Advertising

The Clarion has long wondered if somewhere beyond the parameters of the debate about the First Amendment and the freedom of speech there is a socio-cultural debate we should be having about advertising. It strikes the Clarion that advertising has certain inherent flaws surrounding the need to aggrandize and the incentives to overclaim. (And of course, reflexively the urge to diminish faults or downsides.) Are these problems that may be endemic in advertising symbols, emblems, perhaps even signifiers of core defects, structural issues in the capitalist or market system, itself? Truth in advertising? Or misdirection? Fine print; let alone subliminal visual tomfoolery? Does advertising encourage us to lie to ourselves? Are there strong capital, market incentives in this day and age for our most imaginative minds to engage the arts of cultural deception? At what cost to our faith in each other and our society?

If truth be told, then what need for advertising? What value is added? Publicity?

Beyond the debate about the freedoms of speech, we must within a global cultural context ask ourselves about the nature and value of truth in the marketplace and advertising's ever increasing role. Veracity must have value. Global commerce with its infinite nodes requires ever more skepticism. Yet from this interconnected globe spanning superstructure springs back innovations that show that scale (globally interconnected commerce) can bring new ways to measure veracity and reliability, from Google search to E-Bay seller ratings.

Now here are links to two funny commercials we've recently seen blogged.

Wasted genius? You decide.

Good advertising, an oxymoron?

Funny, how it works.

Yep, somebody got paid to write this.