Ad Nauseam

Spend a minute or two on the streets in Nairobi and you’re likely to see a matatu. It’s impossible to miss these semi-private buses which serve as the city’s only mass transit system. Owner-drivers decorate them wildly with brand logos, paintings of hip-hop artists of varying levels of fame and obscurity, title screens from television shows, and other commercial and media imagery. The really well-decorated and well-equipped matatus cost more to ride, providing an incentive to drivers to make their chariots more outlandish, more ostentatious.

Ubiquitous branding doesn’t fade beyond the city limits of Nairobi. Smaller towns and villages on the main thoroughfares are covered with colorful advertisements. Common among them are entire buildings painted in bright yellow inviting the viewer to enjoy a cold Tusker beer. “If you like it, Crown it,” read the massive Crown paint company advertisements that adorn so many walls of tin and concrete. The crumbling walls of single-room homes occasionally catch the eye with logos of beverage companies, payment and betting services, and other firms, bright paints contrasting with the poor conditions of the roads and the scattering of plastic litter.

On a recent trip to Kenya, the prevalence of brand hieroglyph struck me as a fascinating cultural difference.

Is Kenya’s relationship with brands truly that different from our experience in the global North? Upon returning to Japan, I revisited the subject and attempted to direct my attention to the billboards, digital signage, and other brand insignia that compete for commuters’ attention on the streets of Tokyo.

This exercise was illuminating and helped me frame some of my thoughts on contemporary consumerism.

In Japan and the United States, the advertiser ideally would like its efforts to go unnoticed. An informative but intrusive advertisement can get a consumer to buy a new smartphone when she needs it. By contrast, the unnoticed advertisement that captures the viewer’s subconscious consumerist desires and builds a natural affinity toward its brand can mobilize a consumer to buy a new smartphone despite not needing one.

Despite lacking the intrusiveness of Kenyan advertisement culture, advertisements are no less prevalent in Japan. Whereas matatus wear their branding on the outside, Japanese rail companies run their advertisements on monitors above doors and on digital and traditional billboards throughout stations — not as ostentatious, but nevertheless present. In the private sphere, residences painted with brightly colored branding dot Kenyan roadways, and massive billboards line roads in the United States.

I have observed how companies are hitting on new and innovative techniques to soften the intrusiveness of their branding efforts and more effectively  mobilize consumers in Japan and the United States. Anecdotally, many of the techniques seem prevalent in affluent Europe, as well. Pride Month provides a salient and timely example. Throughout June, corporate interests used LGTBQIA+ Pride events to manufacture inclusivity with the objective of convincing targeted viewers that their beliefs and interests are aligned. Famously, many of these companies are either indifferent or actively hostile toward the LGBTQIA+ community.

Another example of non-intrusive advertisement is the presence of sponsored content in media. In newspapers and non-traditional news outlets, sponsored content is designed to look and feel like informative articles on such prestigious traditional news outlets as the New York Times, and in newer outlets like The Outline. Unsuspecting consumers learn about imminent cyber security threats, courtesy of Hewlett Packard. An article from Fidelity Investments leads readers to the conclusion that their retirement savings are inadequate.

In entertainment, too, brands and products are being integrated into music videos and prestige television shows in ways that hide their intent. A July 3 New York Times article provides a thought-provoking account of the innovation and current use of embedded advertisements in the music industry. On television, there’s something almost comical about the particularly ham-fisted efforts to embed advertisements. Perhaps a certain scene dwells a bit heavily on a character signing and sending a contract with an iPad, as I noticed in what was certainly an Apple advertisement in a recent episode of Showtime’s Billions.

This is the logical direction of our consumption-driven economic moment. Companies will continue to find more innovative ways to nurture consumerist desires and engineer the belief that those desires originate organically from within us. In the first place, consumption is essential to the longevity of the capitalist organization, which uses growth as its core metric for success. More importantly, by feeding a belief that desires can be met through consumption, corporations are striving to create a generation of consumers that autonomously defend the status quo and joyfully engage in the kind of employment relations that support consumption.

The matatus were a striking part of Nairobi’s rhythm for this foreigner. The painted residences felt like a cruel statement on disparity and the communities that are left behind in societies that put the needs of the capital class first. For locals, I wonder if they are a more natural feature of the landscape. To what extent is this kind of advertising  intrusive to the Kenyan viewer?

Where our experiences are the same is in the ubiquitousness of branding. We seem to be heading toward a world with more advertisements in more places. I wonder how Nairobi will look in ten years.