Of Reptiles and Emotional Chords

“It's a capitalism of higher-order production […]This is no longer a capitalism for production but for the product, which is to say, for being sold or marketed.” 

Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”

When I was watching The Persuaders last week in class, I could stop thinking about these lines from Deleuze’s seminal essay. Much of the advertising “cartel” that we saw on-screen last week was clearly very concerned with the process of branding and selling. Among its high-priests such as Clotaire Rappaille and Frank Luntz, advertising becomes a sort of a pseudo-science, and the consumer, a decipherable code. Perhaps the most ridiculous of claims is Rappaille’s notion of the reptilian brain which reduces consumers to  mere recipients of coded advertising messages hurled at them. However branding-building and advertising remain an integral part of commercial circulation. 

A Reptilian Fall?

In her chapter on branding Celia Lurie points towards the brand as an object that can circulate within the economy. This constant flow of the brand as an object allows it to stand in for a signified value—whether that value is based on price, quality, taste or even desire. Amanda’s post for instance points towards the “Love Great Britain” campaign…in one of the videos for this campaign, the sequence starts with signifiers that most commonly allude to Great Britain…Stonehenge, tea, Wimbledon etc. The next 30 seconds of the video clearly try to sell “multiculturalism” as a prime facet of Brand Britain with subtle changes in soundtrack accompanying the “representatives” of different ethnicities. Here “Great Britain” as a brand is sold on the premise of ethnic equanimity… “you’re invited” to Great Britain, not only because it might be a place you might want to visit, but as a set of attributes that should be emulated. 

Advertisements such as these are marked by what one respondent in The Persuaders termed as “emotional advertising.” Advertising creates an aura around the object that might have nothing to do with its use or exchange value. For instance, this Duracell Battery ad I recently saw on Youtube takes it to an altogether different level. Featuring the American athlete and Paralympian Amy Purdy who lost her legs to bacterial meningitis, the ad tells us to “trust the power within.” 

The use of a disabled athlete to sell the idea of “power” is a strategic act as it strikes an emotional chord, regardless of the fact that direct current and strength of will point towards completely different semiotic registers of “power.” Maybe this is what advertising becomes when we are faced with the "capitalism of higher order production"...an object's intended use becomes subservient to the rapid flow of messages that are meant to signify them and capture the market at the same time. Perhaps nothing sums this up better than Mastercard's near-legendary advertising tagline:

There are some things money can't buy...
...for everything else, there's Mastercard.