Culture Changes = Advertising Changes

Source: Ted.com

The article published in The Atlantic.com titled “How Powerful is Advertising?” by Randall Rothenberg demonstrates the economic principle “people generally respond to incentives in predictable ways” because it shows how advertising has changed over the years to keep up with a change in culture over time. This can be seen simply in the different ways advertising has has targeted different people, and has contained varying messages, based on varying periods of time in America.

First, in the 1950’s, according to the article, advertising was widely known as a method of “subliminal messaging,” or as Ruthenberg puts it, “(advertisers) were using hidden symbols to goad the unconscious mind and the body under its control into the act of acquisition” (Rothenberg). Seeing as the 50’s was in the midst of international troubles including the Cold War, it’s no surprise that the public believed in these (since disproven) sneaky methods of advertising. So, people typically bought things that these ads supposedly made them want to buy. In all, the culture of the time was fear of communism and ‘spies,’ so clearly this added to the ability for citizens to go along with such a method of advertising. Advertisers knew what the common public was feeling, and acted upon it to sell, and take advantage of it.

Next, in the 70’s through the 90’s, movements for civil rights both brought people together, but emphasized the division in ideologies within America. So, companies began directing attention towards specific races, genders, etc, in order to sell products. Says the article, companies "encourag[ed] people to separate themselves into more and more specialized groups" and develop "habits that stressed differences between their groups and others." This was a revolutionary change in advertising in America, one that encouraged and took advantage of the division in America, and therefore one that succeeded with flying colors. So, in summary, companies not only took advantage of communist threats, but also societal issues within America in order to appeal to the most amount of people.
From the late 2000’s to present day, we see companies shift advertising to a new platform, one that I have touched on in my last post, but will reiterate nevertheless: social media. Companies, having noticed the increasing societal reliance on technology, began putting a lot of effort into moving towards Internet ads in order to, as usual, reach the highest amount of customers. Although, the difference with present day ads and past ones,is that companies are now able to target individual people, contrary to before where the most they’d do is groups of people.With the internet, companies are able to use one’s search history and so on in order to personalize ads, something never done prior to this point in time. And, the article claims, this will only get more and more prevalent and advanced. Claims the article, “technology will force us to become ‘increasingly isolated from ever-greater portions of the outside world.’"This being so, as technology gets more advanced, the more we will get sucked into it, and therefore the more we will be vulnerable to the individualist attempts to sell us products by these businesspeople.

In all, for the past decade or so, companies have switched over to technology platforms in order to adapt to new changes in American culture to sell more products, just as it has done in the past. This begs the question: do companies’ ads change incentives behind our purchases, or do we change the way companies advertise? According to this research, the answer is the latter. Based on how companies have changed advertising methods based on changes in culture, it’s not hard to see the power we have on these corporations indirectly. We have learned how ads have changed based on culture, how marketing has changed based on incentives, but in my next blog post I will research: if there has been any change in incentives behind purchases over the years, specifically, from generation to generation.