If Advertising Were Abolished…

with advertising…		without advertising…

cheaper television advertising makes television cheaper; whenever anything is subsidized, people tend to consume more of it than they otherwise would; with advertising, people watch more television than they otherwise would		cheaper everything there's a flip side to advertising's making television cheaper; the owners of the corporations don't pay for all those television shows out of their own pockets… instead, they pass on the cost of the advertising to the consumer in higher prices; without advertising, everything would be cheaper

big business only the multinational corporations – McDonalds and Coca Cola, Starbucks and Walmart – can afford to advertise on a massive scale, and only they can benefit from the blunderbuss of mass advertising; with advertising, it's the big businesses that pull in the customers		local business local restaurants, local cafés and local stores can never out-advertise the big brands; without advertising, there would be more of a level playing field; people would go to the places they see in their neighbourhood, and local businesses would no longer be at such a disadvantage

manipulation defenders of advertising claim that it informs consumers about the products available on the market; take a look at any billboard, though, and you'll find little or no information; instead, there'll be images and slogans carefully calculated to make us feel good about a product; with advertising, it's not information you're getting, it's manipulation		information if you really want information, it's available in abundance on the web; without advertising, we'd make purchasing decisions based on half an hour on a consumer web site, or a few minutes scanning the shelves at the supermarket, rather than thousands of hours of manipulative advertising

ugly cities, ugly countryside perhaps there are people who prefer a billboard to a view of the city or the mountains…		beautiful cities, beautiful countryside when the billboards are taken down, as they recently were in São Paulo following an advertising ban, the effect is breathtaking, as we see the world as it is, the world stolen from us by the advertisers

Notes

If advertising were abolished, the world would not come to an end

A few things would change. We'd watch less television. We'd use local businesses more. We'd no longer be plagued by corporate propaganda. Our cities and our countryside would be beautiful again.

Maybe we'd all buy a little less, but I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing, seeing as buying things does not make us happy.

People who work for advertising agencies would have to find some other way to make a living. Who knows, they might find themselves happier as artists, writers, teachers, nurses and plumbers than they ever did as manipulators of consumers' minds.

Just about the only negative impact would be that people who own large buildings in cities or tracts of land beside highways would no longer be able to make money for nothing by putting up billboards. Generally, though, people who own large buildings and tracts of land are not short of money.

Actually, I'm not in favour of abolishing advertising. What I am in favour of is banning non-consensual advertising.

Advertising on television, in newspapers, in magazines and on the web is consensual, in that if we don't want to see it, we can just switch off the television, or subscribe to a commercial-free movie channel, or not buy the newspaper or magazine, or visit a web site with no ads.

Advertising on billboards, on public transit and on the sides of taxis, on the other hand, is non-consensual, in that when we're in public places we're subjected to it whether we like it or not.

Ever more jurisdictions are banning this latter kind of advertising, recognising that it's not only visual pollution, it's sensorial bullying. In a few decades time, it will seem barbaric that we could have allowed the rich, powerful few to pollute our world and bully the populace in this way.

Comments

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Riccardo Antonini ⋅ 8 February 2013

I always sought that there must have been somebody else sharing my view about abolishing advertising. I always felt that there was something wrong with it. I have an original copy of Vance Packard book too but there is a more a fundametal feeling for me that I can not express here *now*. Hanyhow thanks for existing and I hope to be back.

Richard B ⋅ 12 August 2013

I'd love TV without adverts, they are really annoying. The BBC is getting pretty bad these days with their repetitive adverts.

I download my shows online with the ads cut out. I'm all for buying movies on dvd and tv show box sets, but watching stuff on TV on the channels with ads every few minutes is not entertainment.

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