A Report on the Prevalence of Advertising Messages in Our Cultural Landscape

As we have read and discussed in class, the cultural landscape we live in is saturated with advertising messages of all kinds. In the capitalist race for wealth and power, businesses use any and all marketing tactics to attract consumers I found it interesting that, in the book, the authors talk about how “shopping was transformed from a mundane task…into an activity of leisure and entertainment”. In modern times, it seems like this activity has crossed over into other sectors of society.

Americans shop for news and political candidates just like any other product, choosing the flashy and likable option that comes in the most attractive package. We’ve come to expect that everything in our lives should stimulate and entertain us If they fail to do this, we simply lose interest in them. The advertising business can‘t be entirely blamed for this, but I personally hold them partly responsible for our culture’s insatiable appetite for immediate pleasure.

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The book states that “commodities fulfill emotional needs” but never deliver the satisfaction that was promised. Commodity culture, the authors write, “is intricately allied with the idea that we construct our identities, at least in part, through the consumer products that inhabit our lives”. Ads show us what our lives should look like (as determined by mainstream culture) and how we can achieve it, yet its all an illusion. After being let down emotionally time and time again, we get used to the process of not getting what you paid for.

Eventually, this advertising strategy became so prevalent in our culture that it leaked into the rest of our lives, changing our expectations for the world around us. To me, the merging of information and entertainment has created a much shallower and deceptive advertising environment that has altered our lives for the worst.