A tiny laminated theory card that is tucked into the back of a course pack, almost like an afterthought, is making the rounds in university semiotics and media studies classes. It features a quotation from Roland Barthes, a French philosopher and literary critic who devoted much of his career to doing what most scholars shied away from: examining commonplace objects and posing difficult questions about them. wine. vehicles. Steak. soap. the items of daily existence. Nevertheless, what he discovered within those commonplace items proved to be more illuminating than anything found in boardrooms or lecture halls.
Building on a series of bi-monthly essays he had been writing for a French magazine during the mid-1950s, Barthes published his collection Mythologies in 1957. By his own admission, he was motivated by impatience, frustrated by the way popular culture continued to fabricate versions of reality and subtly instruct viewers to accept them as normal. These manufactured realities were dubbed myths by him. Not myths in the sense of ancient storytelling. Myths, or false beliefs disguised as common sense, spread so easily that people lost awareness of how they were influencing them.
The quote on the card is that. The myth-related one. And it’s a sentence that every American student studying marketing must endure long enough to make them feel a little uneasy.
It’s difficult to ignore how well Barthes’ observations from France in the 1950s translate to the current state of American advertising. He described how the Citroën DS was marketed as a near-spiritual object, something akin to a goddess to be worshipped, rather than as a car. That description is nearly accurate if you walk into any luxury car dealership in Beverly Hills or Manhattan right now. The lighting, the architecture, and the quiet. They’re not showrooms. These are better air-conditioned cathedrals.
Barthes went beyond Ferdinand de Saussure’s earlier framework of semiotics, which is the study of signs and their meanings. He contended that signs have more than just meaning. They are ideological. A logo is only one aspect of a brand image. It is a collection of ideals, goals, and social directives subtly incorporated into visual form. A fast food chain isn’t selling food when it runs an advertisement with a laughing family seated around a table. A version of belonging is being sold. Barthes would have noticed that right away, written a three-paragraph analysis of it, and then moved on to the next target.
The fact that the theory card informs marketing students that advertising is manipulative is not what makes it subtly harmful. The majority of them already have suspicions. It gives them the vocabulary and structure to understand how it operates, and then it makes them choose what to do with that understanding. Some will use it to create stronger, more convincing campaigns. Others may notice a slight change in their perceptions of the profession as a whole.
There is a perception that American marketing education excels at teaching students how to create myths while being extremely cautious when it comes to teaching them to consider whether or not they should. Working in postwar France with a typewriter and a keen eye, Barthes didn’t seem to care as much about that distinction. All he wanted was for people to focus on what was right in front of them.
The back of the course pack is not a good place for that card.
