技術爆炸時代,論廣告人的自我修養

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.

按照已故的約翰?貝格(John Berger)的說法，廣告是魅力製造商，由社會嫉妒心態推動。1972年，這位藝術評論家在爲英國廣播公司(BBC)編寫的《觀看之道》(Ways of Seeing)系列節目的最後一集表示：“在一個向民主推進而中途止步的社會，嫉妒成了一種普遍的情緒——在這個社會中，地位在理論上對所有人開放，但只有少數人才能享受到。”該節目探討了美術和宣傳之間的聯繫。

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.

貝格在45年前對社會不平等的割裂影響——以及廣告在其中扮演的角色——作出的分析，在英國退歐和唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)主政的新的後真相時代聽起來切中時弊。

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，在其他許多方面，他的評論反映了一個更爲淳樸的時代，現在聽上去有點離奇。與他研究的海報和展示廣告相比，現代營銷可能要隱蔽得多，更具侵入性，也更難識別。

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.

貝格將廣告稱爲一種死氣沉沉的藝術形式。但在上世紀末，許多廣告從業人員渴望達到藝術卓越，有些人在職業生涯後期做到了這一點。導演艾倫?帕克(Alan Parker)和雷德利·斯科特(Ridley Scott)曾利用廣告片來演練電影製作。作家薩曼?拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)和費伊?韋爾登(Fay Weldon)曾是廣告文案撰寫人。

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.

約翰?赫加蒂爵士(Sir John Hegarty)最近向BBC表示，廣告“創意人士”曾經“對如何溝通有着真切的信念”。他在1985年製作了《洗衣店》(Launderette)——這部“男子脫得只剩平角褲衩來洗牛仔褲”的廣告片讓他聲名鵲起，更重要的是，讓其客戶李維斯(Levi's)的品牌復甦。

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.

作爲一名對寫作和設計感興趣的學生，我一度忍不住想加入他們。但我的教父給我寫了一封措辭嚴厲的信（有點貝格的風格）警告稱，那是魔鬼的工作，於是我選擇了相對純潔的記者之路。

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（也就是貝格逝世當天）爲英國《金融時報》撰寫的文章中，約翰爵士抱怨稱，創造力已經“靠邊站”，讓位於“只依賴數據的解決方案”。他懷念過去的“大規模的、大膽的廣告宣傳活動”這一點不足爲奇。但是儘管他指出了廣告業弊病的症狀之一，但他沒有認識到，該行業的病症比癡迷於數據嚴重得多。

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.

實際上，創造力在廣告業仍受到追捧，只是運用有所不同。一位廣告公司的董事長表示：“關鍵不再是一個60人的團隊花上5天時間拍攝30秒的廣告。還是得有人提出創意，但這個創意可能體現於某個技術解決方案或者某個大型活動。”

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”.

更大的威脅來自谷歌(Google)和Facebook的影響力——如今這兩家公司在新在線廣告支出總額中佔到四分之三，而且它們從用戶那裏收集的相關數據是上世紀80年代的電視和廣告人員想都不敢想的。學者、精彩新書《注意力商家》(The Attention Merchants)的作者吳修銘(Tim Wu)將Facebook稱爲一個“虛擬的注意力種植園”，把用戶變成“自願全面修繕地主財產的佃戶，即便他們被迫觀看廣告”。

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”.

令人上癮的社交媒體平臺可能最終提供了人們長期尋求的證據：廣告商的廣告宣傳活動是否奏效？它們也是伯格在上世紀70年代攻擊的機器的虛擬繼承者。用戶在平臺上發佈的快樂的聖誕節、美妙的滑雪休假和孩子們的好成績是新的渴望目標。社交媒體根據這些用戶生成的魅力快照投放針對性的廣告。約翰爵士正確地擔心，此類手法“使人們加倍注意”。

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.

正如貝格在其電視系列節目中所寫的，宣傳對於資本主義的生存是不可或缺的。儘管創意人士會渲染一番，但他們的工作只是說服人們購買東西這個過程中一個平凡的環節。吳修銘寫道，迫在眉睫的問題不是廣告是好還是邪惡，而是注意力商家應該如何開展業務；當今它們正進一步深入我們的家，並通過社交媒體和虛擬現實，將觸角伸向我們的頭腦。

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.

他警告廣告商和代理機構在這一領域“輕輕邁步”——有見識的廣告業高管已經消化了這一信息。上述廣告代理公司的董事長告訴我，就利用新技術而言，廣告業在行爲上必須保持“出於自身利益的自我剋制”。

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.

客戶對廣告屏蔽軟件趨之若鶩表明，現在可能爲時已晚。但廣告業以前也遭遇過大衆的反彈。就像《注意力商家》裏描述的那樣，在19世紀60年代末，大衆對庸俗的巴黎海報感到不滿，帶來了實行至今的針對街頭宣傳的法規。然而，廣告業始終能找到方法引起消費者的注意。

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.

這意味着，只有自我保護（借鑑貝格具有先見之明的懷疑和敏銳眼光）纔是避免誤入歧途的唯一方式。因爲無論我們喜歡與否，如今我們大家都涉足廣告業。