, etc.; they also owned C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd., the publishers of Mirabelle. Odhams is now the largest of the magazine groups with an enormous printing works at Watford.

These two publishing giants are fighting for the fivepennies of the little girl who daydreams at her typewriter or the factory machine. Yet it is difficult to find anybody who will admit to both reading and enjoying the picture love books Here are two opinions:

17 year old: Well, they’re all the same. I don't like them, although 1 do read them. Some of my friends buy them every week and my little sister gets lots of them. I suppose they must like them or perhaps it's the pictures and transfers and things they give away.

18 year old: I just pick them up and read them and then I think, well, I don’t know—why did 1 read that? 1 mean, it never happens, does it? You get on a 'bus and look at a chap and he looks at you and oooh! Well, it never happens, does it? It's not what you find in them, it's girls about sixteen wishing they could find what's in them.

Nevertheless, Marilyn and Mirabelle, for example, each sell nearly 400,000 copies every week. Put this fact alongside the lament of a London librarian, a few years ago, that “Children of fourteen and fifteen seem to want only books written for five-year-olds. And the older teenagers hardly ever enter the public library at all.” It seems a rather depressing picture.

It is pointless to blame the youngsters alone. If a girl has a job like a copy typist or a sweet packer, she often needs about the same mental power to read one of the strip romances as she does to earn her living. And the frustration and boredom of it all means that she is receptive to the magazines which promise, as one does, “Hundreds of wonderful love scenes to make your eyes dreamy!"

There’s plenty of people to tell us that teenagers are a social problem, youngsters in difficulty over growing up. But capitalism has few tears to shed for them. For in truth they are a market, to be captured and exploited. No shareholder ever wept over that.

Ivan

Blue Pencilled People (1995)

Theatre Review from the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editing Process by Meredith Oakes, The Royal Court Theatre.

Meredith Oakes's play The Editing Process is apparently about the take-over of a small magazine by a predatory capitalist entrepreneur. Enter the new owner's efficiency expert, together with the corporate image consultant, and activities are rationalised, savings (sic) realised, and talk of redundancies is in the air.

Michael Billington in the Guardian complains that the play refuses "to expand into a metaphor for the crisis currently affecting the publishing business". And Billington is right. There is no acknowledgment of the larger world in which the characters operate.

Oakes is good at showing the importance of work: revealing the impact of work on personality; pointing to its centrality in life, as the basis of most social relations. But, according to Oakes, behaviour has no economic and social reference points. Displays of power and dependency at work are seen as matters of individual choice and not as concomitants of the social relations of work. Indeed in defence of her position Oakes writes in a letter to the Guardian that "whatever system prevails, a power is sought by a few people. The quality of society depends on the moral choices those people make, not the political labels they wear".

Socialists see this as just plain wrong. Power is not a universal to be forever the basis of struggle and conflict. Power is a feature of an economically-divided society, and its generalised appearance is rooted in economic divisions. Oakes sees power and morality as independent variables: socialists recognise the primary impact of economic divisions in determining the character of ideas in what Marx called "the superstructure of society".

Within its limitations The Editing Process is a revealing, often very funny, play which us presented with wit and panache. But it is fundamentally flawed. Its characters and their actions are economically and socially adrift. Their behaviours are rooted in personal whims and idiosyncrasies that lack for economic and social underpinning. Like statues without legs Oakes's characters have separated from the economic foundations which might have more adequately accounted for their actions. The result is a series of undimensional snapshots of a world which properly demands a multi-dimensional focus.

Michael Gill

Gels in pearls and all that (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

What have Jenny Greene, Marcus Binney, Michael Clayton, Deirdre McSharn and Sally O'Sullivan in common? You probably have never heard of any of them. They are rivals of the ten million pound advertising revenue on offer for the increasing number of "Country" magazines on sale. Interest in the countryside is booming and 500,000 copies are sold each month.

Of course, the type of country life featured is selective. Small farmers, working hard to feed their families as well as paying off their mortgages and various hire purchase commitments don't feature much on their pages. Although occasional genuflections are made in the direction of conservation, the main preoccupation of the well established Country Homes, Horse and Hound and Country Life, as well as the newcomers Country Living and Landscape is the homes and lifestyles of the affluent owners of country mansions. 

"You have to be be of a certain class to get in [the magazine]" says Jenny Greene of Country Life. "There's always been a joke that no-one who lives at a numbered house is ever featured." Of course, mistakes do happen. Once the magazine printed an engagement portrait of "the lovely Honora Lineham of Mendip House, Woodberry Down". It just so happened that the lady's name was Noreen, her mother did household cleaning and Mendip House is a council block of flats in North London. Still, Noreen was wearing pearls.

Who are the 500,000 purchasers of these magazines? They certainly are not members of the executive country set—there aren't half a million of them around! Then who are they, apart from patients reading back numbers in doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms? Again, Greene " . . . would think the magazine is a great badge for people in the suburbs. It's got the tremendous glamour of top people about it". Your "point to point" may be negotiating a trolley round the local supermarket but for £1.20 an issue you can impress your friends and let your imagination go into overdrive.

