EYE 59 / 06 61 60 EYE 59 / 06 The growth of global advertising and branding is a product of the accelerating globalisation of the world economy, where a small number of agencies set the pace for strategies, styles and content exported throughout the world. Agency culture is now a major force for cultural change in the emerging economies. Since the 1980s, businesses have aimed to expand internationally in search of growth, and they have taken their ad agencies with them. The multinationals have the financial muscle and the technology to sell hard to new markets. And yet the greater part of their work still takes place in the industrialised world (the US in particular) so the values defined by specifically Western advertising spread globally. Through mergers and acquisitions, the world’s largest advertisers – Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Colgate Palmolive and Nestle – have also been configured into groups of companies that own large suites of brands under one corporate banner, what research agency A. C. Nielsen calls ‘Mega Brand Franchises’. These companies primarily target women, and their strategies are defining contemporary images of women on a global scale. Much advertising over the past century has been about defining new standards, and creating new needs and taboos that can be met by products: shiny hair (shampoos and conditioner); clean-shaven faces, armpits, legs (shavers); body odour (deodorant); hiding of women’s grey hair (hair dye) and beauty defined by cosmetics. Advertising also introduces new products such as fast food, and technologies such as mobile phones, computers and sanitary products, as well as services such as insurance, banking, travel and holidays. On a macro-level advertising provides massive propaganda for the concepts of consumption, materialism and the capitalist system. The values promoted in advertising include modernity, technology, youth, lifestyle, individualism, personal fulfilment, together with strict definitions of ‘ideal’ bodies and beauty. Marketeers promote the idea that happiness can be bought, that problems can be solved by a product, and that having possessions is a measure of success. Global advertising agencies set the standards for the industry worldwide and the internal dynamics of the advertising industry play an important ESSAY/AD CULTURE BY LYNNE CIOCHETTO Global visual culture is dominated by the values of the industrialised West Advertising Cultural supremacy Globalisation Lad culture Stereotypes role in the strategies chosen. Advertising is an industry with a history of male domination since its Madison Avenue ‘golden era’ in the 1950s and 1960s. Tight deadlines and competition between (and within) agencies creates an environment where there is pressure to work impossible hours. A high ‘burnout rate’ is reflected in the age profiles of agency creatives: 50 per cent are under 30 and only twenty per cent over 40 years of age. Another source of pressure is the competitive nature of pitching for jobs. Winning and retaining accounts is vital to agency survival, as is entering and winning industry competitions, where the criteria for success are originality and novelty rather than effectiveness. This creates further pressure to ‘push boundaries’. Such limits of taste and morality are always being tested in contemporary media, and advertising plays a role in this, with an easy default to the adage ‘sex sells’. Is this another result of tight deadlines and the dominance of young males? It’s a (white) man’s world Agency culture has been the subject of anthropological scrutiny, which found a cult of specialism for creative teams, (usually paired as creatives and copywriters), allowing them license in the interests of stimulating creativity. What has developed is a laddish, and even adolescent culture that often excludes women. Only eighteen per cent of agency creatives in New York and London are women. A recent Independent newspaper article discussing this issue quoted Neil French, senior executive at wpp in Singapore, whose response to the question why there were so few senior female executives in advertising was ‘they are crap’ and that they will inevitably ‘wimp out and go suckle something’. (French later resigned over the matter.) In the same article, Karen Stanners, Executive Creative Director at Saatchi and Saatchi London, noted that the traits most prized by creative departments are selfishness and competitiveness, along with endless curiosity and a willingness to make a fool of oneself. These, she says, are male traits and ones that women are less eager to adopt. Creatives also spend a much of their time being rejected: many women find this ridiculous. Advertising and the globalisation of aspiration USA CHINA INDIA All pictures by Lynne Ciochetto taken over an XX period