1. How does Kilbourne address the claim that advertising is trivial and has little power over us? Do you find her response persuasive? Why or why not?
2. Specific Examples: How does the author think that ads affect our relationships with other people? What specific examples does she give to support these claims?
3. Personal Insight: Have you seen any evidence of this destructive impact of advertising in your own life or in the lives of people close to you?
4. How is advertising related to myth in ancient societies? How does it serve similar functions as religion in today’s world? How do you feel about these comparisons?
5. Title: Do you think she made the right decision with this title? What impact is she trying to achieve? Does it achieve that intended impact?

Jesus is a Brand of Jeans

2 September 2006

Adverts gleam with promises of transformation and transcendence – via material

objects. Jean Kilbourne decodes this gigantic propaganda effort.

A recent ad for Thule car-rack systems
features a child in the backseat of a car,
seatbelt on. Next to the child, assorted
sporting gear is carefully strapped into a
child’s car seat. The headline says: ‘We
Know What Matters to You.’ In case one
misses the point, further copy adds: ‘Your
gear is a priority.’

Another ad features an attractive young
couple in bed. The man is on top of the
woman, presumably making love to her.
However, her face is completely covered by
a magazine, open to a double-page photo of
a car. The man is gazing passionately at the
car. The copy reads, ‘The ultimate
attraction.’

These ads are meant to be funny. Taken individually, I suppose they might seem amusing or, at
worst, tasteless. As someone who has studied ads for a long time, however, I see them as part of
a pattern: just two of many ads that state or imply that products are more important than
people. Ads have long promised us a better relationship via a product: _buy this and you will be
loved_. But more recently they have gone beyond that proposition to promise us a relationship
with the product itself: _buy this and it will love you_. The product is not so much the means to
an end, as the end itself.

After all, it is easier to love a product than a person. Relationships with human beings are messy,
unpredictable, sometimes dangerous. ‘When was the last time you felt this comfortable in a
relationship?’ asks an ad for shoes. Our shoes never ask us to wash the dishes or tell us we’re
getting fat. Even more important, products don’t betray us. ‘You can love it without getting your
heart broken,’ proclaims a car ad. One certainly can’t say that about loving a human being, as
love without vulnerability is impossible.

We are surrounded by hundreds, thousands of messages every day that link our deepest
emotions to products, that objectify people and trivialize our most heartfelt moments and
relationships. Every emotion is used to sell us something. Our wish to protect our children is
leveraged to make us buy an expensive car. A long marriage simply provides the occasion for a
diamond necklace. A painful reunion between a father and his estranged daughter is dramatized

to sell us a phone system. Everything in the world – nature, animals, people – is just so much
stuff to be consumed or to be used to sell us something.

The problem with advertising isn’t that it
creates artificial needs, but that it exploits
our very real and human desires.
Advertising promotes a bankrupt concept of
_relationship_. Most of us yearn for
committed relationships that will last. We
are not stupid: we know that buying a
certain brand of cereal won’t bring us one
inch closer to that goal. But we are
surrounded by advertising that yokes our
needs with products and promises us that
_things_ will deliver what in fact they never
can. In the world of advertising, lovers are
things and things are lovers.

It may be that there is no other way to depict relationships when the ultimate goal is to sell
products. But this apparently bottomless consumerism not only depletes the world’s resources,
it also depletes our inner resources. It leads inevitably to narcissism and solipsism. It becomes
difficult to imagine a way of relating that isn’t objectifying and exploitative.

Tuned in

Most people feel that advertising is not
something to take seriously. Other aspects
of the media are serious – the violent films,
the trashy talk shows, the bowdlerization of
the news. But not advertising! Although
much more attention has been paid to the
cultural impact of advertising in recent
years than ever before, just about everyone
still feels personally exempt from its
influence. What I hear more than anything
else at my lectures is: ‘I don’t pay attention
to ads… I just tune them out… they have no
effect on me.’ I hear this most from people
wearing clothes emblazoned with logos. In
truth, we are all influenced. There is no way
to tune out this much information,
especially when it is designed to break
through the ‘tuning out’ process. As
advertising critic Sut Jhally put it: ‘To not be
influenced by advertising would be to live
outside of culture. No human being lives
outside of culture.’

