Super Bowl Ads and the Morality of Advertising

It’s Super Bowl week and the air waves are buzzing with talk and previews of some of the multi-million dollar TV ads that will be appearing during the broadcast of the Super Bowl.  Why do corporations pay 4 million dollars for a 30 second spot?  Well, the obvious answer is that they are guaranteed the largest viewing audience of the year.

But a more basic question is this:  Does the advertising work?  Does it move people to go out and buy the products that are being advertised?  And this is a question that applies not just to Super Bowl ads but to most advertising.  Do people buy stuff—stuff they did not plan on buying, stuff they did not realize they needed--because they see/hear/read ads?

Does advertising work? Of course! Would tough-minded, bottom-line oriented businesses spend $4 million for a half minute if they were not certain that it works?

The still more important question is this:  What does advertising do to us?

 Fifty-seven years ago, in 1957, a man by the name of Vance Packard wrote a book in which he “exposed” the hidden psychological techniques advertisers were beginning to use to persuade people to buy stuff.  Packard describes how motivational research in the forties and fifties was used to market to peoples’ hidden needs.  Appeals to such needs as ego gratification, power, and upward mobility, assurance of sexual attractiveness, and assurance of worth became standard appeals employed by the “Mad Men” marketers. 

 

Packard warned of the dangers of exploiting these deep seated needs.  What is the morality of “encouraging non-rational and impulsive buying?”  What is the morality of “playing upon hidden weaknesses and frailties to sell products?”  What is the morality of “manipulating the desires of small children?”  What is the morality of “exploiting our deepest sexual sensitivities and yearnings for commercial purposes?”  What is the morality of encouraging “an attitude of wastefulness toward natural resources by encouraging the psychological obsolescence of products already in use?”

These were questions that many academics and even advertising people were asking in the post-war boom of advertising and consumerism.  Almost nobody seems to be asking them today.  In fact, younger generations are so accustomed to swimming in the water of consumerism that they don’t realize it is the water that they swim in.  Consumerism has become the great good thing which brings joy to the individuals and prosperity and well-being to the nations which consumes the most.

(Next George Will vs. Vance Packard)