技术爆炸时代,论广告人的自我修养

Advertising is a glamour manufacturer, powered by social envy, according to the late John Berger. “Envy becomes a common emotion in a society which has moved towards democracy and stopped halfway, where status is theoretically open to everyone, but enjoyed by only a few,” the critic said in the final part of his Ways of Seeing series for the BBC in 1972, which looked at parallels between fine art and publicity.

按照已故的约翰?贝格(John Berger)的说法，广告是魅力制造商，由社会嫉妒心态推动。1972年，这位艺术评论家在为英国广播公司(BBC)编写的《观看之道》(Ways of Seeing)系列节目的最后一集表示：“在一个向民主推进而中途止步的社会，嫉妒成了一种普遍的情绪——在这个社会中，地位在理论上对所有人开放，但只有少数人才能享受到。”该节目探讨了美术和宣传之间的联系。

Berger’s 45-year-old analysis of the fracturing impact of social inequality — and advertising’s role in it — sounds right up to date in the new post-truth era of Brexit and Donald Trump.

贝格在45年前对社会不平等的割裂影响——以及广告在其中扮演的角色——作出的分析，在英国退欧和唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)主政的新的后真相时代听起来切中时弊。

In many other ways, though, his critique is a quaint throwback to a more innocent age. Modern marketing can be much more insidious, invasive and hard to identify than the posters and display ads he studied.

然而，在其他许多方面，他的评论反映了一个更为淳朴的时代，现在听上去有点离奇。与他研究的海报和展示广告相比，现代营销可能要隐蔽得多，更具侵入性，也更难识别。

Berger described advertising as a moribund art form. But many of the people doing it at the end of the last century aspired to artistic excellence, and sometimes achieved it in their later careers. Directors Alan Parker and Ridley Scott used commercials to cut their teeth in film-making. Authors Salman Rushdie and Fay Weldon were copywriters.

贝格将广告称为一种死气沉沉的艺术形式。但在上世纪末，许多广告从业人员渴望达到艺术卓越，有些人在职业生涯后期做到了这一点。导演艾伦?帕克(Alan Parker)和雷德利·斯科特(Ridley Scott)曾利用广告片来演练电影制作。作家萨曼?拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)和费伊?韦尔登(Fay Weldon)曾是广告文案撰写人。

Advertising “creatives” once shared “a real belief in how to communicate”, Sir John Hegarty told the BBC recently. He was behind 1985’s “Launderette”, the “man-strips-to-his-boxers-to-wash-his-jeans” commercial that made his name, and, more to the point, revived his client’s brand, Levi’s.

约翰?赫加蒂爵士(Sir John Hegarty)最近向BBC表示，广告“创意人士”曾经“对如何沟通有着真切的信念”。他在1985年制作了《洗衣店》(Launderette)——这部“男子脱得只剩平角裤衩来洗牛仔裤”的广告片让他声名鹊起，更重要的是，让其客户李维斯(Levi's)的品牌复苏。

For a time, as a student with an interest in writing and design, I was tempted to join them. But my godfather wrote me a stern letter warning, in Berger-esque terms, that it was the devil’s work, and I chose the purer path of journalism.

作为一名对写作和设计感兴趣的学生，我一度忍不住想加入他们。但我的教父给我写了一封措辞严厉的信（有点贝格的风格）警告称，那是魔鬼的工作，于是我选择了相对纯洁的记者之路。

In an article for the Financial Times on January 2, the day Berger died, Sir John complained that creativity had “taken a back seat” to “data-only solutions”. That he longs wistfully for the “big, daring campaigns” of the past is no surprise. But while he identifies one of the symptoms of advertising’s malaise, he misses that fact that the disease is far more serious than a mere obsession with data.

在今年1月2日（也就是贝格逝世当天）为英国《金融时报》撰写的文章中，约翰爵士抱怨称，创造力已经“靠边站”，让位于“只依赖数据的解决方案”。他怀念过去的“大规模的、大胆的广告宣传活动”这一点不足为奇。但是尽管他指出了广告业弊病的症状之一，但他没有认识到，该行业的病症比痴迷于数据严重得多。

In fact, creativity is still a sought-after trait in advertising; it is just applied differently. “It’s no longer about a crew of 60 people spending five days shooting a 30-second ad. Somebody has still got to have an idea, but it may manifest itself in a technology solution or an event,” says one agency chairman.

