An Anti-Commercial Manifesto

An Anti-Commercial Manifesto

By systemfehler.de

[This pamphlet is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,
http://www.systemfehler.de/comix/usa.htm, System fehler is German for system error.]

Advertising is everyday.

Advertising is everywhere.

Advertising is self-evident.

Must this be?

“Cash-burner” You pay for the advertising that terrorizes you.

It is a truism that consumers in buying promoted produces finance both television- and radio programs and their nerve-racking advertising minutes.

Take a step back and consider the whole picture. The consumer indirectly pays the production costs of amazing television broadcasts, cinema films, radio programs and journals etc. He/she also pays the flourishing advertising industry, advertising agents, advertising designers, managers and publicity directors, the bill posters, the performers of advertising spots and the millions of gimmicks of celebrities, first-rate athletes and advertising studios. The advertising industry consumes essential parts of the gross national product. For brand-name products, the share of advertising in the final price is often over fifty percent.

If the economy were now imagined without the whole advertising sector – zero advertising in all media -, an enormous potential in creative powers would be suddenly released. A distribution problem in financial resources exists since many sections (for example, private television) are essentially financed by advertising. However if a different way were found for these areas financed by advertising, then – referring to the whole economy – we would save massive resources that could be used for more sensible things than burning brand names into human brains.

Nevertheless in the contemporary world, we consumers bombarded and terrorized day after day with advertising messages must indirectly pay for this bombardment ourselves!!

“Consumo ergo sum” - Life means maintaining oneself through individual consumption

Advertising confirms that the possession and use of goods brings happiness. The more goods are produced and consumed, the more happiness. The ideology of prosperity and consumption does not ignore the increasing mental impoverishment but approvingly accepts impoverishment.

Psychological manipulation is part of the bag of tricks. Moods are developed, longings awakened and guilt feelings provoked. For example, the advertising message aims at high-grade, expensive electronic equipment more than intelligence. Advertising for luxury goods like perfume or jewelry strongly rely on moods. For example, the sense of a deficiency and a positive dream world are indirectly created. Some advertising even evokes guilt feelings. For example, the housewife is asked if she is buying the best products for her family…

Call to advertisers:
You suggest needs to people that they don’t have. You have enthroned the lie `consumo ergo sum’ as truth! Therefore you are the preachers of oppression! We urge: End the total manipulation of people! Stop viewing people as a malleable mass who obey your commands!
From a pamphlet to a congress of German advertisers “Subversive Action”, 1964

Millions who hunger for feelings are fed with the cheap and dishonest sentimentality of film and light music for consumer products that promise fulfillment of longings in 30 seconds. Everything can be sold with the magical words “freedom” or “individuality” as labels. This shows that people suffer a deficiency in these things. This suffering is only exploited and deepened. Immaterial needs are satisfied through goods or material things (prestige in the form of an aftershave lotion).

In deciding for a brand-name, people receive a substitute identification for blurred bonds like family, school and nationality. The new group wears the same brand-name clothing or drives the same brand-name car. At the same time, the consumer is deluded into believing in a pseudo-individuality since he or she chooses his or her very personal product combination (“your fragrance”, “your outfit”) from a multitude of consumer decisions.

This leads to a complete loss of reality. The less attractive reality is seen as fiction beside the colorful advertised world and vice versa. However can one blame a person for acting economically – choosing ways that demand sheer consumption and no personal initiative, simplify existence and take away thinking and other troubles? The abolition of the poison of mass suggestion would release a withdrawal shock among consumers that is hardly distinguishable from the withdrawal symptoms of drug addicts.

“Consumer stress” - What costs nothing is worth nothing.

Consumer stress is a typical phenomenon in our society and a practical part of everyday life. Shopping desires are awakened that are always a problem for the “little man” who constantly exhausts his budget. Thus he decides to accept some stress for the desirable consumer goods. For example, increasing the work quota over a long time to have enough money for a vacation trip for relaxation. Relaxation in his own garden or on his own balcony doesn’t even come to mind since the omnipresent tourism branch convinces him that genuine regeneration is only possible under a southern sun. The more air miles away, the better the offer. Thus the recreational value is measured in the price paid.

This is also true for numerous other things available free of charge that find no customers in a simple form. After permanent influencing, consumers insist that the use and price of a thing are always proportional and only brand-name variants are considered for purchase.

What would the world look like if the consumer stress arising through constant advertising exposure did not intrude for a day? Many people who rely on these sources will have serious problems since they suddenly can no longer distinguish between `right’ and `wrong’. They will be comp0letely helpless. This seemingly confirms the argument of the advertisers who contribute to the `decision’. On closer examination, the right to individuality is withdrawn from the individual. Even with objective information about a product, he or she can hardly satisfactorily evaluate this information on account of intellectual impoverishment. An ingenious psychological barrage breaks upon the environment (friends, family etc) when he should be superior to that on account of critical attitudes toward advertising slogans. This psychological barrage touches a sore point in a very personal way.

