The Revolution Will Not Be Advertised

Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal analysis of American Society, "Democracy in America", made the acute observation (in 1830) that in a society in which everyone wants to get ahead it is logically impossible for everyone to get ahead. Some will be left behind. If you define success in your society on others doing worse than you then you will, as a society, have set yourself up for failure.

People will take increasingly larger risks as they see others, who they consider less able, to be more successful through shear luck. Given de Tocqueville wrote this at the same time that Marx wrote "Das Kapital" I think we should talk about the new Alexism rather than Marxism.

Another Frenchman, Alain de Botton, wrote an equally insightful book "Status Anxiety" in 1998 in which he argued that most people are ultimately tied to defining their success in terms of other peoples' failure. It is a very weird world we live in the West that we do this when there are so many people who live on a pittance - several cents a day - and all we worry about is that the person next door has a nicer beach house.

Why is this about advertising? Because advertising has two paradigms. The first is that they are giving it away for free. To everyone. The second is that in buying their product you are one of the cool people who gets it and is getting ahead.

Update: A programme on advertising last week called "The Persuaders" said there are two sorts of advertising. The first is stuff given away for free and the second is where they flatter you by making you feel like you are in on the joke. This is what viral marketing is about as they want you to talk about what you saw and mention the brand at the same time hence increasing brand awareness which is the only metric for success that advertisers care about, well that and industry awards for creative campaigns that never happened. Increased client sales is a distant third. As I suspected.

Is White the New Black?

Having lived in the UK and US on or off for the last 8 years one of the things that is noticeable is the absence of mixed race couples in US advertising whereas in the UK it is entirely unremarkable. In London, where I lived until recently, based on looking at couples on the Underground, mixed race couples seemed to make up about 30% (very approximately) of couples where at least one of the partners was black. This seems to be about the same percentage I have seen in (entirely uncontroversial) UK advertising. I have never seen a mixed race couple in a US advert.

Will Obama's election change attitudes in the U.S. to miscegenation in advertising?

Cool Mule

Stubborn Mule aka The Raw Prawn has cast his observant eye over some telling logos. Are we looking at a post-Obama resurrection of the signifier/signified paradigm? Madbreak approves. 

He plans to sacrifice a chicken (or at least buy a Red Rooster chicken roll) tonight and read the.... errm....crumbs.

Official - it's an Obavalanche!

One of the interesting aspects of the late stages of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election has been a reluctance by the punditocracy to call this as a knock-down 60-40 victory for Obama. 

Despite polls which show him not just leading in the blue and purple states but a few red ones as well. Whether it's a "knock on wood" or Bradley effect or vague references to a (so far) hidden racist backlash who knows. 

There has been a late move by the media to declare a late move to McCain and last minute need for the American public to reconsider their vote and buy more newspapers. I wonder if this will be the last election in which the treemedia figure?

By the time  Americans finish voting on Tuesday it will already be Wednesday lunchtime here in Bondi Towers but we promise to keep the result a secret.

(Update: Flugelhorns all round. I called it first)