CONSUMERISM'S SUBTLE INFLUENCE ON CULTUREKwamchetsi Makokha
Advertising and culture Advertising is not just the announcement of special offers, for an announcement alone can surely not blow away months of good financial husbandry in one moment of fancy. It is how the announcement is made. Long before Christmas and throughout the year, advertising flourishes because it is not limited to announcing new goods and services. It is a persuasion game, aimed at influencing consumer trends and habits. And it is able to do so because it is right on the cutting edge of technological change. Advertisers do not take their work for granted. Producing a 30-second commercial spot for radio may take three weeks of planning, writing, re-writing, voice testing, casting and recording. A 30-second television spot for a new toilet soap may take longer to prepare and cost more to produce than one 30-minute episode drama. A quarter-page bank advertisement in the newspaper can take up to a week to produce and cost more than it costs the newspaper to generate the big story that will sell. Advertising makes that extra effort to be noticed. The effort is not wasted. Advertising influences the way people make life choices and embeds in the mind a value system that is accommodating of certain consumer trends. Advertising makes available information on easier ways of washing, cooking, showing affection and living better than the next man or woman. It is a play on our vanity. Advertisers have created many self-effacing arguments that cast their trade in the mould of a human right, saying that advertising is the right to choose. They say that advertising does not force anyone to buy anything, that the individual retains the right to decide. But advertising is a form of communication. It is the transmission of new, or old information in the most catchy and trendy of ways. The appeal of advertising, through their use of the best writers, the most popular role models, the funniest actors, people society looks up to in order to promote certain products, is plain scrounging on culture. It is advertising which has made plumpness go out of fashion and replaced it with model-slim sizes. True, advertising has also encouraged positive changes, like brushing of teeth, by associating toothpaste with confident smiling, romance and security. By closely associating with culture and scrounging on it, advertising has acquired a more important role in people's life than just giving them the right to choose. Advertising drives culture. It may just as easily propagate negative cultural traits as positive ones. The Kenyan marketplace is full of examples of both, cited here to demonstrate the kind of influence that advertising can have on people's lives. Advertising can subvert culture Some of the questions to keep in mind are: When did plumpness, women staying at home and not being seen in bars, become old-fashioned and unacceptable and why? The need to sell products has summoned the creative juices of advertising copywriters in a way that appeals to mind and emotion like nothing else. In fact, adverts are getting so clever that, if there is no one to look over advertisers' shoulders, society could be preaching one thing and industries that rely on consumption quite another. There is nothing positive about lying or telling untruths, whether they are small half-truths, fibs or big ones. People lie all the time, but it certainly is not a good quality to encourage. Two recent advertisements bring into sharp focus the kind of approval industry is extending to “small” vices like lying and being a little dishonest. They are the Smirnoff Ice ad and the Tuzo ad. In the Smirnoff TV spot, a young man sneaking home at cockcrow from a night of cavorting realises that his jacket is torn. He swaps it with that of his sleeping roommate. Harmless prank. However, stealing is very attractive, and can be addictive. Then the pay-off line: “Smirnoff ice, as clear as your conscience.” Does this mean that it is okay to have a conscience that allows stealing somebody's jacket? A second one is less apparent but falls in a similar category. It is the Spin Knit advert that subtly encourages people to lie. A woman who has been jogging gets home and wants a glass of fresh milk, fast. Now the cook or house help realises that “the cow has refused.” No matter, there is Tuzo, which tastes as good as cow milk. Harmless really. It suggests that if your employer is fooled, good for you. There are less subtle advertisements that are more disgusting than they are subtle and appealing. Two recent ones, perhaps now withdrawn, rely on stereotypes. In the heat of the Olympic Games, it was nice to know that Kenya Tea Packers were helping to bring the games to our sitting rooms. But the company's attitude towards women left a bad taste in the mouth. The scenario for telling the country about the superiority of their tea leaves casts the woman - who as expected did the cooking - as a sort of imbecile. Not only does she not know what tea leaves to buy, she does not know there is something wrong with the beverage. It takes Baba and the children to notice it. Ultimately, Baba dips a hand into his pocket for a note and sends one of the children for Ketepa tea. There are very deep concerns here about whether, to add onto the stereotypes women are struggling against, industries should start helping children see their mothers as dimwits. When Kencell was joining the mobile telephones market, there was this confusing advertisement about how difficult it is to communicate in Africa, with smoke, ropes and all sorts of insulting innuendos thrown into the dark continent. Kenya may have its communication problems, but it is not a jungle, even without mobile telephones. Kencell launched another tasteless ad soon after. A man is kidnapped, and tied to a chair. His captors are trying to get through to his office to demand ransom, but their mobile phone connection is unreliable, so he lends them his Kencell connection. Some people may consider this as harmless humour, but in fact, it is a blatant glorification of crime, and gives the false message that having a Kencell connection could help you when you are kidnapped. Nothing could be further from the truth. The advertisements may have stopped running, but the fact that no apology was made poses the serious question as to whether there was nothing wrong with it in the first place. What can the public do? Humour and fun are all the rage in advertising. Naturally, there must be allowance for poetic license and creativity. But sometimes, the copywriting, in the attempt to be humorous and funny, ends up sounding rather foolish. Public taste and culture are offended as often as they are pampered. What to do? It is true that advertisements can be ignored. Some of them are plain irritating. The cure for that is thought to be three-fold. One way is to ignore the ad and refuse to buy the product advertised offensively. The ones in the newspapers are easy to pass over, just turn the page. Radio and television pose special problems. An advertisement you do not like may keep being repeated in the middle of your favourite programme or song, to the point where it becomes an irritation. In such a case, you can smash your radio or TV set, but you lose. (In fact, it is thought that irritating people is one way of ensuring that they listen to an advertisement. That way, they learn to live with it and could start singing the jingle, and become very loyal buyers of the product.) Another way is to find people with inclinations similar to your own and complain to the media outlet that is publishing the advertisement. A third alternative is what journalists like to call a public outcry, a general social consensus that the advert should not run. However, it is difficult to know how this may be effected. There are positive advertisements, too. The Tusker advertisement using the line, “The Tusker ad “Makes us equal, has no equal” reinforces the emerging social acceptance of women as equal to men in guzzling beer. Naturally, there is no caution that drinking could get you drunk and into a lot of trouble. Interestingly though, the purveyors of alcohol are the ones who come out on top in influencing positive cultural values. Kenya Wine Agencies at one point printed posters telling drinkers what alcohol would not do for them. It is the kind of bravery that industry must be willing to embrace because it is the responsible thing to do. Chocolates are good. Is anyone warned that they have high calorie content and that they should get a rider? Advertising, being in the public domain, should be truthful and positive. Advertising can build culture by using positive role models and reinforcing positive cultural values. But when they do the opposite, the effects on society can be devastating. It is not easy being an advertising police officer. But two suggestions here would help. The media can set up broader acceptance standards for advertising that guide copywriters and advertisers so as to prevent them falling under the axe. Advertisers, too should regulate themselves by remaining committed to the ideals of the society within which they work and thrive. This can be done through the creation and use of positive character models, strengthening ties between parents and children, and enhancing the values of fidelity, honesty and virtue.
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