Hello and welcome back. Does advertising create unnecessary wants? Does it act against the public interest? Or, does it inform the public by helping consumers identify commercial products and services that will serve their needs and wants? These varying points of view about advertising's role in society reflects significant differences in opinion about the worth of advertising. This lecture examines the public's ideas about the advertising profession and the role it plays. It does so by reviewing the opinions expressed about advertising in opinion polls, books, articles, websites, and in popular cultural media like movies and television. I want to begin with the results of a recent Gallup poll in which a variety of professions were assessed with regard to the public's opinion of the honesty and ethical standards used and held by the people in these different professions. You'll note that in this the profession of nursing stands at the top with 82% of people believing and saying that they are honest and ethical in their behavior. Behind them at 70% are grade school teachers. Medical doctors and police officers, and clergy all hovered more down toward the 50% mark. But if you look at the bottom of this chart, you'll see that 20% and below goes to five professions. Lawyers, advertising practitioners, car salespeople, members of congress, and lobbyists. What this means when we look at the numbers with regards to advertising is that 14% of the American population considers that advertising practitioners are generally honest and have high ethical standards. When it's all taken together, that's a fairly low perception of the worth and value of the profession? If we go back to popular culture representations of advertising in Hollywood film we can find these as far back at least as the middle of the 20th century. I'd like you to look at a couple of these that are quite well-known, and famous in terms of the representation of advertising in Hollywood films. The first is from Mr. Blanding's Builds His Dream House in 1948. A very popular movie at the time, but quite biting in the criticism it offers of advertising. >> That's awful. >> That's all? >> You don't see it, do you father? >> No, a fella wants to sell his house, so he puts an ad in the paper. What do you expect him to do, take it to the United Nations? >> There must be more to it than that, isn't there, dear? >> Certainly, mother. What some people don't see is the whole sordid picture. A poor, honest farmer pushed to the wall by hardship until finally, in desperation, he's forced to sell. He stoops to the crass commercialism of newspaper advertising. >> Oh, dear. Newspaper advertising hm, crass commercialism hm? >> Miss Stellwagon says advertising is a basically parasitic profession. >> You don't say. >> Miss Stellwagon says advertising makes people who can't afford it buy things they don't want with money they haven't got. >> Oh she does, does she? Well, perhaps your Miss Stellwagon is right. Perhaps I should quit this basically parasitic profession which at the very moment is paying for your fancy tuition. And those extra French lessons and that progressive summer camp. To say nothing of the very braces on your back teeth. >> From a similar time period, let's have a look at The Hucksters from 1947 and see what's exactly said there about the nature of the advertising profession. >> Darling I've seen you too troubled too often with what you've been doing. What is it? What is it? >> I just threw away my job. Got fed up. You and I are going to have to wait a long, long time before we could be married. That's what I wanted to tell you. So if you want out Kay. >> I see. >> It's a matter of self respect. Just getting out of the army and all, I don't know. Things look different to me. I was becoming like that guy over there. >> Hey, you, you, you, you, you, you! Step right down here, friends, and get your pop You can't afford to be without one. Now here they are. >> You understand, Kay? >> Of course I understand. You're such a child, darling. You've come to hate the business you're in and you just want to drop it and go live on a beach in Tahiti or something. >> That's an idea. >> Yes but Vic you're too good for that. Why don't you sell things you believe in? And sell them with dignity and taste. That's a career for any man. A career to be proud of. What's wrong with that? >> Nothing. Nothing at all. >> [SOUND] Well you can see from both of these, that Hollywood is presenting a view of advertising that is not particularly positive. In fact, it's really rather negative. And the idea is that when we see this over and over and over again, then this is what the infor, this is the information. This is what the public thinks about advertising. Where else except for sources like this do they get their ideas about how advertising works? Very few people ever set foot in an advertising agency. And so they depend on books and opinion leaders and Hollywood and television to give them ideas about how the profession works. Now if we look at written sources in the 20th century we can find a variety of opinions, both positive and negative, expressed by important opinion leaders. For example the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith blamed advertising for creating unnecessary desires and wants. A