Commercial Culture

Overview

Commercial culture is a way to suggest and to measure the profound effects that commercial advertising plays in shaping the lifestyle, morality, ethos, and values of the specific culture that receives the messages, that is, the ads themselves. Cultural psychologists and sociologists as well as those who study the effects of mass communications and the dynamics of advertising have all noted the powerful impact that the inundation of commercial messaging plays. Within an advanced consumer culture such as the United States, widely regarded as the dominant commercial culture in the world, every media outlet—magazines, billboards, newspapers, radio, television, social media, the Internet, even the sides of buses and cars—is centered on the concept of selling something. Whatever the content of the programming, whatever the content of the articles in a magazine or newspaper, whatever the subject of the website, these mass communication systems exist because of the monies they receive from sponsors interested in promoting their goods or services through these same media outlets.

Indeed, the ratio of content to advertising so favors the advertising content that whatever the media artifact—a television sitcom, a Sunday newspaper, a radio call-in show, an online dating site—that outlet is a platform for advertising. Within a commercial culture, these powerful media outlets are designed to present the commercials, not share the content. Television shows and movies strategically position products (Begy & Talwar, 2016) so that any single frame of either medium is little more than a subliminal commercial. A television program—whether a sitcom or a talk show or a local news show—is simply what fills in the time between the real business of television: the commercials. Therefore, mass communication media negates traditional boundaries—neighborhoods, towns, states, countries—and creates rather a vast marketplace, a culture, now global given the reach of digital communication, in which those who consume these mass communication messages virtually all day feel compelled to acquire material goods being promoted whether those goods are actually needed or not. In the digital age, the promotion of goods has spiked dramatically because of the emergence of global corporations and mass media platforms whose reach is limitless. "Advertisers [are]encouraged to be aggressive because of such factors as technology … and media encouraged to be more promotionally oriented due to increased competition and corporate cross-promotional opportunities" (McAllister, 2003).

The reach of advertising is difficult to understate. Ads are everywhere. Virtually everywhere a person goes, they are exposed to commercial advertising, to brand names and the logos of products that subtly create an awareness of the product or the service as a way to ensure that product or service will sell in the market. Advertising for, say, an automobile recognizes the challenge of advertising within a mass communication culture: a person may want a car, but a commercial must create the powerful illusion that a particular make and model is indispensable. Since the advent of television in the 1940s mass communication advertising has been so successful and its reach so pervasive that is has shaped a global culture that is de facto an immersive environment of advertising noise—every step, in public and in private, is a walk through layers and layers of products, brands, jingles (often repackaged pop tunes), slogans, and logos. Given the relative newness of digital communications and social media, cultural psychologists and sociologists cannot be entirely sure yet of the long-term impact on those consumers who live entirely within a global network that stresses unchecked acquisitiveness and rampant materialism.

Nevertheless, ubiquitous online advertising is not necessarily effective in reaching every consumer who "views" it. For example, a high school student assigned to read The Great Gatsby is stopped a few pages into the book by the word "supercilious." Not knowing what it means, she consults an online dictionary. The web page that provides the definition is more convenient than the print version and has the advantage of being free; however, it is a crowded advertising space. At the top, there is an offer to sign-up for a revenue generating subscription feature; along the side is a link to a quiz to see how healthy one's pancreas is and what constant urination might indicate; below that, a rotating ad promotes, in turn, a florist, a hotel chain, and a car dealership; next to the definition itself is a promotion offering to link to a grammar review and a site promoting an Internet provider; along the bottom border is a line of sites that promote diet programs, makeup, and running shoes—and every now and then the screen fades and a pop-up ad for tutoring appears. Within that complex advertising environment is the simple bit of information the student is seeking. For the most part, the ads are filtered out by the student and ignored, but with the vast numbers of visitors, or viewers, to the site, some of the ads will catch enough attention to justify the cost of running them.

Further Insights

Before commercial advertising, culture was itself a complex concept. In addition to sharing a specific area, cultures could be defined by religion, education, family life, employment, artistic taste, traditions and customs, language, and history. Within a commercial culture, however, people are defined (and grouped) within two simple broad categories: the haves and the have nots. The pressures of mass communications make advertised products or services seem necessary, and desire for and/or possession of the product creates a sense of identity, oneness, and wholeness.

Commercial culture has dramatically impacted the basic conception of children's play. As Marsh and Bishop argued in their groundbreaking 2013 study of three generations of British schoolchildren since the 1950s and the introduction of television and film into child development, concepts as such "play as power," in which a child comes to understand their identity through imaginative play, and "play development," in which play helps evolve a child's social confidence have been significantly retarded (2014).

