TV advertising and consumer protection

Anyone fortunate enough to have satellite television and able to watch the Australia Network will be familiar with ‘The Gruen Transfer’, the TV programme which deconstructs the advertising world - which has been called the ‘pointy end of capitalism’.

The show’s title is derived from the technical term ‘Gruen transfer’, describing the response of consumers to the ‘scripted disorientation’ cues (confusing layout, surrounding sound, music - known in this context as Muzak - and art) of the designed environment in shopping malls - which is to lose track of their original intentions and become more vulnerable to impulse buying.

The term denotes a key technique in the field of retail design - born when the first enclosed shopping mall, the Southdale Centre in Minnesota was created by the socialist Austrian architect Victor Gruen (who later disavowed shopping mall developments for bastardising his original idea of providing a pleasant and relaxing environment for shoppers).

The ‘Media Ecology’ guru David Rushkoff has describes the effect of the Gruen Transfer thus: ‘... their jaws may open, their eyes may glaze over for a just a second. And they are transformed from a person who came to the mall for a purpose, into a shopping drone. Ripe for the next battery of psychological assaults.’

That TV advertising has the same effect is the premise of ‘The Gruen Transfer’. The programme’s creator, veteran broadcaster Andrew Denton, said its genesis was a moment in a supermarket in which he reached for a more expensive brand of washing powder, knowing it was no better than the one next to it.

‘I was doing it,’ he said, ‘because that ad says this and I am happy to go along with it. I don't think any of us are immune to advertising and that's the point of the show’.

Advertising has been with us for centuries, newspapers advertising for one and three quarters. However, static, printed ads do not have the same impact as do TV commercials. One hundred years ago the American newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane told advertisers: ‘Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words’. How much more effective than a printed ad is a stream of moving pictures, with enthralling sound accompaniment?

TV commercials

Modern advertising still uses print and other media, but today television commercials are the very kernel of the industry. TV commercials exploit the artificial ambience of the medium by bringing into play a whole cohort of sensitive mind-altering audio-visual tools: using visual gerrymandering, injecting sound bites, providing compelling musical background music, employing attractive voice-overs and so on.

However, the impact of TV commercials goes far deeper: the very act of turning on the TV transports the viewer into the lobby of a giant virtual shopping mall, where they are disoriented and vulnerable. The mind-set of a complete population can be distorted by the cumulative effect of commercials embedded in an addictive melange of soap operas, comedies and reality shows.

Sri Lanka’s experience with the tele-visual advertising media has been the transformation of a fairly level-headed, thrifty and traditionalist population into a mob of extravagant keep-up-with-the-Jones’ buyers, whose very language has been altered (although, to be fair, the private TV broadcast producers, too, have done more than their fair share).

Perceptions have shifted, prejudices have deepened and feelings of self-loathing, inadequacy and insecurity have been enhanced. People are no longer judged by their own worth but by what they possess (and hence, must flaunt), not by their ability but by the model of their mobile phone and not by their internal goodness but by the fairness of their skin and the style of their hair.

Denton said that an advertisement-free, and hence advertiser-independent, broadcaster such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was essential as a host for the ‘The Gruen Transfer’. This was so that advertiser pressure could not force it to lessen its critique and hence its impact.

Mind you, this was in a country where there is not only a self-regulatory body of the advertising industry, but also a government regulatory authority. Indeed, the programme has pointed out occasions in which the government watchdog had to intervene when the industry monitor failed.

Consumer items

In Sri Lanka, we have neither an advertising standards authority nor even a self-regulation institution for the advertising trade. In short we have no advertising standards at all, besides those prescribed by law for certain specific consumer items, such as alcohol and tobacco.

The difference is patently clear between the same Indian advertisements aired in India (which has advertising self-regulation) and Sri Lanka (which does not). The Indian versions have disclaimers regarding special visual effects and the trustworthiness of content information; the Sri Lankan versions do not.

Parenthetically, the limits of self-regulation are clear in that the Indian ads should not have needed disclaimers at all had they been properly controlled - there would be none of that sleek, smooth and perfectly-bouncing hair in shampoo commercials.

Sri Lanka has two major advertising associations, the Accredited Advertising Agencies Association (4As) and the International Advertising Association (IAA). Both associations collaborated in breaking away from the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) and establishing the (now defunct) ‘Chillies’ award for advertising. However, they have not been able to set up a voluntary self-policing body.

The need for a body to enforce standards for television advertising became apparent quite early. Two decades ago, a TV commercial for refrigerators was removed at the behest of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs because it showed a child dreaming of a veritable cornucopia within a fridge; ‘more food’, commented Steven Kemper of Bates University, ‘than most Sri Lankans will ever find in their larder’.

This was a rare state intervention into advertising to prevent unrealistic expectations from being implanted into the minds of people. There needs to be more policing, and not much additional expenditure is required. The Consumer Affairs Authority already exists to give redress to victims of unfair trade practices. All that is required is that its mandate be extended to monitor advertising.