Issue 393 of New Internationalist

September 2006

Advertising overload

In your face and up your nose, mass advertising pushes more than just a product, it pushes an entire consumerist, globalized worldview – and makes it ‘fun’. This is different from the small-scale, non-glam stuff the *NI* itself accepts and indulges in. Backed by the financial muscle of the world’s corporate giants, advertising is about creating hungers in cultures of cool which big business can feed. With most of the media dependent on it and the finest creative brains working for it, the ad biz is hammering out that expressway to your skull. We peer into its bag of tricks.