Outside In Banking

In the first post of this series, I discussed the premise: People don’t believe advertising anymore.

I admit, my counter argument was somewhat jumbled, but it boiled down to this: It doesn’t matter if people believe advertising or not, because belief doesn’t have much to do with the effectiveness of advertising.

In this post, I’m going to discuss the inference: Customers are in charge now.

The first problem I have with this statement is that I’ve always believed consumers were in charge.  I never subscribed to the theory of consumers as passive recipients of whatever the winds of capitalism blew their way.

From my point of view, all products—including advertising—are reflections of culture.  They are, in a sense, demanded by culture.

This is from anthropologist, Grant McCracken:

“The world of goods is a cultural construction and that culture is constantly being played out in goods.

Consumer goods are an important source of meaning with which we construct our lives.

Advertising is the conduit through which meanings are constantly transferred from the culturally constituted world to the consumer good.  It is where culture does its die-casting.”

On a more pragmatic level, there’s the old saying: consumers vote with their feet.

You may argue that social media has given consumers a voice, but a voice is not a vote.  In fact, one could make the case that social media represents a regression—not an advancement—of consumer interests.

Social media also drags up the issue of group conformity.  Here’s what social psychologist, Elliot Aronson, has to say about that:

“People have a powerful need to belong.  Acceptance and rejection are among the most potent rewards and punishments for social animals because, in our evolutionary history, social exclusion could have disastrous consequences—namely being cut off from the resources and protection of the group in a dangerous world.  Thus, humans who passed their genes along were those with the strong inclination to fit in with the group.  The legacy of this history is that people will go to great lengths to avoid social exclusion.”

And let’s face it, there’s lot of pressure to conform in social media.  Conformity may, in fact, be its most contagious meme.  It’s almost as if social media were designed for it.  Here’s Aronson again:

“A group is more effective at inducing conformity if (1) it consists of experts, 2) the members are of high social status, or (3) the members are comparable with the individual in some way.”

Trifecta.

I don’t actually believe that consumers have any less control now than they used to, but I don’t see them as having any more control either.  It’s a wash.

Consumers are the product of culture and culture is the product of consumers.  I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.

The next post in this series will address the conclusion: Advertising doesn’t work anymore.