Since I’m mentioning Wieden-related activities, Jelly Helm presented a lecture at Rontoms a couple of nights ago. I appreciated his humble approach to his role as MC, but had a few issues with the general argument. The talk was titled Conversation/Advertising, which sounds relevant to much current discussion about networks of communication, interaction, audience participation, etc. So I was a bit surprised to hear that Jelly’s notion of conversation (which was demonstrated via an exercise that required 5 minutes of passive intense listening to one’s neighbor) is awfully close to the classical TV model: A speaks to B who receives – but does not respond to – A’s message.
Jelly went on to present a diagram of what he calls post-consumer brands. These include Apple, Toyota Prius, Wii, Facebook, Nascar, Google and Barack Obama. I’m a bit perplexed by the use of the term “post-consumer” to describe these brands. What is it about buying an iPhone or a hybrid car or a gaming system that disrupts the model of production and consumption? Maybe I’m dickering about semantics, but economies are by definition about the production and consumption of goods, services and resources. All engagement equals consumption – an attempt to interiorize something outside oneself. That process in part shapes and defines the various identities associated with a person.
Jelly stated that what he means by a post-consumer brand is one “where experience trumps advertising.” But are the two really divisible? Jelly’s use of the Toyota Prius – and not the Honda Civic Hybrid – as an example is significant. Both are solid cars with roughly the same real-world miles-per-gallon performance/carbon-footprint-reduction effect. So why is the Prius an emblem of post-consumption, but not the Civic? Why is there a months-long waiting list to purchase a Prius, while the Civic hybrid hasn’t experienced that kind of demand? I have a feeling that the explanation has much to do with the same desires for goods of distinction that were diagnosed by Thorstein Veblen in the late 19th century, the same desires that have guided human consumption for, well, probably for as long as there has been human competition. People buy more Priuses not because the experience of driving this car trumps advertising, but because the experience allows for an invidious distinction to be bestowed upon its possessor. The terms of that distinction (its “cool” quotient) are shaped and enhanced by the advertising and marketing invested in the product.
What’s interesting to me is how transparent it has become that much brand marketing is performed today not by paid agencies, but by individuals who use technologies old and new to enhance their own self-concept through brand advocacy. Advertising isn’t something that we passively receive; it’s something that all of us are constantly engaged with through the process of telling others who we are. So, pace Jelly’s theory, I would venture that advertising isn’t dead; rather, we’re just starting to realize that it’s advertising all the way down.
