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I am whatever you say I am. If I wasn't, then why would I say I am? ÑEminem

Both for individuals and corporations, to advertise is to exist. In the social realm, if nobody knows you exist, you donÕt. Likewise, any corporation needs to be known to customers in order to be commercially viable. Commerce is an essential component of survival and largely dependent on advertising, while what we call popular culture is often dispersed through advertising and public relations. The word advert, from the Latin ad and ver, means to turn to oneÕs self or to another favorably. Once our ancestors found that they could make a mark, they realized that they could project themselves through symbols and by doing so make others turn their attention to them. Creative use of metafora is in some sense advertising, in the sense that each creative act contains a piece of our identity and will cause its viewers to pay it attention.

Media, from newspapers to television, and now the Internet, are largely driven by their advertising revenues. For good or bad, the dissemination of information - our identities, nationalities, politics, likes, and dislikes - is defined in response to the paid-for image. Our individuality is created by our resistance to or acceptance of advertising or propaganda (advertising we dislike).

If culture is the story we tell about ourselves, in the modern age advertising is the story told to us by commerce. It is a very careful construction of a story, one we are invited to join, but only through the act of purchasing a product. The only exchange is of money, not metafora. When a consumer buys an SUV, he buys the story told in the advertisement. He is not buying a vehicle, but the social image of rugged strength, of a drive through the mountain. Baudrillard has referred to these imaginary constructions, the tokens of advertising, as simulacra, the image of a reality.

Advertising is like camouflage in that it presents one thing as another. In many ways, it is a creative construct that often disguises banal issues in the form of glamour. Beautiful women have nothing to do with the mechanics of an automobile, but everything to do with creating an aura around it. As the advertising motto goes, ÒIf you have nothing to say about your product, have a celebrity say it.Ó The media have exploited our need for mythic heroes so that we venerate actors to the point where they get elected to public office. As Samuel Johnson put it, "Promise, large promise, is the soul of advertising."