The Star Wars movie franchise, for example, has generated billions of dollars in revenue in a global marketplace with merchandise developed by the movie production company, licensed by them, and promoted as part of the films' public image. A child fan of the films may naturally decide to recreate imaginatively the environment of the movie by wearing a bathrobe instead of an authentic Luke Skywalker cosplay costume and swinging a whiffle ball bat instead of a licensed light saber. As the child grows into the commercial culture, he or she may come to feel that such imaginative play is less legitimate and even a painful indication that family cannot afford the "real" thing. Instead of enjoying the daring and crazy excess of the imagination, the child learns only embarrassment and jealousy and matures into a materialistic mindset that can ultimately lead to social isolation, poor self-esteem, anger management issues, depression and anxiety, a need for the refuge of drugs and alcohol, and in extreme cases theft and even violence. From a marketing standpoint, the movie franchise itself with its rich storylines, its vivid characters, its daring sense of fantasy, and high-octane action, is simply an effective means of pushing product and establishing the franchise brand. The same concept applies to every article for sale within the commercial culture from dog food to fashionable purses, from bottled water to cars. Mass communication is devised to separate those who consume the message from their money, a dynamic that conflates needs with wants.

Issues

An important distinction needs to be made. Pop culture is not commercial culture although the terms are often used interchangeably. Pop culture refers to the way in which a collective (most often a nation or a section of that nation) finds its way to embracing some artifact or pastime or aesthetic expression (for example, a film, dance, painting, or song). The culture chooses from a virtually limitless array of options that this particular thing expresses some kind of need, addresses some kind of delight. That image, in turn, is used as part of creating advertising that plays on that appeal. For example, something in the iconic image of the four massive faces carved on Mount Rushmore has resonance in American culture. It has been used since the national park opened in the 1930s to promote pickup trucks, athletic events, television shows, political candidates, steaks, airlines, tourism, candy, insurance companies, banks, and even sunglasses and deodorant. The image has adorned dinner plates, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, postage stamps, post cards, as well as a countless line of touristy souvenirs. Pop culture's embrace of certain images—pink flamingos, paintings of dogs playing poker, Ebenezer Scrooge—becomes, over time, not merely a signature of an era or a time but kitschy and even collectible because ultimately it reflects the time and the people. By contrast, consumer culture begins with the imperative to sell. The product itself must be packaged and then imposed on, rather than embraced by, the culture that, if the advertising is both effective and ubiquitous, will come to accept the product or service. The golden arches of McDonald's, for example, or Flo the insurance agent for Progressive or the gnome that pitches Travelocity—unlike Mount Rushmore, the culture has been induced, even seduced, to embrace the image that in turn creates not a community but rather a collective of individuals wanting to acquire that good or that service.

In many ways, commercial culture evolved along with the United States, founded as a free market consumer-driven economy, its citizens perceived as free agents able to spend earned income as they saw fit. A commercial culture was initially a couple of blocks, that culture created by simple signs hanging outside the business to tell potential buyers what service or good was provided by the store. That concept expanded considerably in the late nineteenth century with the help of magazines and newspapers, and then exponentially in the 1950s when television redefined much larger areas of potential customer growth. In response, entire businesses sprouted up whose job it was to create advertising. Companies sought to create a look, a signature logo or a distinctive image that, placed in the right advertising queue, became a shorthand way to market the product. The object was to convince a consumer that they needed not just soup, but a particular soup.

Before the federal government through the agency of the Food and Drug Administration began to monitor advertising claims in the 1950s, the consumer was simply told whatever corporate sponsors and advertising executives believed would sell the product. No single advertising campaign in the America's commercial culture better exemplifies the danger of irresponsible or even deliberately misleading advertising as a way to create and enhance a market than the heyday of cigarette advertising. Cigarettes were promoted as an indispensable element of a defined lifestyle, at turns elegant and refined, blue collar and working class, or cool and confident. Ads were ubiquitous. Billboards, print ads, and commercial spots on television promoted cigarette brands, and characters smoked cigarettes on shows sponsored by the tobacco companies. Movie studios received payments from tobacco companies for "product placement" in scenes featuring actors lighting up and breathing practically nonstop streams of smoke. Until the federal government began to require tobacco companies to feature the considerable health risks and the addictive nature of nicotine as part of products' packaging, commercial culture warmly embraced cigarettes.

Given the enormous reach of the Internet and the difficulties of monitoring or policing it, concerns have been raised about the impact of unmediated advertising on the generation born after 1990. Although some cultural studies, most notably the controversial 1998 best seller In Praise of Commercial Culture, written by economist Tyler Cowen, have seen the impress of advertising on culture as a positive, even an inspirational element as it has created for the first time in human history a real global community and opened individuals to the right of choice, others are not so sure, given more recent data. Some scholars note that digital natives evidence a compelling addiction to screens and, in particular, social media (Savci & Aysan, 2017). Unlike newspapers, radio, or even television, the Internet is pervasive, and that has given rise to new concerns over how commercial culture in the digital age is creating and sustaining an ethics based on acquisition and a morality based on desire.

Bibliography

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