Have you noticed that almost everywhere you turn you run into commercial messages? Not only in traditional media where you expect them - television, radio, newspapers, magazines - but everywhere else imaginable as well: on T-shirts, on athletic uniforms, on theaters and arenas. Beer companies sponsor concert tours, cigarette companies host tennis tournaments, most college bowl games have a corporate sponsor. Some recent major Hollywood movies have included 50 or more "product placements" - paid-for endorsements of brand-name merchandise.
What's next, asked one beleaguered consumer, "a `brought-to-you-by sign' hung on every sunset?"Not that there is anything inherently wrong with advertising. It can provide a useful consumer service in providing information about new products. And it oils the wheels of the economy - to the tune of $130 billion last year.
But if it seems like you are seeing more and more of it - you're right. The amount spent in 1990 - which, by the way, translates into roughly $6 for every man, woman and child in the country - has nearly doubled since 1982 ($66 billion) and more than quadrupled since 1975 ($27.9 billion).
According to Common Cause magazine, the Post Office delivered 63 billion pieces of junk mail last year. And, says the magazine, "Conventional ads are only the flotsam in the flood tide: Every day the average American is bombarded by hundreds of marketing messages, many of them adroitly woven into the content of the print and electronic media we depend on for information and entertainment.
"Round-the-clock commercialism has crept up on us, evolving from 19th-century pitches for products like Lydia Pinkham's medicinal pick-me-up into a sophisticated art form that pops up everywhere we are - from the brand name labels that turn consumers into walking billboards to the corporate-sponsored informational posters that hang in classrooms."
And not everyone is happy about it. What has critics so upset, says the magazine, is "not just the human urge to own, which has done so much damage to the environment and eaten away so thoroughly at our sense of values. It's the changing nature of commercialism, its gradual intrusion into the privacy of our homes, the fabric of our cultural lives and the sanctity of our public places."This commercial invasion is coming at a time when public institutions are particularly vulnerable to economic pressures, note observers from the Center for the Study of Commercialism, a group recently organized to research, document and publicize what it calls "excessive intrusion of commercial interests into our lives."
In the '80s, as government support was cut back from many arts groups, public institutions and in the classroom, says CSC's Michael Jacobsen, these groups turned to support from the business community. And, he says, the government has encouraged it by allowing tax deductions for the contributions.
But the Center thinks that policy should be changed.
It is just one of a growing number of critics of excessive commercialism. In recent months, controversy has developed over the involvement of cigarette and alcohol manufacturers with sporting events.
For example, although cigarette advertising has been banned on television since 1971, promotion of cigarettes is a regular occurrence at televised sporting events, say critics.
Dr. Alan Blum, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, noted that by his count, the word "Marlboro" appeared on the screen or was mentioned nearly 6,000 times in a single automobile race televised nationally in 1989.
"A race car driver can sell advertising space on his chest, back, shoulders and helmet," Blum told United Press, "and the higher the logo on this clothing, the higher the price."
Because of the number of young fans attracted to racing, Blum worries that this kind of indirect promotion could lead to "a generation of kids growing up to associate glamorous things like speed with smoking."
Indeed, young people seem to be a prime target for commercial pitches, says Common Cause. Companies spent about $500 million last year to reach children ages 2-12 - five times what they spent in the early '80s.
Advertisers like children because children have increasing influence over the household pocketbook. Consumers Union notes that children age 4 to 12 spend $8 billion annually and indirectly influence household expenditures of $1 billion a week.Commercialism is showing up in all aspects of our popular culture, says Monroe Friedman, a professor of psychology at Eastern Michigan University. "A new, but not necessarily improved, consumer culture may be upon us," he says.
Friedman has studied the use of brand names in popular literature, drama and songs - what he terms word-of-author advertising - and says there has been a more than five-fold increase in their usage since 1946.
Word-of-author advertising, he suggests, "could mean more familiarity with individual brand names, and thus, especially for the case of such low-involvement purchases as grocery staples, a greater inclination to buy the products associated with these names. If these products are relatively low in quality, a not-infrequent circumstance according to our findings, consumers could find themselves unknowingly influenced in directions that are contrary to their best interests."So, what can be done about this intrusive commercialism? The Center for the Study of Commercialism has a plan of action that includes:
- Opposing all corporate promotions in schools as a part of a larger commercial-free-zone campaign.
