Money --> Advertising

In class, when we read the facts and figures of companies who advertise, we see a number. This number is typically shocking--somewhere in the millions and billions. 800 million to cereal brands, a few hundred million more for McD's--whatever.  Can you truly measure the effort of advertising with money?

The article we read, the "Searching for the Why of Buy," is, in my opinion, a better "taste" of how far you need to go in advertising. Not necessarily spending money on advertising/PR firms, but what works best. Money can only get you so far, and it shouldn't be the last thing we look at when we examine the effects of a consumer society-- we need to see the prevalence of these methods, not just their price tag.

I personally find it frightening that advertising has gone so far that it actually takes up enough of our brain that we know corporate logos and slogans--thousands of them.

Time Magazine released an interesting article last November entitled "Shoptimism". The article is an interview with a former top-man at both Land's End (clothing company) and Esquire magazine. In the interview, Eisenberg explains the two different types of "buyers":

The classic buyer who tries to buy only things that he or she needs, who thinks about it rationally, who compares prices. The romantic buyer shops with his or her heart. The romantic may buy something because it is trendy or it has a really cool design or because he or she is feeling blue and needs a pick-me-up.

Which buyer are you? How has this changed as a result of the recession? Perhaps most interesting is the romantic buyer, for whom buying something actually affects their mood. Is this making buying something like a drug?

A little less than a year ago, the New York Times published a similar article, entitled "Message in What We Buy, but Nobody's Listening". Please check it out. In my view, the most interesting passage is when Dr. Miller explains how we subconsciously interpret signs of wealth, like this example: 

 Suppose, during a date, you casually say, “The sugar maples in Harvard Yard were so beautiful every fall term.” Here’s what you’re signaling, as translated by Dr. Miller:

“My S.A.T. scores were sufficiently high (roughly 720 out of 800) that I could get admitted, so my I.Q. is above 135, and I had sufficient conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellectual openness to pass my classes. Plus, I can recognize a tree.”

 

"Hip hop is Dead"

In 2006, rapper Nas released an album called "Hip Hop is Dead". In the song named after the album, Nas has a few points that especially pertain to our class discussions of advertisement, particularly in art. Here are a few portions that I think are relevant:

What influenced my raps? Stick ups and killings
Kidnappings, project buildings, drug dealings
Criticize that, why is that?
Cuz Nas rap is compared to legitimized crap
Cuz we love to talk on a** we gettin'
Most intellectuals will only half listen...

Everybody sound the same, commercialize the game
Reminiscin' when it wasn't all business
If it got where it started
So we all gather here for the dearly departed

From "Beat Street" to commercials on Mickey D's
From gold cables to Jacobs
From plain facials to Botox and face lifts

For the rest of the lyrics, click here, my source.

When you listen to hip hop or rap today, what do you hear in the lyrics? Like Nas says, most rap is "legitimized crap," just a 3 or 4 minute report on cars, prostitutes, and jewelry, a far cry from low-income and sometimes gang related raps that started the hip-hop movement in the 70s.

In class, we read an article about how art has become advertising and advertising has become art. Music, a form a of art, is absolutely a reflection of that. I'm not saying that all music is all advertising. But I do think that a lot of over commercialized pop and hip hop music is focused around materialism. Does this mean that America is materialistic, if some of our most popular (but maybe not artistic) music is?

Why don't we know this?

A few weeks ago, we discussed Native Americans. Mr. O'Connor mentioned that he could only name a couple dozen or so tribes. I myself was stuck after the first 15 or so. It seems like a sporcle quiz: how many can you get?

I checked on Sporcle if there was, in fact, such a quiz. I could only find quizzes such as "can you name the most populous Native American tribes?" To be honest, I'm almost relieved that there wasn't a quiz asking for all 564 nations to be named. I'm certain that no one would be able to do even passably well, unless they were a scholar of Native American history.

I remember being in Arizona (where my family goes at least once or twice a year, to Scottsdale) and reading a book by Tony Hillerman about how there was a Navajo word for white people, but no word for a Native American who was not a member of their tribe (in other words, no name for the race of Native Americans). I thought it was strange, at the time, but I guess it makes more sense.

In the book the Shadow Catcher, a part fiction/part biography of Edward Curtis (a photographer known for his dishonest portraits of Native Americans), the author mentions how strange it is that so many car companies and models are named after Native American tribes. Think about it--Pontiac, Tahoe, Navajo, Comanche, Cheyenne, etc.

Is it ethical to portray Native Americans as something wild, something you need a Jeep to traverse? And why don't we know more about these people?

Teaching Art

There was a time, a few hundred years ago, when being wealthy meant that you were smart, because you were well educated. For women, this education included the fundamentals of art: knowing how to draw and paint, especially. The poorer folk certainly wouldn't have time to spend painting or sketching, so it seems logical that only the rich could engage in that luxury.

Now, however, it seems that the concept of an artist has morphed into an image of a starving Parisian who can barely make a living, but is somehow a creative genius at the same time.

Is art a science, something that can be taught? Pull the brush across the paper this way, and you're good? Can you buy intelligence?