Lessons On Advertising From Across The Atlantic
i really wish I was above the adverts but I am very much not
All over the globe, people are pretty similar. We experience “universal emotions”, happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, etc. Little pawns in this grand chess game of life, though, we all play on slightly different boards. A startling observation about the American board is its relationship with professional institutions, namely corporations.
Unsurprisingly, America has always been a more sectarian society. In part due to its origins as an offshoot of English Whigs. The English Whigs were a political faction in the late 17th and early 18th century who held several key beliefs. They advocated for limited monarchy, constitutionalism, and the supremacy of the parliament over the monarchy. Whigs also supported religious toleration and individual liberties, viewing them as fundamental to a just society. This likely came about as a response to the crushing feudalism rampant in Europe at the time, and as a clapback against the power of the church which was at the height of decline around the same period. Paired with its multicultural origins, this paints a aspirant underdog picture of the USA. There are absolutely hideous chapters to this story (wiping out ~90% of the native population, slavery, etc), but that is a discussion for another day. Ultimately, this resistance against power centralisation resulted in a culture of institutional proliferation.
A poignant change of the past century is the collapse and consolidation of these institutions. From unions and boy scouts, to town councils and organised religious gatherings, there is a very real civic breakdown. Civic engagement is a key indicator of individual wellbeing. The tendency has generally been social breakdown and corporate capture.
This has been most pointed with religion. I I’m not a theist or an atheist. I’m irreligious. I simply don’t give a damn. With that in mind I must confess. I believe Humans are biased towards mysticism, we yearn for it. The concept of higher powers has been one that has grappled with consciousness and it has existed and had a role of prevalence in almost every society. Where there are no gods, we create them. In a society that is increasingly irreligious, who are the gods? Enter the political and professional institutions.
A god as mighty as any in the annals of American history is capitalism. This capitalistic god, given personhood through the 14th amendment (among others) has essentially anthropomorphised corporations in the eyes of the law. This anthropomorphised body has one purpose: to generate profit and do everything in its power to make you an ideal consumer. And consumers need to be told what to consume, similarly to how religious adherents need to be told what to believe.
Corporations are essentially just fancy legalese for businesses, and businesses on a fundamental level do five things (to varying degrees); Sales, service, marketing, value creation, and finance.
If a business is a plant, a society that facilitates all five of these things is the ideal seeding ground for business. For the white collar professional environment, there is arguably no better than the US of A. With sales, the “in your face-ness” and adaptability of American sales is best in class. Its linguistic homogeneity and capital rich markets gives every business a wide reach. The customer centric service demonstrated through things such as tipping culture. The pervasive marketing, and the willingness to embed marketing to a shameless degree. Value creation through individualism and the soft deification of entrepreneurs. The cheap credit, loose financial system and status as a global financial centre for raising funds. All of this creates a nurturing womb for corporate personhood and shapes American culture to a heavy degree.
I see it permeate in an especially stark and visceral manner with sales and marketing. American sales takes a dogged optimism and an in-your-face directness. The adverts are everywhere they can be shoehorned into. Witnessing this in real life is especially startling. I was completely flummoxed at my first NBA game.
Dunks for Salesforce, Oracle Suite Seating Area, Google Cloud Executive Suite, the Chase Center, the activity of making noise for Verizon, Waymo adverts, Ford adverts, Kia adverts, the air-dropped Peet's coffee cups at halftime. It's as if I were in a game of Fortnite for Christ's sake. It doesn’t stop. The t-shirt guns, flamethrowers, fleets of scantily clad baddie cheerleaders, the non-stop music, the monotonous and rhythmic defence chant. It was intense. A borderline spiritual experience. I felt as if I were a crowd member in the idiocracy monster truck scene. An extended smorgasbord of corporate advertising and a very pointed Psyop. Though I have something to admit. I liked it. It was fun.
I'm ashamed, but it was highly effective. I wanted an air-dropped Peet's coffee cup. I had laced up my running boots and hopped straight on the running wheel of demand. A prerequisite of capital creation is consumption, and a prerequisite of consumption is desire. America has mastered the art of creating desire. A war machine tactic turned inwards. No place does it quite like america.
Modern marketing was born from propaganda. During World War I, the American government hired Edwards Bernays. “The father of public relations” and nephew of Sigmund freud. The mind behind family friendly hits such as “Modern Marketing”, “Public relations“ and “Media campaigns”. A heady cocktail where he blended recent psychology insights, with mass communication strategies to control public perception. After using these techniques to promote the war effort and shape public sentiment in favour of U.S. involvement, he turned to a new market. The private sector, helping corporations apply similarity strategies to manipulate public opinion and consumer behaviour. As much as I scorn consumer demand creation, it is a potent force, better understood and potentially harnessed rather than being a victim, lulled into a glassy-eyed consumerism, doomed to mindlessly swipe my plastic card.
Imagine my absolute shock at a corporate event when we start airdropping merch and then an exec starts throwing t-shirts into the crowd. I was gobsmacked. This was in direct contrast to the NBA game I'd observed the previous day. So this is the nature of the game. All these industries are taking tips from each other's playbooks to create this Frankenstein experience where consumerism permeates so deeply into every aspect of the culture. Seeing this in real time caused something inside of me to fundamentally shift, because it works, It absolutely works.
You're ultimately left with the choice of being subject to these forces or harnessing them. Life mirrors business. You as an individual are doing sales, service, marketing, finance, and value creation in your day-to-day whether you want to admit to it or not. That haircut you got, the money you're budgeting, the maintenance stretches you do on your joints. There are many many things in your day-to-day life that could easily fit into these five buckets and build up the individual that is you. So why not pay attention to it?
Simple truth.
"I have something to admit. I believe Humans are biassed towards mysticism, we yearn for it."
Your NBA game insights are hilarious. Go big or go home.