It is no secret that we are all bombarded with marketing messages on a daily basis, reportedly as many as 10,000 per day. In an ironic twist, I became a minimalist years after majoring in marketing and working at a couple of advertising agencies upon graduation, albeit in public relations not copy writing. And in the meantime, I built a strong resistance to being manipulated with marketing, to the extent that I try to limit my overall exposure to it nowadays.
One of the aspects of living in Maine that Linda and I appreciated the most was the total absence of billboards in the state and thus the lack of roadside visual clutter. And both of us are relatively immune to the lure of logos and labels. We consciously try to limit our overall consumption and reject the commodification of contemporary life. So it was with much interest that I read What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel.
“Without quite realizing it, without ever deciding to do so, we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. The difference is this: A market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market,” writes Sandel.
As Sandel also points out, advertising “makes every setting a site for selling” and “markets leave their mark,” contrary to what modern marketers would like us to think. Far from being morally neutral, markets are capable of corrupting our lives by commercializing our human connections at the expense of community. For example, there is increasing pressure upon us to monetize all of our interactions with others in an effort to build our personal brands.
Linda and I even have relatives for whom monetary exchanges explicitly represent the nature of our relationship, with one going so far as to suggest that money is the sole signifier of our love for each other. In other words, “show me the money, honey.” When approached for an apology, the loved one said “not sorry.” Perhaps we should engage the services of a company that has offered to apologize on people’s behalf. The motto of the company: “We say sorry for you.”