New personalized marketing technologies combined with a drive to occupy all communications channels to promote brands, is making advertising a more powerful force in our collective lives. From mobile to broadband branded video to interactive television, the global–and tightly consolidating–advertising industry is pushing for greater consumption of products. As technologies of persuasion are further mingled with pervasive interactive communications, one of the most powerful constant messages fixed to our identities will be to buy, buy, buy.
On April 14, 2007, there will be a “National Day of Climate Action,” also called “Step It Up 2007.” The goal is for an outpouring of public support in the U.S. telling Congress to “Step it up. Cut carbon 80 percent by 2050.” It’s time for leaders of the advertising industry to play a positive and proactive role to address the disastrous consequences of global warming. They must call upon their clients to change course. What’s needed now are messages promoting a world in ecological balance (at the very least). Ad executives should renounce efforts underway designed to create a marketing system featuring “immersive” environments, the constant data collection and tracking of our behaviors, and the exploitation of brain neuropsychology.
We will be returning to this topic frequently, as we shed light on the ad industry’s global schemes to create a “brandwashing” culture–regardless of the costs to society.
