Somebody asked yesterday if advertising really works in these days of ad-blockers etc... My answer was that if it wasn't working on most people, big business wouldn't be spending 1.4 trillion dollars on it every year.
But I was reminded of a friend of mine, a student of Russian, that went to study in Moscow in the early 80s. He got what he called an 'eerie' feeling walking around the city, in the metro, etc. At first he thought it was the stories about foreigners being watched - but eventually he worked out what it really was: the absence of advertising - no bill-boards, posters, vehicle liveries, shop window displays, etc...
We swim in an ambient sea of advertising - and its effects go way beyond its immediate purpose of extracting our hard-earned money so that we keep working hard for more, surrounded by mountains of stuff we could easily do without.
The most pernicious effects of advertising are, precisely, ambient...
1. It makes us unhappy. That's the whole point. It is fundamentally based on making us feel we'd be better, more attractive, popular, successful, etc, if only we buy this or that latest cosmetic, car, whatever; and
2. It shapes social expectations - it makes having new, more expensive things, holidays, etc, look and feel desirable, it associates happiness with wasteful consumerism, so we come to really believe that striving for a 'luxury lifestyle' - big house, fancy car, swimming pool, jet-setting, etc - is the meaning of our lives, is better than living simply, contentedly in caring families, communities and the natural world.
