Rachel Mercer

For those of you who don’t know — the much-hyped and much anticipated book AdLand released this week, and I immediately queued an order up on my Amazon account.

I have a problem with this video, personally — and this is only on a personal level, I do not speak for all of Ad-Dom in what I am going to say here so count this sentence as your disclaimer. This assessment may very well be inaccurate, or incoherent.

Perhaps I have no soul when I say I’d do work for any of these companies. Why? You ask. It is because I believe advertising is all about enforcing a choice — enhancing and developing the choice that is presented to you, the end user of the product. Now, think about this — why do you use the brand of deodorant that you presently wear? Is it the kind that your parent uses? Did you go through a process in your choice? When was the last time that you SWITCHED use of this product.

You came to use the product that you are using today because you were previously unhappy with whatever you were using before, perhaps it was leaving a nasty residue, perhaps the antiperspirant wasn’t up to snuff — whatever. In the end, you were back in the store aisle contemplating the choice between that brand, and another brand. My job, in the end, will be to help INFORM you the end user of what other options you have available to you, what differentiates them from what you were using previously, and perhaps, why it may be the better choice for you.

This video presents existing problems with our culture which advertising cannot necessarily be blamed for. Yes, my job is to bring about brand awareness, you know that there is a distinctive difference between the rugged Marlboro man and the Kool Camel Filters. However, your choice to purchase the specific cigarette brands was implanted in your mind to begin with, whether it be by outside influence societally (you see everyone doing it) or you have a much closer influence (a sphere of friends) — your cigarette brand purchase CHOICE is simply based on the remaining image you want to project. Advertising can’t be blamed for the fact that you want to smoke in the first place, that has everything to do with the influence of other people.

The same goes for fast-food. Fast food was birthed out of the American need for speed, the desire to have something on-the-go that was still delicious and fun. Don’t blame McDonalds and Burger King for the fact that it’s practically impossible to make a salad that you can eat while driving. You can also blame obesity on the present economic divide, it is, at present, cheaper to acquire high calorie non-perishable foods (think potato chips, and those other goodies filled with high-fructose corn syrup) than it is to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. For the frugal, or budgeted buyer — the obvious choice is for the high-impact foodstuffs.

See, don’t blame advertising for that. You can blame advertising on the fact that when you’ve decided to go get McDonalds or Buger King — you’ve decided to move to McDonalds because hey, they have that new 1/3 lb Angus Burger.

We are choice enablers.