Image Is All

Those who champion the role of reason in the marketplace either do not understand the functioning of today's marketplace or do not understand the function of yesterday's reason. The reality of the mass advertising marketplace is simply:

IMAGE IS ALL.

Image, not information, is the touchstone of much of our commercial discourse. The next time you think of reason­why advertising, look at any popular magazine:

• Liqueur ad with suggestive beach scene: "All over the country, people are enjoying Sex on the Beach." ²⁰¹
• Women's blue jeans ad with Matisse­influenced drawings and Picassoesque sketches of women: "Woman Combing Hair" and "Woman With Gold Hoops." ²⁰²
• Four­page clothing ad with scenes of a couple hugging and kissing with an American flag waving in the background: "A kiss is still a kiss"/"The Spirit of Today's Generation." ²⁰³

The flood of such examples from the print and electronic media alike reveals that "the information model has never had much relevance for national consumer product advertising. The explicit function of spectacular image­based ... advertising is not so much to inform as it is to persuade." ²⁰⁴ Ad man David Martin tells the neophytes in his profession how important it is to capitalize on imagistic and emotional persuasion: "You will ... have a hard time finding a truly gifted creative [advertising] person who thinks that straightforward, rational persuasion will be noticed in today's media clutter." ²⁰⁵ And when students of government, law, and journalism consider Holmes's famous marketplace­of­ideas metaphor in connection with commercial speech, they should take special note of what advertising expert John O'Toole has to say on the matter: "It is not in the nature of advertising to be journalistic, to present both sides, to include information that shows the product negatively in comparison with other entries in the category ...." ²⁰⁶ Even if it mattered, who in the marketplace would or could challenge, for example, the suggestions that people are enjoying sex on the beach or that women comb hair and wear gold hoops?

Entire categories of commercial communication are essentially bereft of any real informational content. For cosmetics, fragrances, alcohol, tobacco, clothes, and other products, billions of advertising dollars say much about image and little about information. The mass advertiser all too often strives to create a lifestyle environment with "minimal 'logical' connection with the product." ²⁰⁷ These efforts give new meaning to the Latin root meaning for advertisement: advertere­to direct one's mind toward. ²⁰⁸ Indeed, studies indicate that "the depiction of consumers as rational, problem­solving beings is actually a highly limited description of buyer behaviour." ²⁰⁹

Mass advertisers and their mass consumers have embraced the reality of commercial communication: there is no place for the mind in the marketplace.