Edited by Chris Jenks - carlosmoreno.info

ADVERTISING: THE RHETORICAL IMPERATIVE
of their four periods, Leiss, Kline and Jhally suggest that the advertising
strategy for this period is ‘utility’, that ads refer to the products’ qualities,
price and use and that the ads are generally descriptive. 21
The next stage they call ‘Product Symbols’ and they claim that it lasted
from 1925–45. It is in this period, and those following, that less emphasis is
placed upon the product and its uses and advertising begins ‘to shift towards
the non-rational or symbolic grounding of consumption’. 22 Products are made
to ‘“resonate” with qualities desired by consumers—status, glamour’ and so
on. The tabular representation of the period indicates that ads of this period
stress the ‘symbolic attributes’ of products and that recurrent themes in ads
include ‘status…white magic (and) social authority’. 23
These analyses agree that, sometime around the end of the nineteenth
century, the nature of advertising and thus the meaning of the word
advertising changed. The change is from an advertising that informs the
consumer about the nature, qualities and price of the product to an
advertising that attempts to persuade the consumer to purchase the product
on the basis of its desirability or symbolic significance. These analyses
also seem to allow the characterisation of the former as innocent and the
latter as immoral or reprehensible in some sense. The next section will
explore that sense.
PERSUASION AND DESIRE
The above reference to the desirability of a product introduces one way in
which the innocence or culpability of advertising has been discussed and
assessed. The function of ads which do not create or inflate consumer
desire may be said to be predominantly informational and thus relatively
innocent and the function of ads which do create or inflate consumer desire
may be said to be more persuasive and thus morally questionable.
Consequently, advertising before the end of the nineteenth century,
containing much written information and even in some cases having a
conditional form (the ‘If…then…’ of the siquis, for example), is said to be
relatively innocent. And advertising after the end of the nineteenth century,
containing less and less written information and becoming more symbolic,
is said to be morally questionable. This section will examine the link
between persuasion and desire.
Various critics from various ideological positions agree that the question
of desire is central. Galbraith argues that there are not ‘independently
determined desires’ but that advertising and salesmanship’s function ‘is to
create desires—to bring into being wants that previously did not exist’. 24
All desire is the product of advertising here; there are no natural desires
in Galbraith’s economics. Williamson does not disagree up to this point;
she says that ‘advertising intends to make us feel we are lacking’. 25
Advertising’s intention, on Williamson’s account, is to create desire,
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