Page 81 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

66 J. LEWIS

Not so long ago, musicians were reluctant to see their work endorse
shampoo or sportswear. Today, the music and advertising industries are
locked in a lucrative embrace (Klein 2009), with once rebellious punk
rockers like Johnny Rotten and Iggy Pop fronting up TV commercials for
butter and insurance. This may not be edifying but it is a profitable sym-
biosis: the ad promotes the music and the music promotes the product.
At the centre of this drift towards a consumerist monoculture is the
internet. The beauty of the internet—a place where production is cheap
and information is both abundant and free—has been shaped and con-
strained by a consumerist economy (Curran et al. 2012). Earlier media
revolutions—notably broadcasting—were more contested, with many
governments creating funding mechanisms for public service broadcasting
that allowed content to be shown without commercials. Although some
public service broadcasters have a significant online presence (the BBC
website, for example, is by far the most the popular source of online news
in the UK) most content online is a form of public relations or paid for
directly by advertisers.
Our main search engines (Google) and social media (Facebook) are not
only replete with commercial messages, they are part of increasingly
sophisticated developments in advertising strategy, enabling advertisers to
target consumers with hitherto undreamed of precision. Google searches,
for example, are driven as much by market logic (who pays, where the
consumer traffic is) as by closeness to content, while Facebook encourages
subscribers to provide a slew of demographic details which can then be sold
on. Even critiques of advertising posted on You Tube (including my own
TED lecture) now come preceded—and surrounded—by commercials.
Advertising thereby sucks up a huge portion of the world’s talent for art,
design, creativity and storytelling. It has become such a routine part of
everyday life that—unless prompted by CATS in Clapham or
Brandalism-style interventions—we rarely stop to think about the cultural
and political assumptions contained in most advertisements, or indeed,
their ubiquity in our cultural environment.
This matters, because for all their diversity, advertisements share one
basic value system. While Toyota, McDonald’s and Tesco all have their
own pitches, they sell more than just goods. Collectively, they sell con-
sumerism as a way of life. The common thread that runs through all
product advertising is that the only way to happiness, satisfaction, security
or popularity is through consumption. The answer to every problem lies
not in our relationship with friends, family or community, but in the dead