Buyer’s Remorse: Beware the Post-COVID Marketing Machine
Warning: We’re going to be asked to buy a lot of things post-COVID, and many of us are going to want to because we’ve been targeted to do just that since birth.
It began almost immediately with car commercials referring to how hard this time has been and to go enjoy a nice solitary ride in a new car¹. Just expect marketing to intensify once our masks are dropped.
We’ll be asked to forget about the momentary respite we had from air and noise pollution and to view their returns as signs of normal; that the war against the virus was won so we can get back to transporting things and our bodies around and, of course, buying more things.
The campaign for the return to ‘normalcy’ will be subtle and moving. It will be orchestrated by big business and supported by governments urging us to get the economy rolling again; not the economy that provides us with our basic needs, but the one that fulfills our manufactured desires. The message will be — go shop, feel better, it’s no big deal, you earned it!
The richest, who have profited immensely from the pandemic², will continue to profit. They will be joined by others who are extremely wealthy compared to the majority and want to see their profits return (think brand names). They will frame needless consumerism as good for everyone.
And let’s be clear, the wonderful pollution pause we’ve had is not going to help with climate change³. The impacts of predatory capitalism, hyperconsumerism, militarism, and fossil fuels have already been baked into the atmosphere and oceans. We’ve simply witnessed a tiny fraction of what should already be happening to mitigate continued climate heating and the possible end of human civilization. The fight for a stable climate and livable earth requires far more from us than this drop in the bucket.
Neoliberal ideology supports this grotesque form of capitalism; it promotes deregulation, privatization, the atomization of individuals, and the break-down of social bonds⁴. It shifts blame away from corporations, vilifies government control, and socializes environmental costs while privatizing profits. It relies on people buying non-essential goods and it achieves this through marketing that piques our desires and promotes consumerism and brands as lifestyle choices and personal identity markers with the help of mainstream media and popular culture⁵.
The world’s richest 10% profit from needless overconsumption, have immense political power, and are also the worst offenders — they produce half of the world’s emissions⁷. I do not expect them to start discussing the environmental impact of their consumer habits and business models anytime soon. The top 10% wealthiest are predominantly in rich countries but there is a “massive disparity in most wealthy countries between the emissions of rich and poor households” (Beuret, 2019, para. 9). So if you’re going to point the finger at anyone for their consumer behavior, point it at the wealthy and not the other 90%.
It is tempting to blame individuals and their consumer habits for climate change. Of course, we must consider what and how much we are consuming and why; but focusing blame on individuals for climate change shifts the burden of responsibility away from corporations and the richest 10%. The individual blame game also continues to reinforce the breakdown of urgently needed social bonds as people point fingers at each other instead of uniting for a common cause. Climate change action must be a collective fight against predatory capitalism.
So the next time you read or hear someone vilifying people in general for climate change-related emissions, or guilting someone for a recent purchase (and we should feel guilty if we are hyper-consuming or buying things with high emissions footprints) tell them about the top 10% and how this discourse is turning us against each other. Yes, we must stop needless, high emission buying, but, more importantly, we must be in solidarity with each other. At the very end, this is a class war between the 1% and the rest of us. Don’t let them distract you.
(1) Irwin, J. (2020, April 8th). Hyundai, FCA, Toyota Roll COVID-Aware. Ads. In Wards Auto.
(2) McArthy, N. (2020, June 22nd). U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surged During The Pandemic. In Statista.
(3)Borunda, A. (2020, May 20). Plunge in carbon emissions from lockdowns will not slow climate change. In National Geographic.
(4)Monbiot, G. (2016, April 15th). Neoliberalism — the ideology at the root of all our problems. In The Guardian.
(5) Adorno, T. W. (1991). In J. M. Bernstein (Ed), The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. Routledge.
(6)Babic, M., Heemskerk, E., & Fichtner, J. (2018, July 10th). Who is more powerful — states or corporations? In The Conversation.
(7)Beuret, N. (2019, March 28th). Emissions inequality: there is a gulf between global rich and poor. In The Conversation.