Of course, this type of vicarious living is not confined to visions of how others live "graciously" in the country. Women buy glossy magazines which may carry less romantic fiction than some years ago but instead talk of dresses costing hundreds of pounds, "beauty" improvements costing thousands and recipes calling for the use of game, fresh river trout and smoked salmon. Magazines for men peddle a dream world which is different in substance but not degree. The owner of a second-hand Vespa reads about motorbikes of thousands cc, costing the related thousands of pounds, while the often unhealthy under-exercised office worker reads about body-building contests. The sex situation is so frequently covered elsewhere that it does not need more than a mention.

Why are those purveyors of fantasies so successful? Soap operas like EastEnders and Coronation Street present a world in which "ordinary" people are supposed to be able to see a reflection of their own lives. These glossies want the same people to imagine they could inhabit the world of the wealthy minority.

Eva Goodman

Stereotypes in print (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's role is no longer to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Simpler, more effective birth control has meant that women are freed from the risks and hardships of frequent childbirth. Nevertheless most continue to play a role that is subservient to men, both at home and at work. The female sexual stereotype persists in defining women as the weaker sex - gentle, caring, emotional and unassertive. Traditionally women are admired for being pretty, caring and retiring. The traditional role of men, in contrast, is the authority figure in the family, responsible for providing food and shelter. Men are supposed to be physically strong, aggressive, unhampered by gentleness and emotion.

Biological differences are real enough - women are built to bear children, men to father children and these biological differences dominate relations between the sexes, confining women and men within sexual stereotypes. Women and men respond to their environment and to their biological role in life; therefore many women today "enjoy" a dual role as homemaker and worker resulting in them having to try to balance the responsibilities of work and home, fitting work in around shopping, cooking and cleaning.

In what little time is left over from these activities women may choose to relax by reading some of the bewildering array of homemaking magazines available to them but for which there is no equivalent for men. Men's magazines consist of periodicals on hobbies, sport and women as sex objects. Nothing on running a home, how to make the housekeeping go further, how to get a cleaner wash or how to make up to look attractive to the opposite sex. In magazines designed for the male interest women appear only as decoration, reinforcing their subservient position in society at large. Media images portray women simultaneously as sex objects, as independent (but still sexually attractive), as career women, as doting mothers obsessed with food and clean laundry.

The format of women's magazines can be explained by the fact that each is competing for sales, therefore each must appeal to the broadest section of the female population by including something for everyone. What does a typical women's weekly contain? A mixture of articles on homemaking, health, fashion, competitions, special features and possibly politics interspersed with a lot of advertisements and a horoscope column.

Competitions include an opportunity to "Win A Man" from a computer dating agency by listing his personal attributes in order of importance. Should he be tall, handsome, professional, educated? Another offers a prize of a cleaning person for six months if "you can tell us in no more than 35 witty words  . . . " For those women who have already found the man of their dreams and want to hold onto him a little longer there is a chance to win a set of pots and pans by answering four simple questions.

Lavishly illustrated recipe pages inform women that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach but in case they're too liberal with the cholestorol, the insurance companies reassure women that for a small payment they won't be left penniless in widowhood. "Romance" features highly - recipes for romance, romantic lighting for the home - but one can't be overweight and attractive to the opposite sex so articles on health include numerous fad diets and exercises to keep bums and other bumps in shape.

Fashion articles demonstrate how to dress and make up to look "sexy" and there is a proliferation of homemaking articles guaranteed to make readers perfect wives. Scattered throughout the magazines are adverts for food - some of them ambiguous - "What are you giving your old man tonight?" Not, not a dose of sexual subservience, but a packet of frozen hamburgers. For those who can't manage the housekeeping. there are plenty of ads for mail order catalogues, all of them offering a wide selection of goods to be paid for on the Never-Never.

Tampon manufacturers battle to sell their products using all sorts of technical diagrams and jargon - but disguise the possibility of toxic shock syndrome in very small print. 

The "Politics" column (if there is one) will most likely deal with some of the less attractive aspects of being female in capitalist society - for example one column bemoans the lack of screening facilities for early detection of breast and cervical cancer although, apart from criticising government underfunding of these health services, there is little political comment.

The ideas put across in these magazines occupy women's minds with trivia but at the same time subtly reinforce the dominant values of capitalist society, of privacy, family and home. Even those magazines which claim to appeal to the "liberated" woman concede only that she has an equal place in the job market - liberated in so far as she may not depend on a man to dole out the housekeeping. She is free to go out and obtain it for herself by selling her mental and physical energies to an employer for a wage or salary.

True liberation from traditional roles will only come through a partnership of men and women united in their desire for socialism. How might socialism change women's position? For a start, they will be on an equal footing with men. Neither will be obliged to sell their labour power to a capitalist class in order to survive. In addition women will be freed from their role in life. HUman beings will share all the tasks necessary to run society equally and in partnership with one another and we won't need glossy magazines to tell us how to do it.

Cathy Gillespie