323W - Tutorial Feb.24th

Transcript

1. cultural dimensions in advertising W323
2. Branding consumer citizens, Sarah Banet Weiser. Too much stuff: • From mass marketing to branding culture • Commercialization of social issues • Authenticity • Consumers' free labour in the digital age 01 #SFU323 This week readings Citizenship and consumption, Frank Trentmann. • Just an introduction • Lot of references!
3. To take the responsibility to participate in the process of constructing society’s future David Avra Lane, Social Innovation Manifesto Living and breathing an organic communal identity Quentin Skinner, Liberty before liberalism 01 #SFU323 Citizenship Vs Consumption? Fluidity and specialization […] division of labour and identities Frank Trentmann, Citizenship and consumption Substitution of social relations with formal relations
4. 01 #SFU323 Citizenship and consumption 1. On the one hand we are assisting a progressive redefinition of public life in line with neoliberal ‘consumerist’ policies. 2. On the other hand, the association of political and social values to commodities is transforming consumption in a form of activism.
5. Sarah Banet Weiser defines it as: Advanced capitalist strategy that restages corporate and managerial practices into political and social contexts. 01 #SFU323 Commodity activism
6. Individual consumers demonstrate their politics by purchasing particular brands over others in a competitive marketplace; specific brands are attached to political aims and goals, such as Starbucks coffee and fair trade, or a RED Gap T-shirt and fighting AIDS in Africa. 01 #SFU323 Commodity activism…
7. Contemporary commodity activism positions political action as part of a competitive, capitalist brand culture, so that activism is reframed as realizable through supporting particular brands; activism is as easy as a swipe of your credit card. #SFU323 …and swipectivism
8. 1. Chipotle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE 2. Starbucks Fairtrade coffee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MLhSCZq1XY 3. Any other example? #SFU323 Some examples:
9. 1. Campaigns address the individual citizen-consumer at the personal level (Vs collective struggle or civic participation) 2. They may be hard to criticize because they incorporate the critiques into their discourse (Kuhn?) 3. … Characteristics:
10. • Why does a company driven by profit care about social issues? • What is the historical context for this neoliberal recontextualization? #SFU323 How did we get here?
11. • Fordism (50s 60s, mass marketing) • Post-fordism (70s, niche marketing) • Individualism From masses to individuals #SFU323
12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ooIgjEQv0 Fordism and Mass marketing #SFU323 “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”
13. The celebratory framing of abundance and convenience of that era [the 50s] became seen as an impediment to individuality and difference. These kinds of critiques of consumer culture helped the US cultural economy transition into a liminal period, where there is a challenge to the unified subject of the mass audience and movement toward what would eventually become a fragmented, niche market landscape Divide et impera #SFU323
14. [… ]rather than sell products with the overt message of “buy, because everyone else is, be the same”, the message shifted to “buy our product, because it is different from everyone else’s, be ‘real,’ be authentic.” The message to “buy,” of course, did not change; the value of buying shifted definition, as did the definition of the ideal consumer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FipEYhv3fEg Authenticity, again #SFU323
15. Not just more focused. If marketing in the mid-20th century was primarily about mass, homogeneous audiences, and in the later 20th century about niches and authenticity, in the early 21st century it is about increasingly elaborate relationships between producers and consumers through the principle of “engagement” Rather than insert brands into existing culture [through reification], brand managers use the emotive relationships we all have with material things, with products, with content, and seek to build culture around those brands From niches to individuals? #SFU323
16. The progressive redefinition of public life in line with neoliberal ‘consumerist’ policies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnnwN27OhZA Let’s look at the other dynamic #SFU323
17. https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/93/activism-after-clicktivism.html Clicktivism is the pollution of activism with the logic of consumerism. Activism is debased with advertising and computer science. What defines clicktivism is an obsession with metrics. Each link clicked and email opened is meticulously monitored. Subject lines are A/B tested and talking points focus-grouped. Clicktivists dilute their messages for mass appeal and make calls to action that are easy, insignificant and impotent. Their sole campaign objective is to inflate participation percentages, not to overthrow the status quo. In the end, social change is marketed like a brand of toilet paper. Activism after clicktivism #SFU323
18. Room HC 2146 right after class alusoli@sfu.ca Alberto Lusoli twitter.com/albertolusoli #SFU323 You can also find me at: * See you next week