Advertising Criticisms

Some critics of advertising have assumed that the creation of false needs in consumers is the principal mechanism underlying what these critics regard as its manipulative and hegemonic power. Central to this type of critique are the writings of political theorist Herbert Marcuse, who maintained that modern people succumb to oppression by to the genuine well-being of consumers, but rather to the profit—and thereby the disproportionate power—of corporations.

Marcuse supposed that we all have certain real needs, both physical and psychological. Advertising appropriates these needs for its own purposes, forging psychological associations between them and consumer items, e.g., between sex and perfume, thereby creating a false “need” for these items. Since the quest for fulfillment is thus displaced from its never really fulfilled and the consumer remains at some level unsatisfied.

Unfortunately, the distinction between real and false needs upon which this critique depends is extremely problematic. If Marcusians are right, we cannot, with any assurance, separate our real needs from the alleged false needs we feel as a result of the manipulation of advertisers. For, in order to do so, it would society that they have come to inform our instinctive judgments about things.

But, in fact, Marcusians make a major mistake in assuming that the majority of consumers who respond to advertising do not do so autonomously. Advertising techniques are unable to induce unwilling behavior in rational, informed adults, and regulations prohibit misinformation in advertising claims. Moreover, evidence suggests that most adults understand and recognize fulfillment, or even that its genuine fulfillment of needs must be less than the advertisement suggests.