Conformity Of Conformism In Advertising

In an age of constant advertisement, it can be said we have fallen into the prediction of the Frankfurt school. Under a constant bombardment of advertisements, original thoughts become more and more difficult to differentiate from the clutter of messages about what is good and meaningful. It may seem that in this system we are merely conforming to these messages, but I dissent. In the following paper, I assert that we are not conformists, but victims of the cultural industry.
Dictionary.com defines term conformist as “a person who conforms, especially unquestioningly, to the usual practices or standards of a group, society, etc.” Or perhaps a more fitting definition is urban dictionary’s: “Society's B*****. One who has to follow what's 'In'
The conformist is aware that everyone else is following a system and make the conscious decision to do so as well. Can it be said we are making a decision in the consistent bombardment of advertisements? Not exactly. The insidious methodology that advertising companies have adopted are specifically in place to convince the consumer that they are deciding to buy a product on their own. Social media sites make the majority of their money from advertisements. Users of the site are profiled and sold to advertisers so they can be sent advertisements specific to their individuality. It becomes harder and harder to recognize the influence of the ad when it is outfitted to a personal identity. When the ad is exactly what an individual was looking for it may seem like they are making the decision to purchase rather than being coerced into by advertising when they likely would not have made that purchase without the carefully placed advert. As Adorno and Horkeimer illustrate in The Dialect for Enlightenment, “The way the girl accepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection on the telephone or the most intimate situation, the choice of words in conversation, and their whole inner life as
For this we can look to the format of the advertisements themselves. While the ad is selling a product, it is just the conduit to a lifestyle. An identity that one can attach to the product itself and can themselves when they consume that product. Consider an advertisement for a car. A sports car is dangerous and expensive. The owner of that car must be a risk-taker so to buy one is an expression of that person is or wants to be. No one appeals to the conformist, but the family man, mini-van, the free spirit, the jeep, or the boss, the hummer. It is the craving for an identity or unique sense of self, meaning to our lives that allots the ad its power. The conformist would be looking specifically for a group to gain this identity, but the individual is seeking to express themselves to others. In this sense, we are victims. The cultural industry feeds off of our weakness and desire for meaning and individuality. While we can attempt to disconnect and perhaps could, but the odds are stacked against us. We are not conforming as the system was built to lock us in. For the lack of choice and structure of the cultural industry, we are victims rather than conformists. A conformist must have a decision in order to fill the act of conforming which the industry does not provide. It is insidious in nature working to give the illusion of having a choice in purchasing decisions and while