120 years of hating advertising
One of the most frequent comments people make when they read this website or discuss the topic of advertising, is that advertising isn’t a new invention, it’s been around for a long time. Consequently, it seems that advertising is a perfectly normal feature of our landscapes, and has been for generations. Which begs the question, why are Art Not Ads so upset about it?
This perspective is naive, and it’s a shame to see people who go about their world so unquestioningly. This picture, from Paleo-Future Blog shows the Statue of Liberty decked in advertising devices (discovered at Murketing). It dates from 1885, demonstrating that in fact advertising has had detractors for a long, long time - at least 120 years, and probably back as far as its origins. Advertising’s longevity doesn’t relate to popularity or acceptance. Its persistence doesn’t justify its continuation.
It’s just as true to say that advertising has been intrusive and irritating for many generations.
Michael Dawson said,
December 13, 2007 @ 11:54 am
It’s interesting to watch corporate marketing’s more thoughtful practitioners (the ones who even bother to think about larger issues) contort themselves to find comfort with their own trade. Murketing wants to contend that, since advertising has always been unpopular, then popular revulsion against it is just a constant thing that need not trouble anybody. Besides, murketing says, the dislike for corporate brainwashing campaigns has never really led to action, so it must be mere trivia:
“Clearly there were people who could “see through” marketing in the late 19th century, and who could count an audience that would get the joke. Just as clearly, seeing through marketing didn’t quite add up to resisting marketing. Kinda like today.”
What murketing fails to mention is the complete and consistent lack of avenues for opposing the marketing juggernaut. The topic has always been forbidden in politics. What would happen if it became a topic of ongoing democratic debate? We may never know, because that prospect is ANATHEMA to the moneyed elite, who own the lion’s share of the corporate cash flows and buy and sell the figureheads in our two craven political parties.