Expert: Maggie Macnab - 4/13/2005

Question
In what ways does advertising Affect the common consumer?

Answer
Wow, Roxie, that's a pretty broad topic. But I do teach in the area of symbolism as visual literacy (in particular for graphic designers, but not exclusively) and I think I can give my thoughts briefly.

As much as human beings are inspired and driven to take the risk of evolving, we are also very attached to pattern. Patterns give us something to grasp in the world; a way for our senses to make sense. Literally. Repetitive advertising has the effect of creating a false sense of continuity and therefore, a sense of security and trust. This is one of the ways that unethical advertising (for things like greasy burgers or pharmaceuticals directly marketed to consumers) are so compelling to the consumer, even though at some level we all know greasy food in this day and age is a killer, and medicines should be thoroughly tested and marketed with actual empirical results within the medical community to people who know what they are doing with them. So, for good or bad, advertising campaigns backed by big budgets exert a great amount of influence over those who are not aware of how they are reacting to the underlying communication.

This gets to why I teach symbolism. Understanding our intuitive responses to visual imagery is very important in our ability to respond rather than react. For designers, this knowledge creates effective (direct and aligned), ethical (when you know, you have a much better chance of using appropriate imagery), and aesthetic advertising (the integrated is inherently beautiful).

If our 'feelings' can be interpreted somewhat (I don't assume that we know much more than the tip of the iceburg of what goes on in our subconscious) at the cognitive level, we have some measure of choice in what we do with that input. So you can make a choice that is good for you and yours, instead of reacting in a way that may not be and supports someone or something else out of deception.

Advertising is powerful, and can be a very good thing. It's simply an extension of our somewhat phenomenal ability as communicators. I teach symbolism to student designers, do workshops for public arts programs to help the responding artists incorporate appropriate symbolism into their work for better community integration, and speak at conferences ranging from marketing to design. Symbolism underlies all of human communication, and being able to connect symbol to universal principle and allows us to make appropriate choices to the accelerating amount of information we all deal with every day.

It's a big topic, so I apologize if this only scratches the surface.