The moral responsibility of advertising must be discussed when gullible persons are seduced to become indebted with the help of bait like consumer credits and leasing contracts.

“Information Hiding” - Advertising is not consumer information

Advertising doesn’t inform people objectively about a product. Since every product is advertised by a particular manufacturer, the goal of a satisfied customer is only interesting insofar as the same customer is bound to a brand name. What is most important is breaking up a product in the greatest possible number of pieces. As a result, advertising is one-sided. Advantages are exaggerated. Disadvantages, side effects and damages are played down or concealed (classic examples cigarettes, cars).

Regarding tobacco companies, product manufacturers are interested in the first place in short-term economic advantages instead of the long-term well-being of consumers.

Reality is presented in a distorted way through project placement (legal means). Products become popular through massive subtle advertising instead of excellent qualities as in the past. Brand-name articles are inserted subtlely and unobtrusively in film scenes without being praised directly. An attitude toward life is communicated more than a product.

“Sound and smoke” - Packaging dominates the product

A brand name should guarantee an invariable quality. However quality actually moves to the background by fixation on brand-name products and is replaced by a vague mixture of brand-name pressure, social status symbols and a purchased attitude toward life.

The quantity of consumption is only grasped numerically through the purchase price. However the numbers say nothing about the uses and pleasure caused by the purchase. What something really `is’ loses in importance. How something is sold is decisive. This can only be detrimental to the product quality.

“Peer Pressure” - Brand-name pressure inside and outside the schools

Those who can be influenced most easily always consume most enthusiastically. People at a certain age commonly have problems with identity. Whoever must strengthen his or her self-confidence through means from the outside is susceptible to all kinds of influencing. This conduct is more or less striking in youths at puberty. Lack of bonds through a stage between the family of the parents and the founding of one’s own family, mood fluctuations, moments of madness, permanent dissatisfaction and desire to test everything are characteristics of this difficult phase of becoming an adult. These are also features of the perfect consumer. Withdrawing from consumption is difficult. Whoever wears the wrong socks, shoes, jacket etc in school is separated from the others and subject to the most serious psychic and physical reprisals. This phenomenon is known under the term `peer pressure’ or `group pressure”.

This group- and brand-name pressure is also transferred to the parents who want to offer their children an acceptable social status in their environment and often go to the limits of their financial or suffering capacity. This is also one reason that families with children are more severely endangered by poverty than childless couples. This makes explainable the demographic development in industrial countries contaminated by advertising (women on average have fewer children).

As persons grow older, there are status symbols that can hardly be evaded. Since a fully-grown individual only reluctantly wants to appear as a poor loser, the consuming crowd follows the pied piper named the advertising industry with its unique ability to spread frivolous lies with impunity.

People with few resources can be especially attacked through the definition of the self by consumption. They are under extreme pressure through their partial exclusion from many kinds of consumption. They cannot keep up even with the help of state transfer benefits like unemployment assistance, income support etc. Nevertheless considerable sums flow quasi directly from the state treasury into the pockets of manipulators. If the supportive state resources are not enough, self-help is emphasized and manifest either in mercilessness towards oneself (for example, renouncing on meals for important consumer articles; rather seldom) or towards others (criminality like larceny, robbery, extortion, illicit work etc.; the normal case). In a consumer society, the fact of having no money gives most persons the feeling of being passed over and not existing. Having one’s own money, even if it is not used, is a question of self-esteem.

Credit banks – partly in cooperation with the suppliers of products – help with so-called `consumer credits’. However what happens when the `attractive’ financing possibilities simply overstrain the jobless buyers?

“Big Brother is watching you” - The consumer can be easily manipulated

Supplying the general public with a hierarchy of qualities only promotes complete quantification. Everyone should act spontaneously according to his or her `level’ and reach for the mass product concocted for his or her type. Consumers are divided in income groups, in red, green and blue fields as statistical material on the map of research agencies. (cf. sprachkritik.de)

Efficient advertising is only possible with an identifiable clientele. Consumer studies and analysis of consumer conduct have long been standard practices of advertising experts. Both the product and the manipulative advertising can be better adjusted through knowledge about the preferences of potential customers.

Data protection regulations protect individual persons at least on paper from consumer profiles targeting certain persons. However no one can resist on principle massive data collected about one’s person that is utilized intensively in the computer age.

Violation of privacy is in no way excluded. With cell phones and credit cards, people today leave behind an electronic data trace although no person knows whether, how and where this data is stored and evaluated.

“Dumb and happy” - Dummification as an everyday event

People are influenced by mass suggestion. Producing and consuming as an end-in-itself is the goal. Every kind of hypnotic suggestion now attempts to emotionally impress its objects and make people switch off their minds. Products can more easily find an audience when no rational basis of decision exists.

Constant advertising exposure often produces certain defensive instincts. In the crossfire of shopping commands, people must begin to filter out information important to them. So corporations can reach their clientele, the pushiness of dull advertising messages is increased leading to intensified dulling. One negative result of this development is a widespread learning incapacity for important information. .

