the inquisitive techie

Selling things to the United States public was a $28 Billion industry last year. The United States government is one of the advertising industry’s biggest customers, spending over $1.6 Billion last year selling ideas, policies, and actions to you. Can you think of a better way to describe the selling of an organization that has no tangible products?

By comparision, McDonald’s, who actually sells a product, spent approximately $700 million on advertising last year on the road to $ 22.8 billion in revenue. (On a scarier note, I also found out that US Pharmaceutical companies spend over $50 Billion annually, when you include Marketing and promotion, which includes those pervasive pens, pads, and other junk you see in your doctor’s office.)

Ad Age Magazine once listed the Top 10 Advertising Icons of the last century – the Marlboro Man was number one, followed by Ronald McDonald, and a clearly disappointed, and likely not so Jolly, Green Giant came in third. These images are part of our culture, and we recognize them immediately. We all know these images, and can visualize them, because we have seen them in the media thousands of times. This list just reinforces the concept that products, ideas, and messages are sold by repeating them, many times, and in many different ways.

In the media, how things are communicated is as often as important as what is being communicated. Marshall McLuhan once wrote in his book, The Medium is The Message, that “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.”

McLuhan was saying that pictures, small edited soundbites, and other smaller components of a message can become as important, or more important to people than the original message itself. Sorry to pick on Donald’s again here but the message is clear- we see smiling happy families, loving the hearty, filling, plentiful, food.

We all know that the reality of eating at McDonald’s is far different- the 15 minute wait at the drive thru (of course a new word had to be created here – thru), mostly low income customers, and consistently lousy service. Nobody is showing THAT message on television during the Super Bowl, are they? There is a difference between the advertising images and reality, and the management of that gap is the sell.

This ability to invoke images and messages repeatedly is very useful when selling war too.Wait, you say. You don’t think that we are being sold war? Think again.

War is carefully packaged, imaged, and delivered to us in many forms by the media. Openly paid for recruiting ads, reporters being paid to write favorable stories, and other public relations “freebies” are just some ways to get messages out. A news media hungry to fill the demands of a 24/7/365 news appetite is glad for soundbites and images of uniformed generals, government insiders, and pundits to fill time talking about the war – any war.

War sells, and ratings show it, and the more we watch, the more the media makes selling the ads during the shows about war. It is in the media’s interest to sell you war, because to them, WE ARE BUYING IT.

The more viewers a program has, the higher the ad prices for that program. A simple example of this is Super Bowl ads that cost almost $3 million for 30 seconds of air time. This is because last year billions of people saw those ads. Dollars buys eyeballs is the fundamental principle to remember when seeking to understand advertising based TV ratings.

Even the names of our military conflicts are chosen for their media value. We had “Operation Uphold Democracy” as 20,000 US troops supported a dictator in Haiti in the 1990’s; “Operation Enduring Freedom” as we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and the wickedly ironically named “Operation Just Cause” as George Bush, Sr. turns on long time ally Manuel Noriega in Panama as Bush’s political winds shifted against Panama in 1988. Who could argue against a small, insignificant invasion, of an unknown country in an operation NAMED JUST CAUSE? It was not only great marketing, it was a great sales job. Most of us barely noticed as we took over the country and put our own leader in place.

I recently watched a short, fascinating movie called War Made Easy, narrated by Sean Penn. It looks at media coverage leading up to the last 60 years of wars. Expert after expert show how the media supports war, often unwittingly, but frighteningly more often consciously.

Creating support for a war follows a familiar campaign. It is a time tested formula, one that the US Government marketing staff has been polished over the years from Vietnam to Iran.Many corporations in the United States and the world have a great interest in PROMOTING war. Their products are no good without war – missiles, bombs, tanks, all no good without a war or conflict. War is good business. Their lobbyists seem to be the only ones with access to congress anymore. Money buys access, access buys war. Businesses that depend on the selling of war do well.

From the folks over at Just Foriegn Policy:

The film demonstrates the use of the following types of deception:

• The rhetoric of democracy is repeated over and over to convince Americans that bombing other people is actually an act of kindness.
• As war approaches, we are told it is inevitable. Neither outside events – such as Iraq allowing weapons inspections – nor domestic opposition will stop it. So why work against it?
• The media defers to war planners. In the film, a top CNN official brags that he asked the Pentagon to approve a list of possible military commentators.
• If you are pro-war, you are objective. If you are anti-war, you are biased. Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett were fired for not supporting the war, even though Donahue hosted MSNBC’s highest-ranked show at the time. The channel’s executives wrote privately that they did not a want an “anti-war face.”

War propaganda in the U.S. is sophisticated, and most of it blends into the media background. Educate yourself. Pay attention to the details. Ask questions. Be a healthy skeptic. Remember that war is always bad, no matter what you hear.

Sell peace. Here’s just one way for you to get involved.