Much of advertising’s power comes from this belief that it does not affect us. As Joseph
Goebbels said: ‘This is the secret of propaganda: those who are to be persuaded by it should be
completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being
immersed in it.’ Because we think advertising is trivial, we are less on guard, less critical, than
we might otherwise be. While we’re laughing, sometimes sneering, the commercial does its
work.

Taken individually, ads are silly, sometimes
funny, certainly nothing to worry about. But
cumulatively they create a climate of
cynicism that is poisonous to relationships.
Ad after ad portrays our real lives as dull
and ordinary, commitment to human beings
as something to be avoided. Because of the
pervasiveness of this kind of message, we
learn from childhood that it is far safer to
make a commitment to a product than to a
person, far easier to be loyal to a brand.
Many end up feeling romantic about
material objects yet deeply cynical about
other human beings.

Unnatural passions

We know by now that advertising often
turns people into objects. Women’s bodies –
and men’s bodies too these days – are
dismembered, packaged and used to sell
everything from chainsaws to chewing gum,
champagne to shampoo. Self-image is
deeply affected. The self-esteem of girls
plummets as they reach adolescence partly
because they cannot possibly escape the
message that their bodies are objects, and
imperfect objects at that. Boys learn that
masculinity requires a kind of ruthlessness,
even brutality.

Advertising encourages us not only to objectify each other but to feel passion for products rather
than our partners. This is especially dangerous when the products are potentially addictive,
because addicts do feel they are in a relationship with their substances. I once heard an alcoholic
joke that Jack Daniels was her most constant lover. When I was a smoker, I felt that my
cigarettes were my friends. Advertising reinforces these beliefs, so we are twice seduced – by the
ads and by the substances themselves.

The addict is the ideal consumer. Ten per cent of drinkers consume over sixty per cent of all the
alcohol sold. Most of them are alcoholics or people in desperate trouble – but they are also the
alcohol industry’s very best customers. Advertisers spend enormous amounts of money on
psychological research and understand addiction well. They use this knowledge to target
children (because if you hook them early they are yours for life), to encourage all people to
consume more, in spite of often dangerous consequences for all of us, and to create a climate of
denial in which all kinds of addictions flourish. This they do with full intent, as we see so clearly
in the ‘secret documents’ of the tobacco industry that have been made public in recent years

The consumer culture encourages us not
only to buy more but to seek our identity
and fulfillment through what we buy, to
express our individuality through our
‘choices’ of products. Advertising corrupts
relationships and then offers us products,
both as solace and as substitutes for the
intimate human connection we all long for
and need.

In the world of advertising, lovers grow
cold, spouses grow old, children grow up
and away – but possessions stay with us and
never change. Seeking the outcomes of a
healthy relationship through products
cannot work. Sometimes it leads us into
addiction. But at best the possessions can
never deliver the promised goods. They
can’t make us happy or loved or less alone
or safe. If we believe they can, we are
doomed to disappointment. No matter how
much we love them, they will never love us
back.

Some argue that advertising simply reflects societal values rather than affecting them. Far from
being a passive mirror of society, however, advertising is a pervasive medium of influence and
persuasion. Its influence is cumulative, often subtle and primarily unconscious. A former editor-
in-chief of _Advertising Age_, the leading advertising publication in North America, once
claimed: ‘Only eight per cent of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind. The rest is
worked and re-worked deep within, in the recesses of the brain.’

Advertising performs much the same function in industrial society as myth did in ancient
societies. It is both a creator and perpetuator of the dominant values of the culture, the social
norms by which most people govern their behavior. At the very least, advertising helps to create
a climate in which certain values flourish and others are not reflected at all.

