Comments on: 120 years of hating advertising http://www.artnotads.com/blog/2007/12/13/120-years-of-hating-advertising/ Replacing intrusive, mind-numbing advertising with something thought-provoking Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:03:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5 by: Michael Dawson http://www.artnotads.com/blog/2007/12/13/120-years-of-hating-advertising/#comment-996 Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:54:45 +0000 http://www.artnotads.com/blog/2007/12/13/120-years-of-hating-advertising/#comment-996 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. 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.

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