Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close --Episode 26

                                        MARKETING THE WORLD

   In modern societies, television has arguably become our most important institution of cultural reproduction. Our schools are probably the second most important. Television has already been wholly colonized by corporate interests, which are now laying claim to our schools. The goal is not simply to sell products and strengthen the consumer culture. It is also to create a political culture that equates the corporate interest with the human 

interest in the public mind. In the words of Paul Hawken, "Our minds are being addressed by addictive media serving corporate sponsors whose purpose is to rearrange reality so that viewers forget the world around them."

The rearrangement of reality begins with the claim that in a market 
economy, the consumer decides and the market responds. In a world of small buyers and sellers, this may have been true. No individual seller could expect to create a new culture conducive to buying his or her product. This is not our current reality. Present-day corporations have no reservations about reshaping the 
values of whole societies to create a homogenized culture of 
indulgence. As corporate demand has grown for supporting services in advertising, graphics, media, creative production, consumer research, marketing education, and countless others, whole industries have emerged to help corporations create insatiable desires for the things they sell and cultivate political 
values aligned with the corporate interest.

              FIRST AMERICA, THEN THE WORLD

   There was a day when the prevailing American culture was the mass marketer's worst nightmare. Frugality and thrift were central 
to the famed "Puritan ethic" that the early Puritan settlers brought with them to America. The Puritans believed in hard work, participation in community, temperate living, and devotion to spiritual life. Their basic rule of living was that one should not desire more material things than could be used effectively. They taught their children, "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do 
without." 
   The Quakers also had a strong influence on early America and, although more tolerant and egalitarian, shared with the Puritans the values of hard work and frugality as important to one's spiritual development . Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, both important early American writers, viewed simplicity as a path 
to experiencing the divine.
   The consumer culture emerged largely as a consequence of concerted efforts by the retailing giants of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries TO CREATE AN EVER-GROWING DEMAND for the goods they offered for sale. American historian William Leach has documented in Land of Desire : Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture how they successfully turned a spiritually oriented culture of frugality and thrift into a material culture of self-indulgence.  Leach finds the claim that the market simply responds to consumer desires to be nothing more than a self-serving fabrication of those who make their living manipulating reality to convince consumers to buy what corporations find it profitable to sell : 

     Indeed, the culture of consumer capitalism may have been among the most nonconsensual public cultures ever created, and it was nonconsensual for two reasons. First, it was not produced by "the people" but by commercial groups in cooperation with other elites comfortable with and committed to making profits and to accumulating capital on an ever-ascending scale. Second, it was nonconsensual because, in its mere day-to-day conduct (but not in any conspiratorial way ) , it raised to the fore only one vision of the good life and pushed out all others. In this way, it diminished American public life, denying the American people access to insight into other ways of organizing and conceiving life, insight that might have endowed their consent to the dominant culture (if such consent were to be given at all) with real democracy. 

The populist cultures that grew out of the hearts and aspirations of ordinary people in America stressed the democratization of property and the virtues of a republic based on independent families owning their own land and tools, producing for themselves much of what they consumed, and participating in communities of sharing. Theirs was the model of a strong social economy, supplemented by involvement in the money economy at the margin of their lives.
   The shift from a social economy of household and community production to a primarily monetized economy took place in America in the mid-1800s, during the period in which the large corporations came into ascendance. As late as 1870, however, the average number of workers in a given firm was still fewer than ten. Markets remained predominantly local or regional, and most businesses were individually owned and managed ---a world still close to the ideal of Adam Smith. 
   Large corporations became increasingly skillful in creating desire for their products. Eventually, marketing was born as a management speciality, and the early business schools began offering courses to meet this demand. As more people became dependent on wage employment in the factories, governments gained a stake in promoting consumerism as a way of maintaining employment. 
   Business became skilled in using colors, glass, and light to create exciting images of a this-world paradise conveyed by elegant models and fashion shows. Museums offered displays depicting the excitement of the new culture. Gradually, the individual was surrounded by messages reinforcing the culture of desire. Advertisements, department store show windows, electric signs, fashion shows, the sumptuous environments of the leading hotels, and billboards all conveyed artfully crafted images of the god life. Credit programs made it seem effortless to buy that life. According to Leach : 

     The United States was the first country in the world to have an economy devoted to mass production and it was the first to create the mass consumer institutions and the mass consumer enticements that rose up in tandem to market and sell the mass-produced goods. More effectively and pervasively than any other nation, America . . . forged a unique bond among different institutions that served to realize business aims. 

Today, television is the primary medium through which corporations shape the culture and behavior of Americans. The statistics are chilling. The average American child between the ages of two and five watches three and a half hours of television a day ; the average adult, nearly five hours. Only work and sleep occupy more of the average adult's life, with television effectively replacing community and family life, cultural pursuits, and reading.  At this rate, the average American adult is seeing approximately 21,000 commercials a year, most of which carry an identical message : "Buy something --- do it now !" The 100 largest corporations in America pay for roughly 75 percent of commercial television time and 50 percent of public television time. With a half minute of prime-time network advertising selling between $200,000 and $300,000, only the largest corporations can afford it. Although there may be no overt control over program content, television producers are hired to produce television programming that advertisers will buy and necessarily have these corporations and their views of proper programming content constantly in mind.
   Jerry Mander explains why television is a nearly ideal communications medium for serving the corporate purpose : 

     By its ability to implant images into the minds of millions of people, TV can homogenize perspective, knowledge, tastes, and interests of the people who transmit the imagery. In our world, the transmitters of the images are corporations whose ideal of life is technologically oriented, materialistic, and hostile to nature. And satellite communications is the mechanism by which television is delivered into parts of the planet that have, until recently, been spared this assault. 

As global corporations reach out to the four corners of the earth, they bring with them not only established products and brand names but also their favored media and the sophisticated marketing methods by which they colonize every culture they touch. 
   The Economist reported that in 1989, global corporate spending for advertising totaled more than $240 billion. Another $380 billion was spent on packaging, design, and other point-of-sale promotions. Together, these expenditures amounted to $120 for every single person in the world. Although the bulk of this corporate expenditure is directed toward creating demand for specific products, it also contributes to creating a generalized global consumer culture and to making a connection in the public mind between corporate interests --- in particular the interests of large corporations ---and the public interest.
  Overall, corporations are spending well over half as much per capita to create corporation-friendly consumers as the $207 per capita ($33 for Southern countries) the world spends on public education. Furthermore, growth in advertising expenditures far outpaces increases in education spending. Advertising expenditures have multiplied nearly sevenfold since 1950 ---one-third faster than the world economy.