Advertising is not only our physical
environment, it is increasingly our spiritual
environment as well. By definition,
however, it is only interested in materialistic
values. When spiritual values show up in
ads, it is only in order to sell us something.
Eternity is a perfume by Calvin Klein.
Infiniti is an automobile, and Hydra Zen a
moisturizer. Jesus is a brand of jeans.

Sometimes the allusion is more subtle, as in the countless alcohol ads featuring the bottle
surrounded by a halo of light. Indeed, products such as jewelry shining in a store window are
often displayed as if they were sacred objects. Advertising co-opts our sacred symbols in order to
evoke an immediate emotional response. Media critic Neil Postman referred to this as ‘cultural
rape’.

It is commonplace to observe that consumerism has become the religion of our time (with
advertising its holy text), but the criticism usually stops short of what is at the heart of the
comparison. Both advertising and religion share a belief in transformation, but most religions
believe that this requires sacrifice. In the world of advertising, enlightenment is achieved
instantly by purchasing material goods. An ad for a watch says, ‘It’s not your handbag. It’s not
your neighborhood. It’s not your boyfriend. It’s your watch that tells most about who you are.’
Of course, this cheapens authentic spirituality and transcendence. This junk food for the soul
leaves us hungry, empty, malnourished.

Substitute stories

Human beings used to be influenced primarily by the stories of our particular tribe or
community, not by stories that are mass-produced and market-driven. As George Gerbner, one
of the world’s most respected researchers on the influence of the media, said: ‘For the first time
in human history, most of the stories about people, life and values are told not by parents,
schools, churches, or others in the community who have something to tell, but by a group of
distant conglomerates that have something to sell.’

Although it is virtually impossible to measure the influence of advertising on a culture, we can
learn something by looking at cultures only recently exposed to it. In 1980 the Gwich’in tribe of
Alaska got television, and therefore massive advertising, for the first time. Satellite dishes, video
games and VCRs were not far behind. Before this, the Gwich’in lived much the way their
ancestors had for generations. Within 10 years, the young members of the tribe were so drawn
by television they no longer had time to learn ancient hunting methods, their parents’ language
or their oral history. Legends told around campfires could not compete with Beverly Hills
90210. Beaded moccasins gave way to Nike sneakers, and ‘tundra tea’ to Folger’s instant coffee.

As multinational chains replace local character, we end up in a world in which everyone is
Gapped and Starbucked. Shopping malls kill vibrant downtown centers locally and create a
universe of uniformity internationally. We end up in a world ruled by, in John Maynard
Keynes’s phrase, the values of the casino. On this deeper level, rampant commercialism
undermines our physical and psychological health, our environment and our civic life, and
creates a toxic society.

Advertising creates a world view that is based upon cynicism, dissatisfaction and craving.
Advertisers aren’t evil. They are just doing their job, which is to sell a product; but the
consequences, usually unintended, are often destructive. In the history of the world there has
never been a propaganda effort to match that of advertising in the past 50 years. More thought,
more effort, more money goes into advertising than has gone into any other campaign to change
social consciousness. The story that advertising tells is that the way to be happy, to find
satisfaction – and the path to political freedom, as well – is through the consumption of material
objects. And the major motivating force for social change throughout the world today is this
belief that happiness comes from the market.

*Jean Kilbourne* is the author of _Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We
Think and Feel_ and the creator of the award-winning _Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image

of Women_ film series.

This article is from the September
2006issue of New Internationalist:

https://newint.org/features/2006/09/
01/culture

Response Questions:

1. How does Kilbourne address the claim that advertising is trivial and has little power over
us? Do you find her response persuasive? Why or why not?

2. Specific Examples: How does the author think that ads affect our relationships with
other people? What specific examples does she give to support these claims?

3. Personal Insight: Have you seen any evidence of this destructive impact of advertising in
your own life or in the lives of people close to you?

4. How is advertising related to myth in ancient societies? How does it serve similar
functions as religion in today’s world? How do you feel about these comparisons?

5. Title: Do you think she made the right decision with this title? What impact is she trying
to achieve? Does it achieve that intended impact?