Reading Response #6

In the article “Jesus is a brand of jeans” by Jean Kilbourne she fears that advertisements are “exploiting our human emotions and replacing them with inanimate objects.” In other words Kilbourne believes that advertisers are praying on our feelings and insecurities and using them to get us to buy more stuff we don’t need. Feel fat buy this product to make you skinny, feel lonely buy this product to make friends or lovers, feel sad buy this product to make you happy, feel happy buy this product to capture the moment, and the list could go on and on. There is an unending amount of items out there marketed to cure almost every humane ailment imaginable.
Kilbourne reminds us that advertisers will go to any length to capture consumers and sell their product. Poaching on the young the old, big or small, even on the sick and addicted, she states “the addict is the ideal consumer” Meaning who better to buy your product than someone hooked on it. So the advertising agencies go to extremes to know their consumer and the best ways to hook them and she states “hook them early they are yours for life.” So if ads are made directed at children and young adults like fuzzy camels and smoking cowboys to the new amped up alcoholic energy drinks. They can have an addiction started before they are even old enough to buy the product. End result equals more years of buying product which means bigger profit.
I agree with Kilbourne that advertisements are meant to make us feel like we should buy their products to replace our feelings with something inanimate because of my own experiences with inanimate objects and human emotions. She mentions cigarettes and says “when I was a smoker, I felt that cigarettes were my friends.” I celebrate the fact that she said this because when I was a smoker I felt exactly that way too. When no one else was around at least they were. Even to this day I still miss them and sometimes think about them. But when I have succumbed to the desire and have had one I remember why we are not best buddies anymore but I am sure after hanging out for a while we could chum up right quick.
Did advertisements do this to me? I am sure in a long tangled web of consumer culture and this media based frenzy to all be uniquely the same my addictions and millions of other people’s addictions at some point were a consideration for some advertising executive’s decision on how to market a product. So here we are a nation of consumers perfectly primed to be little buying machines. Buy something use it a while than its time to replace it, upgrade it, or get rid of it for the next new thing that comes along. Rarely do I actually throw something away because It actually wore out or was all used up. And what does that say about me and my habits? Maybe the only things I actually need to buy are those things that actually did wear out or were empty. Maybe I should follow through with this idea and try this theory out or maybe not.