Advertising International
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ADVERTISING INTERNATIONAL The advertising industry has changed out of all recognition over the past twenty years. The map of global communications has been redrawn by a flood of mergers and takeovers, and the media industry is now dominated by a handful of transnational conglomerates. Advertising companies have diversified into television production, public relations, media buying and marketing services. In the gap created by the crisis in public service provision, advertising has stepped in, forming a network which enervates media, economies, cultures, politics and international relations. Armand Mattelart’s outstanding survey assesses the development and future prospects of this ‘industry of public noise’, and examines the implications for democracy of the seemingly irresistible rise of the communications society. Armand Mattelart is Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at the University of Haute-Bretagne (Rennes-France). From 1962 to 1973, he taught at the University of Santiago, Chile. He is the author of several books, including How to Read Donald Duck (with Ariel Dorfman) (1975), Multinational Corporations and the Control of Culture (1979), International Image Markets (with Michèle Mattelart and Xavier Delcourt) (1984) and The Carnival of Images: Brazilian Television Fiction (with Michèle Mattelart) (1990). He has carried out missions relating to communications policy for the governments of Belgium, France, Mozambique and Nicaragua. Michael Chanan, the translator, is Senior Lecturer in Film and Video at the London College of Printing; he is also an independent film-maker and author. COMEDIA Series editor: David Morley ADVERTISING INTERNATIONAL The privatisation of public space Armand Mattelart Translated by Michael Chanan London and New York A Comedia book First published in 1989 as L’Internationale publicitaire by Editions La Découverte, 1 Place Paul-Painlevé, 75005 Paris Revised English language edition first published 1991 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1991 Armand Mattelart Translation © 1991 Michael Chanan All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Mattelart, Armand Advertising international: the privatisation of public space.—(A Comedia book) 1. Advertising industries. Management I. Title II. L’Internationale publicitaire 338.47659.1 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mattelart, Armand. [Internationale publicitaire. English] Advertising international: the privatisation of public space /Armand Mattelart: translated by Michael Chanan.—Rev. English language ed. p. cm.—(Comedia) Translation of: L’Internationale publicitaire. Includes index. 1. Advertising. 2. Advertising agencies. 3. International business enterprises. 4. Advertising-Social aspects. 5. Communication, International. 6. Intercultural communication. I. Title. II. Series. HF5821.M3213 1991 659.1-dc20 90–24146 v ISBN 0-203-99421-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-05063-4 (Print Edition) ‘Come on, Mitz! There were five hundred Veenies out there!’ And so there had been—maybe more—at the time, I could have sworn half of Venus was silently parading around our embassy with their stupid signs—‘No Advertising!’ and ‘Take Your Filth Back Where It Belongs!’ I didn’t mind the picketing so much— but, oh, the pathetic amateurishness of their slogan writers! ‘They’re crazy,’ I said —a complicated shorthand that didn’t mean ‘crazy’ for thinking we would use advertising techniques on them, but ‘crazy’ because they were getting upset about it—as though there were any possibility that, given a chance, we wouldn’t. I also meant crazy in the specific context of incompetent copysmithing…. All the same I came up with some beauties. I called Dixmeister in to see them, all beautifully calligraphed and ornamented by Art, with theme music and multisensual background by Production. He gaped at the monitor, puzzled. ‘Hands Off Hyperion’? That’s truly superb, Mr Tarb,’ he said by reflex, and then, hesitating, ‘but isn’t it really kind of the other way around? I mean, we don’t want to let go of Hyperion as a market, do we?’ ‘Not our hands off, Dixmeister,’ I said kindly. ‘Veenies’ hands off. We want them left alone by Veenies.’ His expression cleared. ‘A masterpiece, Mr Tarb,’ he said raptly. ‘And this one. “Freedom of Information.” That means no attempts at censoring advertising, right? And “Get Government Off the Backs of the People”?’ ‘Means abolishing the requirement to post warnings at Campbell areas,’ I explained. [Thus named after Dr H.J.Campbell, celebrated pioneer of psychology during the heroic epoch, inventor of limbic pleasure therapy.] Frederick Pohl, one of the craftsmen of American science fiction, The Merchant’s War, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1984. CONTENTS Author’s preface viii Translator’s preface x 1 THE GEOSTRATEGY OF THE NETWORKS: The rise of the 1 global agencies 2 CULTURE SHOCK: The decline of the imperial model 29 3 THE LIMITS OF THE GLOBAL SCENARIO: Imagining the 45 Other 4 MEDIA WORLDS: Cosmopolitan flexibility 65 5 THE VANGUARD OF DEREGULATION: Neo-liberal 83 enterprise culture 6 THE NEW FRONTIER OF THE OLD CONTINENT: 97 Fragmentation and planetary conscience 7 CHANGING ROLES: The new marriage of advertising and 117 fiction 8 AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT: Towards a bar-coded world? 139 9 THINK TANKS: The bestiary of ‘lifestyle culture’ 155 10 THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE: The limits of transparency 169 11 TOTAL COMMUNICATION: The crisis of public culture 181 12 THE WEAPONS OF CRITICISM AND THE CRITICISM OF 193 WEAPONS: A new subjectivity? Notes 211 Index 225 AUTHOR’S PREFACE No media without advertising. This is what most television clearly demonstrates. Some would hasten to add, no creation, no national production, no preservation of cultural identity without the manna of the advertisers, whilst others speak of the collapse of national cinema, the asphyxiation of creation, the degradation of programme quality. One of the objects of this study is to analyse the multiple forms taken by the growing overlap of the advertising industry and the media. The question of advertising has long ceased to be a national question, and indeed its transnational dimension constitutes its history as a network and a network of networks. This book analyses the trajectory of this network which today—with varying intensity—forges ever-stronger links between the economy and a universalised culture. It presents numerous realities which this network comprises, which it both unites and separates in this era of the abolition of frontiers. For this epoch of ours is rich in contradictions. When everything in the evolution of technology and the economy seems to lead to the homogenisation of taste and behaviour, when this complex world of interrelations and interpenetration favours concentration and gigantism, one has never felt with so much force the tensions which mark the encounter between the universal and the particular, between external logic and territorial communities of understanding, which in their own way are sources of universality. Like all networks, this one has its own splits and discontinuities. Advertising has become an essential actor within public space. It has overflowed the cramped frame of the commercial break in order to constitute itself as a mode of communication. From the isolated and isolable product, it has become a diffuse environment, pregnant and present in the everyday. Yesterday a simple instrument, today a central feature. Its field of competence is so diversified and branching, that it forms a social network which enervates media, economies, cultures, political and civil society, international relations. Network of networks, these systems of connection regulate the relations between individuals and groups. The so-called communications society chases the so- called consumer society. We must therefore examine this essential change which provokes a whole cascade of mutations and redefinitions in the practice of democracy. ix This book is also a book about intellectuals. Not about those who not so long ago defined themselves through the exercise of the critical function, but these new mediators and bearers of knowledge and knowhow who run this institution and this industry of public noise. Lastly, the issues examined in this book concerning the networks’ progress are unfolding in a particularly volatile international environment. Uncertainty governs the strategies of the big groups and the flow of capital released by the new world economy. If the golden Eighties of megamergers, takeovers and unmediated globalisation were able to sustain the illusion of the limitless (and exponential) growth of advertising markets, the Nineties have begun by planting seeds of doubt. The combined effect of the first post-Cold War international conflict in the Persian Gulf and the recession in the leading