Michael Cusumano Jomc 170.001 July 18, 2006 Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture The author of Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture, Arthur Asa Berger, is professor emeritus of broadcast and communication arts at San Francisco State University, where he taught from 1965-2003. Berger received his Batchelor of Arts in 1954, from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It only took Berger two years later to receive his Masters degree, in 1956, from The University of Iowa. Then in 1965, Berger completed his education at The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and received his Ph.D. His areas of concentration during his time in school were media criticism, cultural studies, humor, and communication theory. Berger could be considered one of the forefathers of studying popular culture. In 1973, Berger produced his first book, Pop Culture. In a time, when popular culture was rarely talked about or considered, Berger understood its importance and knew how it can influence American advertising. Berger has become a well-known figure in analyzing advertising’s influence on American society, and is a preeminent scholar in the field of American popular culture studies. In just over 30 years, Berger has published over 60 books. To name a few of his books they are, Seeing is Believing An Introduction to Visual Communication, Media Analysis Techniques, Cultural Criticism, Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics, and Essentials of Mass Communication. His latest book, published in 2005, Shop ‘til you drop: Consumer Behavior and American Culture is considered one of his finest achievements. To gain specific insight into writing Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture, Berger was granted a visiting professorship from the Advertising Education Foundation to spend three weeks at Goldberg Moser O’Neil advertising in San Francisco.2 In the book Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture, Berger develops his own theories as to how advertising influences Americans’ purchasing. The main point of this book can be broken up into three main areas, “To teach readers how advertising works, to suggest how advertising has affected American society and culture, and to help readers learn how to interpret and analyze advertisements and commercials (Berger, xv).” One area of concentration in the book that Berger focuses on is our resistance to advertising. Many people who consider themselves “ad-proof” are actually influenced unknowingly by advertising just by the looking at their purchase behaviors over time. Berger writes, “Advertising is an important part of our culture, and many of our ideas and notions have been influenced by the enormous amount of advertising we are exposed to as we grow up (Berger, xiv).” Advertising affects consumers differently, and to those who think they are not influenced by advertising, Berger thinks otherwise. Berger suggests the average person in America can be subjected to 15,000 commercial messages each day (Berger, 101). Another important fact about advertising is that it is always around us, one can not escape it. If one typed the word “advertising” into the search engine Google, 35,800,000 web sites will show up that have the word or mention the word “advertising” in them (Berger, xiv). Berger examines in Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture in further detail the affects of advertising on consumers, society, and American culture. He also discusses the system that is used by marketers to segregate consumers’ demographic, psychographic, and geographic information. This book also analyzes the famous “1984” Apple ad, and breaks it down to help readers see the commercials underlying message; plus, the reason why it became the second best commercial among all ads in the year 1984. Finally, Berger deals with the topics of sex and advertising, political advertising, market research (utilizing the VALS 1 and VALS 2 methods), and advertising in American’s culture.3 Advertising in American Culture The world of advertising is continually growing, and is especially on the rise in American society. In the United States, “Advertising is a $200 billion industry (Berger, 1).” The cost to create an average commercial is anywhere between $300,000 and $400,000, with most of that money going towards television production costs. For example, in one of the famous “Got Milk” commercials Berger breaks down the costs that were included in the production of this campaign. On just television production alone it cost $281,000 (Berger, 2). It is also important to keep in mind that the production of a commercial does not include medium purchases. So, airtime for a commercial or an advertisement can run into the hundred thousands to millions of dollars. Advertising is around us continually, whether we like it or not. However, there is not a clear-cut method that can show why a consumer exactly purchased a certain product because they saw an advertisement about it. Advertising does help consumers gain information about products, and could lead to a purchase decision. There is a method that many social scientists have used to see advertising’s psychological influence on people. Berger uses the Social-Psychological Model to explain that just because a person sees an advertisement it does not lead to any decision-making. “This approach, which often is quite sophisticated in terms of research design, frequently indicates that advertising has little or no effect on respondents” (Berger, 13). Berger goes on to use the post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument. This argument says that, “Just because “Y” follows “X” does not mean that “X” caused “Y” (Berger, 15).” To further explain, just because John sees a television commercial for beer and then drinks a beer, it does not mean the commercial made him do it.4 Throughout this book Berger uses the phrase, “Running it [an advertisement] up a flagpole to see if anyone salutes.” What he means by this statement is the idea of corporations and organizations spending millions of dollars to run advertisements in the huge world of media, and then seeing if consumers will respond to the messages being delivered (see if anyone salutes). These companies assume people are irrational when it comes to spending. This may be true, given the fact that many Americans today are more concerned with materialistic wealth. Berger uses Sigmund Freud’s idea of the human psyche: the id (“I want it now”), the