Sunday, January 11, 2009

The Great Mall in the Sky

If you want a bird's eye view of the American consumer, SkyMall is the place to start. Trapped on a plane with nothing to do, cramped, cranky and completely bored, sooner or later almost every airline passenger turns to the SkyMall catalog, handily provided in the seat pocket compartment. But what makes this catalog unique?

SkyMall is defined by the breadth of its target audience. Most advertising mediums aim for as much specialization as possible: why spend precious advertising money to reach the wrong audience? Even TV shows allow specialization: one can advertise to MythBusters viewers in Boston, or General Hospital viewers in Boise. SkyMall is different. Most anyone is likely to fly sooner or later, excepting the bus-traveling poor. As a result, very little can be said about the readers of the catalog: they have some minimal amount of spending power, and they are likely to be Americans, since most flights in the United States are domestic. An advertiser in SkyMall is targeting the broadest possible audience, an undifferentiated mass of the archtypical American Consumer.

The advertisers in SkyMall are similarly diverse. Those large-scale events that do reach a broad audience are far too expensive for most advertisers. The Super Bowl is the domain of megacorporations able to afford the vast sums required for a 30 second ad slot. SkyMall is far more affordable, including advertisements from a large number of merchants, ranging from the fairly large Sharper Image to small, single-product retailers. As a result, the catalog cannot allow the slightest whiff of provocative, controversial or offensive advertising that might be acceptable in a more specialized medium, since other advertisers will also be implicated.

SkyMall products are sanitized, wholesome mirror images of the everyday desires of the American consumer. And if there is one iconic product that summarizes everything one can learn about the American consumer from reading SkyMall, that product can only be the Creo Mundi Intentional™ Hoody. Also available as a T-shirt ($36), the $79 hoodie is printed with "over 200 positive words in 15 different languages" on the inside. "Fact: Research shows that written words on containers of water can influence the water's structure for better or worse depending on the nature or Intent of the word. Fact: The human body is over 70% water. What if positive words are printed on the inside of your clothing?"

This is what Creo Mundi, which as it turns out is a Canadian company, has taught me about American consumers: they are impressed by science, but aren't educated or smart enough to tell bullshit from the real thing. They are perennial optimists, fervent believers in the power of positive thinking. They are willing to spend money to improve their lives, though that money is often not well spent. In short, nothing much has changed since 1922, when Sinclair Lewis wrote the classic novel Babbitt:

The advertisements were truly philanthropic. One of them bore the rousing headline: "Money! Money!! Money!!!" The second announced that "Mr. P. R., formerly making only eighteen a week in a barber shop, writes to us that since taking our course he is now pulling down $5,000 as an Osteo-vitalic Physician;" and the third that "Miss J. L., recently a wrapper in a store, is now getting Ten Real Dollars a day teaching our Hindu System of Vibratory Breathing and Mental Control."

Ted had collected fifty or sixty announcements, from annual reference-books, from Sunday School periodicals, fiction-magazines, and journals of discussion. One benefactor implored, "Don't be a Wallflower—Be More Popular and Make More Money—YOU Can Ukulele or Sing Yourself into Society! By the secret principles of a Newly Discovered System of Music Teaching, any one—man, lady or child—can, without tiresome exercises, special training or long drawn out study, and without waste of time, money or energy, learn to play by note, piano, banjo, cornet, clarinet, saxophone, violin or drum, and learn sight-singing."

...

"Well—well—" Babbitt sought for adequate expression of his admiration. "I'm a son of a gun! I knew this correspondence-school business had become a mighty profitable game—makes suburban real-estate look like two cents!—but I didn't realize it'd got to be such a reg'lar key-industry! Must rank right up with groceries and movies. Always figured somebody'd come along with the brains to not leave education to a lot of bookworms and impractical theorists but make a big thing out of it. Yes, I can see how a lot of these courses might interest you. I must ask the fellows at the Athletic if they ever realized—But same time, Ted, you know how advertisers, I means some advertisers, exaggerate. I don't know as they'd be able to jam you through these courses as fast as they claim they can."

"Oh sure, Dad; of course." Ted had the immense and joyful maturity of a boy who is respectfully listened to by his elders. Babbitt concentrated on him with grateful affection:

"I can see what an influence these courses might have on the whole educational works. Course I'd never admit it publicly—fellow like myself, a State U. graduate, it's only decent and patriotic for him to blow his horn and boost the Alma Mater—but smatter of fact, there's a whole lot of valuable time lost even at the U., studying poetry and French and subjects that never brought in anybody a cent. I don't know but what maybe these correspondence-courses might prove to be one of the most important American inventions.

"Trouble with a lot of folks is: they're so blame material; they don't see the spiritual and mental side of American supremacy; they think that inventions like the telephone and the areoplane and wireless—no, that was a Wop invention, but anyway: they think these mechanical improvements are all that we stand for; whereas to a real thinker, he sees that spiritual and, uh, dominating movements like Efficiency, and Rotarianism, and Prohibition, and Democracy are what compose our deepest and truest wealth. And maybe this new principle in education-at-home may be another—may be another factor. I tell you, Ted, we've got to have Vision—


So what are you waiting for? Buy yours now!

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