实际上，创造力在广告业仍受到追捧，只是运用有所不同。一位广告公司的董事长表示：“关键不再是一个60人的团队花上5天时间拍摄30秒的广告。还是得有人提出创意，但这个创意可能体现于某个技术解决方案或者某个大型活动。”

The greater threat comes from the influence of Google and Facebook, which now account for three-quarters of all new online ad spending — and collect more relevant data on their users than 1980s television and ad execs could dream of. Tim Wu, academic and author of an excellent new book, The Attention Merchants, refers to Facebook as a “virtual attention plantation” that has turned people into “renters willingly making extensive improvements to their landlord’s property, even as they [are] made to look at advertisements”.

更大的威胁来自谷歌(Google)和Facebook的影响力——如今这两家公司在新在线广告支出总额中占到四分之三，而且它们从用户那里收集的相关数据是上世纪80年代的电视和广告人员想都不敢想的。学者、精彩新书《注意力商家》(The Attention Merchants)的作者吴修铭(Tim Wu)将Facebook称为一个“虚拟的注意力种植园”，把用户变成“自愿全面修缮地主财产的佃户，即便他们被迫观看广告”。

Addictive social media platforms can finally supply the long-sought evidence of whether advertisers’ campaigns are working or not. They are also the virtual heirs of the machine that Berger attacked in the 1970s. Users’ posts of their happy Christmases, fabulous skiing breaks and beautiful children’s academic achievements are the new aspirational targets. Social media harnesses targeted adverts to these user-generated glimpses of glamour. Sir John rightly worries that such techniques are “aggravating people into attention”.

令人上瘾的社交媒体平台可能最终提供了人们长期寻求的证据：广告商的广告宣传活动是否奏效？它们也是伯格在上世纪70年代攻击的机器的虚拟继承者。用户在平台上发布的快乐的圣诞节、美妙的滑雪休假和孩子们的好成绩是新的渴望目标。社交媒体根据这些用户生成的魅力快照投放针对性的广告。约翰爵士正确地担心，此类手法“使人们加倍注意”。

As Berger wrote in the book of his TV series, publicity is essential to capitalism’s survival. For all the airs put on by creatives, it is a mundane part of the process of persuading people to buy stuff. The pressing question, Prof Wu writes, is not whether advertising is good or evil, but how the attention merchants should conduct their business, as they reach further into our homes and, via social media and virtual reality, our minds.

正如贝格在其电视系列节目中所写的，宣传对于资本主义的生存是不可或缺的。尽管创意人士会渲染一番，但他们的工作只是说服人们购买东西这个过程中一个平凡的环节。吴修铭写道，迫在眉睫的问题不是广告是好还是邪恶，而是注意力商家应该如何开展业务；当今它们正进一步深入我们的家，并通过社交媒体和虚拟现实，将触角伸向我们的头脑。

He warns advertisers and their agents to “tread very lightly” in this area — a message enlightened advertising executives have already absorbed. The same agency chairman told me the industry must act with “self-interested self-restraint” when it comes to exploiting new technology.

他警告广告商和代理机构在这一领域“轻轻迈步”——有见识的广告业高管已经消化了这一信息。上述广告代理公司的董事长告诉我，就利用新技术而言，广告业在行为上必须保持“出于自身利益的自我克制”。

Customers’ appetite for ad-blocking software is one sign it may already be too late. But the advertising industry has suffered popular backlashes before. A revolt against garish Parisian posters in the late 1860s, described in The Attention Merchants, triggered regulation on street publicity that is still in place. Yet advertising always finds ways to creep back into consumers’ consciousness.

客户对广告屏蔽软件趋之若鹜表明，现在可能为时已晚。但广告业以前也遭遇过大众的反弹。就像《注意力商家》里描述的那样，在19世纪60年代末，大众对庸俗的巴黎海报感到不满，带来了实行至今的针对街头宣传的法规。然而，广告业始终能找到方法引起消费者的注意。

That leaves self-defence, based on Berger’s prescient scepticism and keen eye, as the only way to avoid being misled. For, whether we like it or not, we are all in advertising now.

这意味着，只有自我保护（借鉴贝格具有先见之明的怀疑和敏锐眼光）才是避免误入歧途的唯一方式。因为无论我们喜欢与否，如今我们大家都涉足广告业。