Discussion Questions Click Here

Frank's Conquest of Cool:

The author describes a richer, more complex relationship between mainstream and counterculture in his attempt to transcend the "theory of co-optation":

• Although many model the counterculture movement as a revolt of "hip vs. square", Frank sees hip consumerism as more involved than this traditional binary narrative suggests.
• "Hip" becomes a central way American capitalism understands and sells itself.
• As a result, a new corporate style arises and diverges from the centralized model of "Fordism".
  

Frank describes how the social revolution of the 1960s parallels major changes in the world of business. These changes were not mutually exclusive, as businesses, and in particular the advertising industry, were both influenced by the 1960s counterculture and also used it to create new, creative appeals to consumers.

• The many changes that took place in the social and business realms in the 1960s were a result of frustration with the dull conformity of the 1950s.
• Advertising agencies that departed with the uniform techniques of decades past had great success, as mass culture critique was enormously popular in the 1960s.
• To a much greater extent, advertisers began to direct their appeals to youth culture in the sixties.
• Bill Bernbach and the Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) agency invented "anti-advertising" in response to the uniform ads of the 1950s. Their ads, particularly for Volkswagen, caused the industry as a whole to change their methods.

More Examples of the Counterculture in 60's Advertising:

Bernbach campaign for Levi's and Avis:

http://www.ciadvertising.org/studies/student/99_spring/interactive/joohwan/bernbach/ad1.html

Bernbach: Sympathy vs Selling

Calvert's "Soft Whiskey" (1966) and Alka Seltzer's "Spicy Meatball (1970):

Watch it! http://ad-rag.com/104719.php

Analysis

Bernbach's legacy:

Calvert Soft Whiskey (1966) and Maker's Mark "Letter campaign" (2001):

(Maker's text)

Discussion Question: Is the difference between these ads a representation of changes in the advertising industry in general since the "Creative Revolution" led by Bernbach? Or are the two ads so fundamentally different at all?

Goldman and Papson's "Advertising in the Age of Accelerated Meaning"

Papson and Goldman discuss the use of commodity signs in advertisements, which are aimed at individual viewers. The authors argue that ads ask consumers to construct their identities based on their buying choices. Postmodernism has had a substantial effect on advertising, as ads have become characterized by fragmentation and rapidly circulating, disconnected commodity signs. This has led to crisis of meaning in which images are constantly replaced in intepreted by a distracted audience.

• Differentiation of images is important to attract the attention of viewers and to keep them engaged in the ads.
• Signs of a commodity are often fragmented and redistributed in conjunction with postmodernism.
• Advertisements today depend on symbols of cultural opposition. Ads must speak the truth about the commodity culture while also trying to sell the commodity.
  

Giroux's "Consuming Social Change: The United Colors of Benetton"

Giroux explains how advertisers today have strived to create a perceived sense of unity in a world void of community and solidarity. He uses the clothing company United Colors of Benetton as a model of how advertisements have successfully used various images and representations, often shocking, to form this link at the cost of a "critical public culture".

• Advertising uses cultural logic of postmoderism:
• focus on: celebration of images, profileration of differences, and fragmented notion of self
  
• Benetton and others use controversial issues not to promote social and political change, but to sell merchandise.
• images are stripped of their political possibilities
• agency becomes the purchase of these goods
  
• Logos represent the commodification of everything in our society.
• used to connect identities to corporate ideologies
  

Conclusions:

Each author presents their audience with a dialectic between the attractions of advertising/consumption and the consequences of these systems of representation. For instance, Frank frames an uneasy relationship between our love and hate of commercialization. He describes a novel "hip consumerism" fueled by a disgust of mass society and the bloated huckster advertising of the '50's.

Goldman and Papson offer analysis of the legacy of this advertising with their insight that Bernbach's "anti-advertising" has transformed into just that: symbols used so quickly and arbitrarily that our notions of meaning have been diluted similar to the exaggerated language of 50's advertising. Giroux follows this line of thought as he presents the social and political alienation of consumerism through postmodernist commercialization.

Frank, Goldman and Papson, and Giroux focus on the relationship of consumer and producer that has guided our course's depiction of the attractions and replusions of an "industry of culture". Each recognizes the importance of consumerism in its ability to shape how we define our and relate to our society while illuminating its potential to transfigure our values.

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