The Growth of Lifestyle Advertising

Audience demographics and market segmentation strategies were among the more significant responses of the advertising industry to the parity product phenomenon. Armed with data about prospective consumers­age, profession, income, gender, geographic locale­the advertiser could "target" that segment of the population most susceptible to a particular commercial message. Earlier advertising agents had sold products for manufacturers; by contrast, demographic and segmentation strategists now sold audiences to manufacturers. For example, once advertising agents identified the special audiences of certain newspapers and magazines, they could better align those audiences with their clients' products. As advertising historians Charles Goodrum and Helen Dalrymple put it: "[Agencies] designed ads that 'looked like' the identified audience, talked like it, [and] were shown doing the things that audience did." ⁴³ In like fashion, "[p]ublishers began to regard their publications not so much as products to be sold to readers, but more as vehicles that organized audiences into clearly identifiable target groups that could be sold to advertisers; [thus,] the audiences themselves became the 'products' ...." ⁴⁴ From this vantage point, the early notion of "product placement" meant placing potential buyers in the laps of manufacturers and distributors.

In sum, commercial photography and radio broadcasting "caused the first cracks to appear in the strictly rational orientation of the product­ information format ...." ⁴⁵ Furthermore, as goods became more indistinguishable, advertising pitches became more distinctly alluring. Similarly, whereas the focal point of "reason­why" advertising campaigns was "What does this product do?", the focal point for audience demographics and market segmentation was "Who will buy this product?" ⁴⁶ Cumulatively, these factors increasingly distanced advertising from factual product information.

Notions of lifestyle preoccupied the American mind more and more in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, as the newly released Xerox copy machine became a corporate status symbol at one end of the cultural spectrum and the beatnik movement captured the imagination of the young at the other end. Increased affluence and the widespread popularity of television, among other things, opened the door for advertisers to promote the lifestyle ethic. Once inside, the advertising industry told commercial stories that linked the individual to a social group or an economic class and simultaneously associated products with the style of consumption of that group or class.

"Lifestyle" advertising typically portrayed work activities (the homemaker baking or the office executive negotiating) or leisure scenes (golfing or entertaining) and depicted products as essential elements within those contexts. This form of advertising thereby gave the impression of a nexus between the lifestyle and the product. For example, life insurance could be sold not by explaining actuarial facts and premiums, but rather by picturing tender moments of a loving family around the hearth, a family whose security needed to be ensured. By way of another example, it was the "Pepsi generation"­surfing, dancing, racing­that lived life to the fullest. In regard to deciphering these messages, Professors Leiss, Kline, and Jhally explain: "[T]he unifying framework of interpretation is action or behavior appropriate to ... a social group or situation, rather than use, satisfaction, or utility." ⁴⁷ The lifestyle format predictably distanced advertising even further from utilitarian messages and their reason­why logic.