Advertithing: I shop therefore i am (Andrew Shamy)

You are what you consume. Put another way, consumerism is a religious impulse and like religion, it seeks to shape our vision for life.

According to ad executive Douglas Atkin, in an interview with PBS, there is a deep connection between the type of allegiance shown to brands and the type of allegiance shown to cults.

I believe that there is a very, very close relationship between cults and the best cult brands in the sense that people join and stay with cults for the exact same reasons as people join and stay with brands. The reason why is pretty obvious if you think about it: The desire to belong to something, to make meaning out of something, is universal.

Atkin’s belief in this connection led him to study cults in order to make him better at his job as a brand manager. Atkin here reveals the deep power of advertising and consumerism to shape our identity and vision for life.

As our society becomes more consumerist, so are the ways that we make meaning and create identity. We might originally, years and years ago, have created a sense of identity through nationhood or through belonging to a particular church. Nowadays, it can be made through what brand you’re particularly committed to.

This is an astonishing admission from someone in the industry – advertising aims to give meaning to our lives. This is, in fact, what a brand manager does according to Atkin:

Their job now is to create and maintain a whole meaning system for people through which they get identity and understanding of the world.

If we have ever needed a warning to be careful what we watch, here it is.

Next time you see an advertisement (which will probably be in the next 5 minutes) ask yourself, “What vision of life is this trying to create in me?” “What is this saying about what it means to be human?” “How is this trying to make me feel about my own life?”

It is difficult to avoid advertising, we are surrounded by it constantly. But we need to learn to be critical of it, identify what vision of life it is seeking to give us and compare it to the vision of God’s kingdom given to us in the Bible. I’d hazard to guess, the two rarely match up