Edited by Chris Jenks - carlosmoreno.info

ADVERTISING: THE RHETORICAL IMPERATIVE
‘material object being sold is never enough’; 35 we need social and personal
meanings, supplied by advertising, to ‘validate’ those objects. 36 Desire here
is being directed towards certain products, privately consumable products,
and consumption is associated with ‘human desires to which it has no real
reference’ by means of advertising. 37 Again, the true desires of a society
are being magically transformed by advertising into a consumption ideal
which is not only ‘misleading…but ultimately destructive to the broad
general purposes of the society’. 38 It is clear from Williams’s language that
he considers ads to be reprehensible; the talk, noted above, of how
‘traditional standards’ and ‘respectable trade’ were abandoned in the face
of potential financial ruin is testimony to this.
What these critics, from their various ideological positions, all have in
common is the view that ads are potentially if not actually morally
reprehensible on the basis of their creation or inflation of desire.
Advertising that is considered reprehensible or dangerous, by these critics,
is that which affects desire, that which attempts to influence or modify
behaviour in some way and it is this type of advertising that has been
characterised as persuasive rather than informational. Advertising which is
considered innocent is that which does not affect desire, which does not
attempt to influence or modify behaviour and it is this type of advertising
which has been characterised as informational. As seen in section two,
advertising before the end of the nineteenth century was said to be largely
informational and thus innocent and advertising after the end of the
nineteenth century was said to be largely persuasive and thus potentially
reprehensible. The next section will question the validity of the informing/
persuading dichotomy and the innocent/reprehensible opposition that is
built upon it by looking at the model of communication that is presupposed
and at some advertisments.
INFORMING AND PERSUADING
This section will argue that the distinction between informing and
persuading cannot be upheld in any simple form, in the forms that the
critics noted so far have upheld it, for example. It will show how the
supposedly innocent sense of advertising as informing can never have
existed apart from, indeed, has always been inhabited by, the supposedly
reprehensible sense of advertising as persuasion.
The case against advertising as persuasion is based on the idea that such
advertising intends to influence or modify behaviour in some way;
Galbraith, Williams and Williamson are agreed on this point, that there is
something reprehensible or even dangerous about advertising which
influences people’s behaviour. The case against Galbraith, Williams and
Williamson is based on the idea that even advertising as informing intends
to influence or modify behaviour; that there is no point to information that
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