Young people and people with little secondary school spend more time before the television. Since these groups can be more easily influenced and manipulated by advertising, they are naturally very interesting for advertisers as target groups. Television broadcast stations are focused on reaching these groups and adjusting programs downwards intellectually (examples: Big Brother, soaps, talk-shows). The imbeciles make the program!

“Nothing is sacred” - Whatever can be marketed will be marketed

The money panderers take the best produced by our hearts and minds and transform this into consumer products, provide them with price tags and sell them back to us as goods. Limits to the marketing rage hardly exist. Every emotion that can be reconfigured into a shopping decision is exploited, Famous athletes become vassals of advertising. The enthusiasm of people for athletic feats is channeled immediately into consumption. All inhibitions are passé when the Brandenberg gate is misused as an advertising billboard and profiteering doesn’t stop at the school door. Everything becomes a commodity in this capitalism: living labor, the conscience, dignity and all of life.

Even the protest conduct of young persons is automatically accepted and marketed in the mainstream. Every group or cluster retains its own style which then must be advertised as a brand-name product.

This mainstreaming leads to cracking the “subversive” code. Every advertising- and graphics agent offers his or her services. When one looks around in advertising, a vast number of corporations have assimilated this system criticism. The campaigns of Penetton, for example, are media- and social criticism in the best sense. The “prank” consists of the company taking this perspective and marketing it as an image. This is obviously detrimental to the really subversive praxis and leads to an irony rollback. Criticism in any form decays to a mere attitude.

Consumerism is nothing but a new form of totalitarianism. A hidden terror lies in the shopping commands of advertising. The propaganda of advertising shows people what’s what. Whoever doesn’t join in cannot be a full member of society…

“Performance-oriented society” - Advertising triumphs

When top athletes, celebrities and well-known faces from radio and television give their names for advertising spots, the suspicion arises that gimmicks overshadow performance. The enormous salaries of athletes have a considerable advertising advantage since a football club can be marketed better with known faces.

This redistribution from consumers to stars through the idol-promotion and marketing of advertising intensifies the social tensions and tears asunder the gulf between poor and rich. Unreasonable uneconomic dispersion of funds is widespread in the overpaid advertising media. While demand for luxury goods is strengthened on one side, little is left on the other side since massive funds are consumed in buying brand-name products advertised by celebrities.

All appearances of certain top athletes etc. become advertising since the identification of the athlete with a product outlasts the time of constant advertising exposure.

“Pushing progress” - Where does advertising drive us?

Increased daily consumption may raise the living standard but not quality of life. Advertising contributes to the conviction that possession and use of a product brings happiness. More consumption brings more happiness. Considering limited resources, motivating people to frugality and rational environmental consciousness would be more sensible. Instead needing an extravagant car is drummed into their heads.

Advertising produces desires that did not exist before. Superfluous products arise without real practical value. The necessity increases of producing and consuming what is unnecessary. Advertising gives many products their significance. Many goods would not be sought without advertising.

Advertising denies consumers’ ability to know what they want. Progress is stimulated by the drawing boards of marketing departments, not by demand. Whether this “progress” really increases prosperity is open. Product- and advertising designers decide where the journey goes…

The passive person is understood only as a shopping machine who can choose between goods. We say: the person must be in the limelight, not the commodity.

“Generation M” - Manipulation is better than pressure

Advertising pursues the goal of selling goods. Deception and manipulation serve this objective. Taste becomes synchronized so people consume as much as possible in a pre-calculated profitable way. Advertising is an instrument for controlling the private consumer. Advertising emphasizes consumption as the center of life.

Manipulation must be opposed for reasons of human dignity. What doesn’t happen voluntarily is accomplished through manipulation. Daily we are told that freedom of decision in conventional consumption is the maximum of personal autonomy. Choosing this or that detergent, this kind of chocolate or another or even refusing should give the feeling of being free.

Conventional entrepreneurs could fill a pool with human blood so rich people can bathe. This could be done without despotic means. One need only force the poor through hunger to donate their blood, encourage scholars to show the benefits of the cause and invite ministers to ecclesiastically consecrate the pond. (cf. sprachkritik.de)

We buy because we believe we must own all these things. Everyone is free to resist the general trend. The hypnotic effect cannot prevail against a deliberate resistance. Nevertheless private rebellious attitudes are politically irrelevant. Do we really enjoy enduring constant advertising exposure from all sides day after day? Do we really like friends, children and acquaintances being influenced and manipulated in very dubious ways?

Before their assumption of office, our representatives on the government bench must swear to dedicate their strength “to the well-being of the people” and “warding
off damages”. Continuous brainwashing through advertising is one of the possible injuries that should be averted. Completely repressing destructive commerce from our society is hardly possible. However regulative measures working for people should limit the flood of advertising where this is possible and other financing resources exist.