Can't Buy My Love Precis

The modern-day advertisements make people feel like they have an intimate relationship with the products. However, once these products are purchased, in the hope of receiving the love and intimacy that was advertised, people remain hungry for more, and are never satisfied, simply because the products that people have begun to love do not and cannot love back. Can’t Buy My Love is primarily about how aggressive marketing degrades the quality of a culture. Kilbourne explains how we have become the product that is sold. This means that an image of a “normal” person is broadcasted through advertisements of all possible industries (even though this normalcy is far from the average human being), and we feel we need to become that image by purchasing all sorts of products (diet programs, expensive cars, cigarettes, etc.). Advertisers sell specific products to different focus groups, by targeting different audiences and their leaders. MTV, which presents itself publicly as a place for rebels and nonconformists tells advertisers, however, that its viewers are lemmings who will buy whatever they are told to buy.

The average American is exposed to an average of 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years’ of television ads in one lifetime. Young people, and especially teenage girls, are affected the most since they are in their most weak and influential phase. Advertisements offer false representations of control, connection, and rebellion. Not only do they make promises they cannot hold, but they purposefully aim advertisements for addictive products at young people, so that their addictive mentality is developed early and therefore the addictions remain throughout adulthood. There are actual tactics that advertisers use to manipulate the innermost fantasies and desires of women and especially teenage girls to turn them into addictive longing, which, they claim, only their products can satisfy. An ad for sneakers asks: “When was the last time you felt this comfortable in a relationship?” which is aimed at touching the vulnerable topic for women considering happy and successful relationships. An ad for a car claims that “you can love it without getting your heart broken”. Advertising goes as far as a woman saying “until I find a real man, I’ll settle for a real smoke” in an ad for cigarettes. Kilbourne does not question the capitalistic economy, which includes the competition amongst companies to market a more successful product, but attacks the methods that advertiser use which affect the way we interact negatively. She claims that personal human contact has diminished since advertisements have negatively changed the way people view themselves, their peers, and material goods. This devalues the importance of human interaction, as it now seems enough to interact with a product.
Advertising has become our environment, and even though advertisers tell parents that they can turn off the TV to protect their kids from the negative impact of advertising, it is clear that this suggestion is ridiculous as kids are bombarded with more advertisements as soon as they step out of the house. Rance Crain (editor of Advertising Age): “only 8% of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind; the rest is worked… deep within the recesses of the brain, where the product’s positioning and repositions takes shape”. Some companies use the approach of advertising their products with an anti-advertisement approach. An ad for Easy jeans: “we don’t use sex to sell our jeans. We don’t even screw you when you buy them”.

Kilbourne states that “advertising encourages us not only to objectify each other but also to feel that our most significant relationships are with the products we buy”. Because of its influence, advertisement is the most important aspect of the mass media. With it, women especially are objectified and therefore made insecure about themselves and their present lives. In women’s magazines images of high-calorie foods such as cheesecakes on the cover are juxtaposed to images of skinny models and weight loss tips. After all, advertisers know that people who feel empty make great consumers. An ad for Charmin with a smiling old couple in their kitchen says: “Bath tissue is like marriage. The longer it lasts, the better it is.” Advertising makes consumers believe that they can recreate themselves by purchasing a product. When people buy a product, values, images, and concepts of normalcy, romance, sexuality, success, and love are also sold. The thousands of messages that are forced into people’s minds every day, link products to deep emotions, turn people into objects that must follow a certain criteria, and question people’s heartfelt moments and relationships at being good enough. An ad for a car: “Can an engine pump the valves in your heart?” and “Rekindle the romance”. It says “If anyone should ask, go ahead and show them your pride and joy” under a picture of a wallet showing two photographs, one of children and the family dog, the other of a Honda. Other examples include: “We don’t sell cars, we merely facilitate love connections”, “stylish, responsive, fun – if it were a man you’d marry it”, “Drive the new Paseo, fall in love”, “She loves her new Mustang. Oh, and whatshisname too.”
For women the equivalent to car’s replacing actual love and relationships for men is food. “Skip the Zip (brand of mayonnaise) on my little girl’s sandwich and give up one of her bear hugs? Not in her lifetime.” This implies that the child won’t hug her mother unless she gets the right kind of mayonnaise on her sandwich. A Burger Kind ad says: “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. Stop crying and start eating”. This is just one example of how food is related to comforting. Often food is associated with romance and sexuality, which all women aspire to achieve; an ad for a frozen mousse dessert: “achieving mutual satisfaction is easy. Just share some Mousse du Jour”. It has become as extreme that “we are not only offered connection via the product, we are offered connection with the product. Food becomes the lover. ‘Rich, impeccable taste and not an ounce of fat. Wow, if only I could find a guy like that,’ says a woman holding a candy bar”. The culture, reinforced by advertising, urges girls to adopt a false self, to become “feminine”. An ad for Seventeen magazine: “She’s the one you want. She pursues beauty and fashion at every turn. It’s more than a magazine. It’s her life.” Girls are told that their perfume, clothing, bodies, and beauty are their most important traits. An ad for jeans: “He says the first thing he noticed about you is your personality. He lies.” Most importantly, they are told that they must be thin.

Even alcohol is promoted through ads: “Forget the rules! Enjoy the wine!” Advertising also has a strong influence on children. Young children can’t differentiate between the actual show and the advertisements that interrupt it. Children are constantly “forced” to watch something supernatural happening as soon as a product is purchased or used. For example, a man opens a soda and a marching band explodes out of his TV into his room, the interior of an SUV becomes a landscape with waterfalls, or when wearing a certain brand of jeans the world shifts into a nighttime city scene. “Advertising and religion share a belief in transformation and transcendence… but in the world of advertising, enlightenment is achieved instantly by buying material goods”.