Week 8

Advertising, Consumers Cultures & Desires

Envy, Desire, & Belonging

the language of transformation they sell the promise tat their lives will change if they buy a particular product. They use figures of glamour that consumers can envy and wish to emulate.
Attachment if the value if art to a product can give it a connotation of prestige tradition or authenticity & cultural value -
ex. grey goose vodka advertising

Ads such as these construct consumers as having cultural knowledge - cultural capital. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu identified different forms of capital in addition to economic capital, social capital, & cultural capital.
Social Capital = whom you know, your social network, & the opportunities they provide you.
Symbolic Capital = prestige celebrities
Cultural Capital = the forms of cultural knowledge that give you social advantages. It can come in deciphering cultural relation & artifacts

Commodity Culture
Commodity Fetishism
- Marx’s Theory - Social Theorist
- 19th the first to write about capitalism as a social structural element sometimes “use value” is outweighed by “exchange value” (the more expensive the better)
We construct tour identities with the consumer products we buy and keep
Commodities are emptied of the meaning of their production (the context in which they were produced)

4 wheel drive - analysis
decode the ad
- who is the “commodity self” of the 4WD
- consider connotations of voice over
- midlife crisis for women is almost getting an SUV
- this whole thing plays on fear (giving up, not having adventures) so you get a vehicle that can do all these things that you’re not going to do
- cause-related marketing (suzuki with the black rhino)
- 25% of Australians actively reject the green message