The Obsolescence of Advertising in the Information Age (2018)
This article could be better, particularly for kentucky college.<p>Their article attempts to pigeon hole advertising down to one function, informing existence and facts of a product. There’s a lot to argue against (modelling behaviour, ads as art, ads as culture, line between art and ads, short term v long term memory), it’s quite reductive but I’ll pose this question instead of a laundry list of counter arguments.<p>Take a teenager learning to skateboard, he is destined for many hard knocks and scrapes. He sees Nike shoes in his price range that are physically okay and some Adidas shoes that have more padding. He buys the Nike’s because he wants to live the dream of athletic achievement that he saw in many Nike ads. Every time he falls over he is still in the spirit of winning, shoes equipped.<p>Is that manipulation of his preferences for good skateboarding shoes, the ad making him impulsive and changing his desires and making him buy a worse product?<p>Or is the ad informing him he can buy access to a spirit that will accompany him on his self selected journey and help his own desires and achieve his goals?