fellow economist, Robert Heilbroner, called advertising subversive toward the public because of it's relentless effort to persuade people to change their life-ways not out of any knowledge of, or deeply held convictions about the good life, but merely to sell. Professor Sut Jhally, a well known cultural critic, called advertising quote, the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history, end of quote. Now some people have expressed far more positive opinions. For example, the former Librarian of Congress and American historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, quote, we read advertisements to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready, even eager, to discover, from the announcement of a new product what we have all along wanted without really knowing it. As professor of advertising Jeff Richards wrote, advertising is the art and sole of capitalism. It captures a moment of time through the lens of commerce, reflecting and affecting our lives, making us laugh and cry, while simultaneously giving traction to the engine that propels the free market economy. Now advertising has not always been held in a low opinion. As a matter of fact if we go back more than a 100 years to let's say around the turn of the 20th century. We find that advertising was not something that the public had seen a great deal of. It was not overdosed on it. Advertising didn't clutter people's lives in quite the same way that it does in the modern period. And thus the story is told very interestingly, of how the sailboats on the Hudson River going up and down the river would sail close to the shore where there were enormous billboards put up. The public would sit in deck chairs for example, talk about the ads and find this very entertaining. Today, when we look out and the see the landscape peppered with advertisements like this, we tend to be annoyed and not like it very much. But if we put ourselves back in time, we can see that, in a different age advertisements may not have been so troublesome as they seem to be to many people in the modern period. Now, one of the difficulties in older advertising is that there was no regulation including no self-regulation. And thus advertisers could say pretty much what they wanted to about the benefits of the products that they offered. The advertisement that you see on the screen now offers an oil that will cure your rheumatism. Now, if this were the case, that this oil solved such problems as arthritic rheumatism, then it would still be on the market and people would be flocking to stores to buy it. Unfortunately, it didn't work quite like that. People believed that many of these products, these patent medicines, had very high alcohol content or sometimes various drugs in them like opiates that may have calmed people's feelings. But they didn't really affect the cures that were promised in them. Now after a while the public began to be suspicious of this kind of advertising because of the outrageous and fantastical kind of claims that were made in it. And thus they were simmering around by the early decades of the 20th century some public distrust and some public concern over the ethics of advertising. It didn't just spring full-blown into the mid-20th century, but it had been developing over a period of time. And really, from things like this patent medicine advertisement where these claims were unregulated, un-self-policed, and certainly not managed by government. So that the public began to distrust what was said. Now, taken together, most Hollywood and television portrayals of advertising give rise to a set of impressions about the nature of advertising. These impressions are widely shared among the public. Let's have a look at what some of these are. First of all, one impression that's conveyed about advertising in the media is that it is easy work. If you watch this clip from the film, Nothing in Common from 1986 we see the image of advertising being playful, easy, simple kind of work, and maybe fun as well. [SOUND]. >> Hey brother, tell us how your life has been shattered ever since you turned away from colonial and put your faith in other airlines. >> I, I was lost. I had no leg room. I had no pillow. I couldn't even smoke. [NOISE]. >> So board me, and feel the experience. Fly Colonial Airlines. >> What, you're an airplane? >> Yeah, what do you think? >> Anybody want to board Mishi? [CROSSTALK]. >> You said something about a grandma, I like that. >> One, two, three, four. [SOUND]. >> When you're sitting on an airplane in a big and comfy seat. And the fella sitting next to you is one big Arab Sheikh. When you fly into the sky. Now you're really getting high. You're flying on Colonial. And that's no jive. [SOUND] [MUSIC] >> Can't we do this in your office? >> No. No when you hit a dry spot you come back to where you are highest. This is my cubicle. It's a magic space. All right. [MUSIC] >> [NOISE] I like it, it's kind of bluesy. >> A second image that's portrayed of advertising in Hollywood film is that advertising is glamorous work. In the sl-, stills that I'm going to show you now you can see the homes, offices, clothing, and social occasions that advertising professionals have in the movies. What you see is that their lives are very glamorous, indeed. Here are some examples of