OUGD501: Context of Practice 2 Lecture - Consumerism: Persuasion, Society, Brand, Culture

Aims:

• Analyse the rise of US consumerism
• Discuss the links between consumerism and our unconscious mind
• Sigmund Freud
• Edmund Bernays
• Consumerism as social control

• Book: Century of Self - Adam Curtis
• Book: No Logo - Naomi Klein

Freud (1856 - 1939)

• New theory of human nature
• Psychoanalysis 
• Hidden primitive sexual forces and animal instincts which need controlling
• The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
• The Unconscious (1915)

• Freud's model of personality structure - Mind in three parts: Ego, ID and Superego 
• ID - Primitive instincts not accessed but inform our actions

1930 - Civilisation and it's Discontents

• Fundamental tention between civilisation and the individual 
• Human instincts incompatible with the being of community
• The pleasure principle

WW1 

• Testament of Freud's theories
• Nature of human beings
• 'Release' of morbid desire

Edward Bernays (1891-1995)

• Press agent
• Employed by public information during WW1 
• Post war set-up 'The Council on Public Relations'
• Birth of 'PR'
• Based on the ideas of Freud (His Uncle)

• Make people want the product by linking to our instinctual desires - psychological techniques

1929

• Easter Day Parade - Bernays paid debutantes to all light up a cigarette and leaked a story of them being suffragette doing a political protest - smoking became symbol of power and independence.

Introduced:

• Product placement
• Celebrity endorsements
• The use of pseudo-scientific report
• System off mass and cross marketing

Fordism

• Henry Ford (1863-1947)
• Transposes Taylorism to car factories of Detroit
• Moving assembly line
• Standard production models built as they move through the factory
• Requires large investment

• Importance of brands - distinguishing their product, USP - Starting point of modern costumer culture

• Culture shifts from 'need' to 'desires'

• Marketing hidden needs - The hidden persuaders

• Selling emotional security 
• Selling reassurance of worth 
• Selling ego-gratification
• Selling love objects
• Selling creative outlets
• Selling sense of power 
• Selling a sense of roots
• Selling immortality

• People giving the allusion of happy

1920 - A new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd

• 'manufacturing consent'

• Russian Revolution - threat to capitalism 

• Off the back of WW1 - Chaos

• Oct 24th 1929 - 'Black Tuesday - Started the Great Depression

• Roosevelt and the 'New Deal' (1933-36) - Better pensions, investment in industry, job creation

1939 - 40: New York, Worlds Fair

• All that's great about America 
• Propaganda
• Depiction of what the world could be like

Conclusion

• Consumerism is a ideological project
• We believe that through consumption our desires can be met
• The consumer self
• Legacy of Bernays / PR can be felt in the 21st Century
• To what extend our are lives free?