Beginning sometime around the 1920’s, the United States’ culture shifted to become an increasingly consumerist society. By the 1990’s, many households in America had access to televisions and the internet was in its infancy. As an effect, most people in the United States were prey to some form of advertisement. In the chapter, “I am not a Target Market” of Douglas Coupland’s book, “Generation X”, Dag reminisces about his stint working in advertising. Even he admits he wasn’t a likable guy working in advertising. Dag recalls his boss giving him an assignment for a hamburger franchise, with the end goal to make the consumers, “vomit with excitement” at the thought of eating a burger. Advertisement is most often predatory and the people behind advertisements work tirelessly to crack their targeted audience. As Thomas Frank discusses in an essay written about advertising targeted toward Generation X, the advertisements shifted to a “hip and cool” form of advertising. The advertisements appealed to Generation X’s rebellious nature, all for the sake of cracking what was thought to be a savvy generation inherently suspicious of advertising campaigns. The field of advertisement is always evolving with the sole goal of gaining consumers in new generations
Prof L
Luke, this is lucidly put together! You quote I think primarily for vividness—but I think it’d be worth saying something about why Coupland might have put that particular image in the mouth (sorry) of a adman
Which reminds me: I notice that if Dag’s boss is a 40ish ex-hippie, he is also…..a Boomer! He is an example of the admen that Frank is writing about: note what Frank says about the allegedly “rulebreaking boomers”. You can use this boss as a jumping-off point to link up to Frank’s larger argument (I think the word “evolving” is not quite right for the historical argument Frank makes).