Advertising Mirrors and Molds

In Douglas Rushkoff's book "Coercion" he dedicates a chapter solely to advertising. He mentions how branding began in the very literal sense of branding cattle. Branding cattle provided means of tracing cattle back to the owner of the cattle. Manufacturers then adopted the practice for similar reasons, being able to identify the original source and additionally enabling customers to gauge quality and establish loyalty if satisfied. Much has changed since then and advertising has incorporated many psychological ploys to allure often unsuspecting customers into irrationally purchasing mediocre or even subpar products.

One ad campaign that fascinated me was Mike's Hard Lemonade advertisements. Sweet fruity drinks have always been considered "girly" drinks. Mikes Hard Lemonade ads attempted to buck the trend and directly target the male market. The particular commercial I remember involved a lumberjack accidentally chopping his leg off and non-chalantly responding to the event while drinking a Mike's Hard Lemonade. The trend associating sweet drinks with feminine tastes was deeply in bedded so they threw all the testosterone they could into the campaign by using burly men performing blue collar work. Being an ex-bartender, none of my patrons or friends seems to have bought into it and Mikes Hard Lemonades are still considered girly drinks, but it's interesting nonetheless to see advertisers trying such a daunting attempt to aggressively mold public perception.

Advertising is obsessed in discovering, replicating, and ideally creating a trend. It's heavily colored in fashion and entertainment making it an edgy branch of business as opposed to other more traditional fields such as accounting, finance, and management. In a steadily growing consumerist society advertising has become not only a mirror but a window into the human psyche.