The Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture Pages 265-279

        In this section of the book its all about advertising, consumers, and desire. Consumer products and brands and the advertising that sells them aim to present an image of things to be desired, people to be envied and life as it should be. Advertisements and advertisement companies have to predict what they think the consumer world wants, needs, and has to have. Because ad make promises to the viewer/audience it is our job to interpret these images in the best we know how. Not all images are going to be interpreted in the same way by everyone. The consumer world and consumer societies promote this idea of individual choice even though consumers are being told what to buy the advertisements make it seem like it was the consumer's idea. With a constant demand for new products, consumerism will never end, everybody always wants more. Also with so many products being made overproduction happens causing advertisement companies to work harder to persuade the consumer to buy more. The idea of selling self-sulfillment is a big money maker for advertisement companies; it is crucial to marketing and consumption. Advertisements plays on our emotions of envy, desire and belonging. Advertising asks us not to consume the product, but to consume the signs in the semiotic meaning of the term. No matter what the item or how we feel about it there will always be pressure and pleasure in consuming. There will always be that needing feeling to purchase that item, followed by a disappointment feeling after we purchase the item.