COP Lecture 7 - Consumerism: Persuasion, society, Brand and culture

COP Lecture

Consumerism: Persuasion, society, Brand and culture

Modern form of culture that emerged in early 20th century

BEAST!

Building cash register New York world's fair

Rise of US consumerism

Consumerism and our unconscious desires

Sigemund Freud and Edmud Bernays

FILMS

Century of Self - Adam Curtis 2002

No Logo - Naomi Klein 1999

Sigmund Freud 1856 - 1939

Father of discipline known as psychoanalysis 

Hidden or subconscious desires explain human nature

Animal instincts which need controlling 

'civilisation and its discontents' 1930

"awareness of ourselves is just the tip of the ice berg"

ID EGO SUPEREGO

Tension between civilization and the individual 

Human instincts incompatible with community

for example:

"Desire to instantly have sex with anyone we find attractive"

"anyone who we consider a threat getting in between our goals we want to 'destroy'"

instinctual desires that never get acted upon

We are constantly frustrated and restrained

Anxieties

The pleasure principle 

Freud in contrast with WW1

'Nauseating celebration of WW1 at the moment' 

WW1 proved Freud's points and shown an example of how people wanted to behave

Base desires and motivations which associate our desires

Edward Bernays 

Created Public Relations

Employed by propaganda office during WW1

Attach a related meaning to products you can make people desire these or want them 

Make people feel that their instinctual desires are being met when buying things

Psychoanalytic desires - Public relations

Cigarettes companies - Lucky strike

Cigarette smoking for women was viewed negatively back in 1929

PR student on Easter day parade - torches of freedom (cigarettes)

Suffragette (feminist) example of freedom and power

Smoking become and icon for women to feel free and independent 

Those Suffragette women who smoked on Easter day parade became symbols to all women

This began an era of:

Product placement

Celebrity endorsements

Pseudo scientific reports

Bernays was the man who came up that doctors smoked cigarettes 

David Cameron trained as a PR guru

President Coolidge wanted to seem more desirable to the public

Henry Ford (1863-1947) - Fordism

At the same time, Henry Ford began creating Ford auto mobiles

Fordism is a term for production lines where people create small elements of a larger items. The logic of this method of production

Idea that the workers worked so hard creating Ford cars so they could eventually buy a Ford

1910- 20000 amount of cars price is $850

1916- 600000 $360

1927 15,000,000 $290

Product competition:

Aunt Jemimas pancake flower - Hence love or history etc

Hartley's jam 'The greatest name in jam making'

Emergence of contemporary advertising 

Need culture moves into Desire culture

'Chanel'

'I shop therefore I am'

The Hidden persuaders Vance Packard

8 common techniques to create an irrational desire for their products:

1. Selling emotional security (also does this nowerdays)
2. Selling reassurance of worth
3. selling ego gratification
4. Creative outlets
5. Love objects
6. Sense of power
7. Sense of roots
8. Selling immortality 

Fridge Freezer causes you to waste more food than you use

knowledge and emotional security gained by knowing you have food at home

"blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere"

'Torches of sexual oppression'

Bernays - Public opinion

" a new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd"

Educated elite to manage the citizens 

Manufacturing consent

Create a system where people's desires are being met/satiated then people will feel as they have a place

Illusion of freedoin

Deregulate markets - Allow big businesses to flourish.

Democratic society

Stop Shopping and start thinking g20

Russian revolution 

Communism 

Zaarist

Peace Land Bread 1917

Equal redistribution of wealth

A revolution could start in America and the elite's money could be seized

BLACK TUESDAY 

Biggest crash of capitalism in America. The Wall street crash

History of capitalism shows boom times and then crashes

Great Depression 

Joblessness

Transients

Political Class

Roosevelt and the New Deal 1933-36

Total control over individual influence

Futurama 

Giant PR exercise which was the NY world fair 1940

Pioneered by Bernays 

Comparing America and celebrating consumerism in relation to the rest of the world

Free citizen in America, can do things there which you cant do in RUSSIA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World's_Fair)

Futurama - A world where if people paid to contribute to, then this future world would exist

Freedom because you can buy products

Democra-City

Consumer system expressed as a city

Doesn't represent citizen participation

Illusion of democracy

Becomes a consumerist society 

 The public is kept fooled into a meaningless life and kept subdued

"you are not what you own"

Ideological project

Through consumption our desires can be met

Consumer self

Politicians continue to be hand in hand with business

Free market

Status quo