I don’t have a specific ad campaign in mind this time around, but i wanted to put down some thoughts on the use of images to generate irrational demand for products and services and a connection i see to the bubble economy that is deflating around us as we speak.

Human Nature

It is human nature to compare ourselves to those around us, whether out feelings of curiosity, envy, greed, superiority or even compassion. In order to defend our honour from those that may judge or mock us, cultures throughout the world put a great deal of emphasis on maintaining the perception of a perfectly-functioning family to the outside world at all costs. This is nothing new.

Appearances can be entirely fabricated yet have very tangible impacts through their influence on other people. People working in sales, whether for online ad space, cars or real estate go to great lengths to create an aura of success around themselves. This usually means expensive Italian clothes, a 7-series BMW or Swiss watches. Some individuals and families, through credit, can keep up appearances well beyond their realistic means, perhaps in the hope that if success is faked long enough, it will eventually come through positive reinforcement.

In the book Irrational Exuberance, Yale professor Robert Shiller does a great job of showing the effects this kind of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses-at-all-costs mentality has had on the stock market and real estate markets. I do not wish to repeat this discussion, but rather focus on how advertising ties in to this.

Exploiting Human Nature

Marketing for condominiums in the city, for example, seem to all have images featuring a variation of models in a cocktail dresses sipping martinis. The image: live here and you will live a lifestyle of elegance and prestige.

Virtually all fashion advertising is completely abstract, sometimes not even containing any of the actual products offered, focusing almost entirely on image. The mass proliferation of celeb-related content on the web and the subtle advertising that goes along with it serves as part of an asymmetrical attack on the psyche of the intended targets — the marketing of an image is no longer just a single picture on a billboard or a half-naked Claudia Schiffer in Flare magazine, it is indeed multimedia and multi-dimensional. You’re never going to look like Gisele in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. The fashion industry knows it can’t go too far in pushing an unrealistic ideal. But here’s the decidedly closer-to-earth Jennifer Aniston, cankles, big chin and all, and look at what she’s wearing! The players in the media and fashion industry are engaged in asymmetric image warfare in which they attempt to outdo each other in how effectively they can instill a sense of insecurity and longing. This has resulted in a predictable race to the bottom in the depravity of the content and the actions of the image-bearers, with DUI violations that put lives at risk becoming mere publicity stunts (I remember personally seeing a spike in the number of clearly-drunk drivers in Los Angeles during that particular fad)

Car advertising no longer seems to have any desire to give consumers a rational reason for purchasing their car. It is purely image based. Sleek cars driven on windy roads or through urban centres. The car companies have simply staked a claim on a particular territory market and bring out all the big marketing guns to protect from invaders. Consumers, on cue, in trying desperately to emulate an image, then do the work of self-segmenting themselves and preaching the virtues of their choice of car as an extension of their (imposed) personality. The sophisticated urbanite drives a Mini, the soccer mom with her SUV, and so on. It takes a great feat of will power for someone to break from this segmentation.

And so on. For kicks, grab an old National Geographic from 1975 in your local library (library? is that a Facebook group?) and find a full-page Ford or GM advertisement. They practically write mini-essays describing to you the virtues of their car and why you should purchase it! How far we’ve come from such primitive times.

Are we living in a “cultural bubble”?

What impact is all of this having?

We have people spending and living beyond their means in order to maintain an ever-increasing appearance of wealth, with others spending more to keep up, resulting in a wealth bubble that is now unravelling.

But what of the cultural bubble that has been forming around us for quite some time?

There is Wall Street folk wisdom that states that boom times are associated with shorter skirts and leaner times with longer ones. Certainly our culture is connected to our economic health, but has this particular bubble popped just yet? The bubble that has people desperately trying to emulate fabricated images that are deliberately unattainable to make us crave and want indefinitely? The bubble in which the vast majority of young girls that do not have the “right” measurements nevertheless buy the clothes from whichever label did the best job of instilling a fear in her of being passed up and ignored?

Just as not all of us can be real-estate wealthy millionaires, not all women can be supermodels, and not all men can be CEOs. What happens when this particular bubble pops, when the excess becomes too much for all to bear? There has always been pressure and motivation in society to conform and succeed. Never before has this pressure been applied with so much force, from so many different angles, and with so sophisticated a system of imagery with which to compare oneself to.

The epidemic of depression, anxiety and other psychological disorders are the signs of this strain. Even if there is a modest correction in extravagance, I am not convinced that the longer-term cultural bubble that has been forming over the past few decades is anywhere near popping. We have medicated the population with Zoloft and Prozac and produced a great growth industry in pharmaceuticals as a result, but there will eventually be a breaking point, if the trends of the last few decades continue.

One of the most common props in the advertising of our day is the Hot Girl ™. I am sure I will refer to it many times, so it is important for me to define exactly what I mean by this.

The Hot Girl is not a girl at all.  It is a concept that has been bludgeoned into our collective psyche through a relentless barrage of images we have been exposed to for most of our lives (assuming we are under the age of, say, 100)

This image has an impact on everyone from teenaged boys to newly-divorced middle aged women whose husbands have regressed into their second puberty and left them for younger women. These newly-minted Cougar ™ representatives then serve as a great target market for products and services that will help them in their battle against the Hot Girl. As you can see, much revolves around this simple image.

The Hot Girl does not have to be a living, breathing human at all. It is only an image that is brought into play when it is important to drive home to the victim target audience (whether male or female) that the Hot Girl is the end goal of all male existence and, oh, yeah, here’s this product/service that we’re conveniently offering for sale. In many cases it’s a computer-rendered image, often it’s a stock photo that has been mutated into a persona for the purposes of marketing (as I’m sure the “blog posters” from the axe hair crisis relief are, in fact), or it’s just a lucky representative selected from the masses of girls that flock to the media centres like LA and NYC.

Even deeply-embedded people in the media complex don’t seem to get it. Sorry, Demi, there are no roles for you because you’ve outlived your ability to fit the image of Hot Girl. But I commend you for trying. There will be some nice Cougar roles for you, don’t worry.

It’s no wonder depression and dysfunctional behaviour are so common in Hollywood, even for those that have indeed “made it”, with the Malibu beach homes and exorbitant wealth and attention. You’re still just a representation of an image and best of luck to you if you try to escape that. Your best chance might be to upgrade to a Talented Hot Girl ™ as some have successfully done.