markpasc.org weblog

Finally got around to finishing this piece at someone's suggestion:

So the primary purpose of national advertising is not to enable the manufacturer to increase his sales. It is to enable him to tell the wholesaler, rather than to ask him, the price of his goods. His new price will be higher than the old, competitive price--not only to cover his costs of branding and advertising, but beyond that to provide him with the greater profit he is seeking.

The article is mostly about how, from a survey of advertising textbooks, the real purpose and social context of advertising is hidden. It's a persistent lie that advertising enables us to produce and have more, cheaper goods of a given quality; the real reason is to move power from the consumer to the producer. I find that reasonable, if only as that seems to be a recurring theme of postindustrial commerce.

The elevator upshot is a very libertarian argument against advertising as we know it. Nice.

January 23, 2004 5:19 PM 1 comments