- Developing public-service messages encouraging people to consume less, to be skeptical of advertising claims and to turn off their TV sets periodically. It supports "turn it off" TV-free days.
- Supporting luxury taxes and a reduction in tax breaks for advertising.
- Opposing such intrusive forms of advertising as computerized telephone solicitations and fax-machine ads.
- Requiring Hollywood films to disclose the presence of paid-for product placements.
- Exposing corporate censorship of the media.
- Developing curricula on commercialism for high-school social-studies teachers.
If you would like more information or would like to express other viewpoints, you can contact the Center for the Study of Commercialism, 1875 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20009-5728.
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Center says trend fosters avarice and insecurity
According to the Center for the Study of Commercialism, over-commericalization can have the following effects:
Commercialism promotes a culture characterized by greed, materialism, hedonism and selfishness. It creates an insatiable appetite for more and fosters feelings of envy, anxiety and insecurity.
Commercialism transforms us from citizens into constant consumers, focusing our attention on getting rather than giving - buying things instead of bettering our communities and workplaces.
Advertisers' influence on the media often prevents fair coverage of political and social issues. In the United States censorship often comes not from the government but from advertisers.
Commercialism promotes planned obsolescence and a use-and-toss mentality, which destroy the environment.
Commercials exploit our very real need for security, health, love and community by telling us that if we buy a particular product we'll live longer, be more attractive and have more friends.
Advertising frequently exploits women (and men) as sex objects.
The constant call to buy more and more has fostered a situation in which too many of us are in chronic debt.
American values tend to be undermined by commercial interests - such things as the value of community, the satisfaction of being involved in bettering our social and physical environment and the pleasure of interdependence, of sharing and cooperating with others.
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Ads creep into classrooms, records, taxis, restrooms
A few examples of the diversity of new outlets for advertising messages compiled by Monroe Friedman in "A `Brand' New Language" (Greenwood Press, 1991):
- Drivers in Baltimore learn about the attraction of four-wheel drive vehicles from miniature 10-inch billboards affixed to four thousand of the city's parking meters.
- Skiers on their way up the slopes on ski lifts now see signs depicting soup ads that are strategically placed to catch attention.
- Piped-in music has been replaced by advertising messages for grocery products in 9,000 supermarkets.
- In exchange for free television equipment, schools are using their classrooms to show students "Channel One," a professionally produced television news program with youth-oriented commercials - and the students are required to watch.
- Upon picking up a ringing phone, consumers may find themselves listening to a telemarketing message from a machine that has been programmed to call unlisted as well as listed numbers.
- Sports fans attending their favorite event may well see corporate logos on the athletes' uniforms and, in the case of baseball, commercial messages on huge electronic screens between innings.
- Public television viewers are likely to find sponsorship messages for programs looking more like major network commercials.
- Moviegoers may find they have to watch one or more commercials before viewing the film at their local theater. This is also becoming the case with videotaped films and in-flight feature films shown by major airlines.
- Commercials are also finding their way onto records and compact discs. In 1986 the British rock band Sigue Sigue Sputnik put out an album on the EMI label that contained advertisements in the 30-second spaces between songs.
- Two "rolling billboard" companies in New York have had a fleet of 16 large trucks that bear eye-catching billboards daily making their way through the most congested part of the city. The companies say the slow pace ensures that as many as 300,000 pedestrians view the billboards daily.
- Also in New York, taxi riders have found themselves exposed to a series of four-minute messages that appear repeatedly in three-inch-high, red letters on a 20-inch-wide screen on the divider that separates them from the driver. The messages start as soon as the driver activates the motor and cannot be stopped, even if the paying passenger voices objections.
- Appearing in public restroom stalls are advertisements for such major companies as Holiday Inn, Rubbermaid and Merrill Lynch Realty, all of which evidently found compelling the marketer's pitch for their advertising dollar: "The only way not to read our ads is to close your eyes."