offices. Pretty glamorous. Here are some examples of the homes that are shown where advertising practitioners live. This one in Malibu. This a very modern, luxurious house or apartment. Here's another from 2013 the movie Passion. And if you look at the clothing that people in advertising professions wear it's always very stylish. This is one older one from 1960s but it's the same. So these ideas of who advertising people are, how they live their lives and so forth are conveyed again and again in Hollywood movies. Look at the social events that advertising practitioners attend in the movies. They're very glamorous. They're very spectacular kinds of evenings. People are well dressed. They're in lovely venues. Now a third impression conveyed by popular culture media about advertising is that advertisers are dishonest. The movie Crazy People from 1990 shows a situation in which an advertising practitioner goes to a mental institution and finds that the inmates there come up with some of the best ads. It's an interesting kind of parody and comedy of advertising, but it does convey the idea that advertisers are dishonest, because what happens is, the inmates of the institution actually tell the truth, and it becomes a very popular form of advertising, and succeeds in the movie. >> Where, where are the proofs? Can I see the Chrysler proofs? >> Hey, how much can you say about a Chrysler, and still be honest with yourself? I mean, nobody cares about he's like an annoying relative who keeps coming over for something to eat. >> He runs the company! >> I, I don't even like Chryslers. You know? I mean they're not sporty. Have you seen the people who drive them, lately? They just don't look normal. Let's face it, Steve, you and I lie for a living and, and, I, I, it's not easy for me to digest that anymore. Excuse me. >> Note also this clip from The Fighting Temptations, 2003, where advertisers are also shown to be dishonest. >> Those are the people that need your product. >> [CROSSTALK]. >> They need your lies, your false images of success and glamour. The poison that causes them to look for fulfillment in material things rather than in people. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if making money is our number one goal, then it's the little people in the little towns that we should exploit. After all, what do they know? They're just a bunch of country bumpkins anyway, right? >> [APPLAUSE] Way to go Darren. [APPLAUSE]. >> Yes. Yes. That's the way we're all going to make money. [APPLAUSE]. >> This opinion of advertising and its public esteem or lack thereof is not necessarily the case in all other countries. In England for example advertising is a fairly high status profession. And scholars and students from prestigious colleges and universities like Oxford and Cambridge often go into advertising. In Brazil, for example, advertising executives are often seen as celebrities. Their work is well-known. It's important. It's talked about in the press, and the people themselves live glamorous lives and they're treated like celebrities. In Kenya where advertising is a much newer thing people seem to appreciate the aspirational culture that's represented in it. They're very tolerant of advertising. They've not seen so much of it that they're tired of it. So the particular viewpoint that the public has of advertising in America is a specifically American set of ideas about it. If we look at other countries, we're liable to find other kinds of additives and other impressions that the public holds about advertising. And I don't believe it's possible to convey on a global scale a single impression that the global public feels and holds about advertising. Recently an internet marketing research organization asked 500 respondents about their perceptions of advertising. They found that only 3% of those surveyed described the claims that advertising makes as very accurate. Other had this to say, ads are very exaggerated, 19%, ads are somewhat exaggerated, 57%, and ads are somewhat accurate, only 21%. They also reported these results. 87% of the people surveyed think that at least half or more of the cleaning products are photoshopped. 80% think that half or more shampoo ads are photoshopped. And 96% think that half or more weight loss ads are photoshopped. 38% of people wish claims in advertising were more accurate. 32% want to know what ads are trying to do. 17% wish there were laws to regulate ads. And only 8% say they just enjoy the ads. And a further 5% say they don't pay attention. Now to follow up on the topics that we've talked about today, namely the public perception of and the popular media and textual representation of advertising in American culture, you can consult Ad Text. There are at least four units on Ad Text that are relevant to this discussion. These include Advertising in the Public Eye, High Culture/Low Culture. Hollywood Looks at Advertising, and A Brief History of Advertising in American society. You'll find lots of references in these various units to articles that have been published in Advertising & Society Review, the online journal published by the Advertising Educational Foundation, and in other published sources and websites. This course is a collaborative venture of Duke University and the Advertising Educational Foundation.
