The economist, Stephen Leacock said that 'advertising is the art of arresting human intelligence just long enough to get money from it.'  Consumerism, for good or for ill, is about stuff and its exchange value, to use Marx's term.

 Advertising tries to turn wants into needs and to shape desire. The trick is to make machine-made things or services, most of which are very similar, appear different, even if they are not. To do so, they have to be given meaning. Put the product into a system of exchanges, monetary or otherwise, and it should acquire value. The ideal result as far as our industry is concerned is that we drink the ad not the beer, as it were.

 All of which raises the question: what is a product? Plainly, our definition must include services. But a ball-point pen, a hairdryer, a box of detergent, a diamond ring-whence their value? People (their perceived wants, desires and fears) give value to brands rather than vice versa. Our job is to find novel ways of creating value.

Or has all of the above changed because of the internet and a new kind of relationship consumers are having with brands? Maybe...