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The following essay is going to analyse how the consumer

culture in a capitalist system uses or creates identities, the

ideologies that surround certain identities and the ways in

which these impact branding and marketing. A particular

advertisement, “Choose Beautiful” by Dove, will be examined

in the essay, as the essay will specifically focus on the female

identity and Dove is a popular and preferred brand among

women. The structure of the essay will be firstly describing

the keywords of the questions by using relevant academic

theories, secondly giving answers to the questions,

afterwards portraying the mentioned advertisement and

finally analysing it.

First of all, “a consumer culture is a commodity culture, -

that is, a culture in which commodities are central to cultural

meaning.” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2001, p.198) In other

words, as Celia Lury stated in her book, consumer culture is

a specific form of material culture - the culture of the

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appropriation or usage of objects and things. (2011, p.9) The

consumer societies appeared in the framework of

modernity, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

century with the growth of mass production, following the

Industrial Revolution and with the unification of people in

large cities. In a consumer society, the individual is faced

with and encompassed by a huge variety of goods, and the

qualities of those goods alter regularly. (Sturken and

Cartwright, 2001, p.191) Moreover, the term identity is

concerned with the supposed uniformity of an individual or

of a social group, always and in all situations. However, the

relatively current, anti essentialist discourses about identity

highlight that identities are socially created, and suggest that

they are established in specific historial and social contexts,

that they have to respond to the variable situations; thus

they are exposed to constant change and rearrangement.

(Bennett et al.,2005, pp.198-199) “Ideologies are systems of

belief that exist within all cultures.” Sturken and Cartwright

define ideology as the extensive but essential, common set of

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ideas and values through which people live out their

intricate relations to a variety of social structures. The most

significant feature of ideologies is that they seem to be given

or innate, instead of an element of a system of belief created

by a culture, with the purpose of operating in a specific way.

(Sturken and Cartwright,2001, pp.21-22) Marketing can be

comprehended as “the management of the means of

consumption.” Management is understood as an expansive

procedure that tries to guarantee that the means of

production are utilized in a logical way - in terms of

capitalist economy, this indicates confirming that they are

used in a way that can produce surplus value. In terms of

marketing, this requires establishing a market. Marketing

practice entails information - information gives an interface

that marketing can take action. (Arvidsson, 2006, p.43) In

other words, the marketing discipline has come to

contribute actively to the production of markets, by way of

using information concerning the market - both about

competitors and especially about consumers. (Lury, 2004,

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p.14) Branding can be primarily defined as “a process by

which commodities are given an explicitly self-promotional

form.” (Lury, 1993, cited in Moor, 2007, p.2) It develops into

an apparent power in the arrangement of production in

industrial countries in the second half of the nineteenth

century, and grows in importance over the subsequent one

hundred and fifty years. (Lury,2004, p.15) Branding, as an

industry, is a crucial system in providing the steady working

of a universal capitalist economy. In public discussion, it

generally performs as an indicator of the rising

commodification or marketization of ordinary life, and of a

specifically merciless and Western ruled form of

globalization. (Moor, 2007, p.1) Finally, according to

Raymond Williams, advertising can be described as “the

official art of the modern capitalist society” and “it is what

‘we’ put up in ‘our’ streets and use to fill up to half of ‘our’

newspapers and magazines”. Advertising is a dominant

element of the capitalist business system, it is a source of

money for a variety of general communication, and it is not

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only concerned with selling goods and services, but also

with educating people about individual and social values.

(1999, p.421) In short, “advertising is one of the primary

means through which [this] exchange of goods is

promoted.”(Sturken and Cartwright, 2001,p.191)

The consumer culture in a capitalist society uses or creates

identities in various ways. Within the circumstances

provided by the consumer culture, self-identity is not just

comprehended in connection with possessions, but it is in

fact formed as a possession. Consumer culture is an origin of

the modern belief that self-identity is a sort of asset, cultural

source or belonging. (Lury, 1996, p.8) The commodity self, a

term created by Stuart Ewen, is used to illustrate how

people’s selves and subjectivities are shaped and mediated

through their consumption and utilization of commodities,

such as cars, clothing and cosmetic products. (Sturken and

Cartwright, 2001, p.198) In a consumer culture, it is

recognized that women are most inclined to conduct the

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consumption act and to buy most of the products, thus the

character of the consumer is shaped as a feminine one.

(Lury, 1996, p.121) Therefore, the use or creation of the

female identity is prominent in a consumer culture.

Advertising, as a fundamental element of marketing

(Sturken and Cartwright, 2001, p.198), is also one of the

most significant means in the construction of identities

conducted in a consumer culture. Advertising invites

consumers to consider commodities as fundamental

instruments through which to project their personalities.

(Sturken and Cartwright, 2001, p.198) It presents a world of

fantasy to consumers and persuades them to think that they

can achieve this life. In this way, as argued by Sturken and

Cartwright, advertising makes people create commodity

selves and work to obtain the features that are attributed to

particular goods by using them. (2001, p.214) “Women are

both objects or signs of representation in advertising and

the market for the majority of the products advertised.”

Therefore they are situated at two points of the commodity

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exchange cycle at the same time - as a favored symbol in

commodity aesthetics and advertising, and the main target

market. (Lury,1996, p.135)

In terms of ideology, the most significant ideology that

surround the identities in a consumer culture is of

capitalism. There is an endless request for new goods and

the requirement to sell the old ones with new packages,

slogans and campaigns in a consumer society. This is

comprehended in the same way that capitalism relies on the

overproduction of commodities in Marxist theory. The

demand to consume products is essential in the ideology of

the capitalist society, as it produces more products than the

required amount, in order to operate. (Sturken and

Cartwright, 2001, p.192) Consequently, as marketing and

branding are the some of the primary means that this

ideology of the capitalist society functions, they need to be

constantly alert, they need to develop new strategies and

techniques to grasp the changing viewpoints of the

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consumers, and especially in order to make the products

consumed. For instance, when it was acknowledged that

people, in the field of self-expression, were emotionally

connected to their products; marketing had to move on to

these emotional and unreasonable relations, instead of

focusing on the belief that people made their choices

logically regarding the order of necessities and values.

(Arvidsson , 2006, p.59) In terms of branding, global brands

such as Coke and Kleenex have to take actions against the

“generic use of trademarks” since if a product’s mark

become truly global, then it means that the company does

not possess it any more and it no longer serves as a

commodity that brings profit. (Sturken and Cartwright,

2001, p.228)

Dove’s “Choose Beautiful” advertisement, part of its “Real

Beauty” campaign, was released in 7 April 2015 and it was

shot in five different cities - San Francisco, Shanghai, Delhi,

London and Sao Paulo. The video starts by showing a young

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woman standing in front of the entrance of a building,

looking in a hesitant way. Afterwards, different women from

various cultural backgrounds and ethnicities, such as Asian

and Indian, and also from different age groups are shown

and throughout the film the women that appear are

considerably different from each other in mentioned ways.

Their voices are heard in the background as voice-over. Two

placards, one with the word “average” and the other with the

word “beautiful” written on, are placed above two entrance

doors of buildings in different cities. A woman says that they

had to choose one of the two pathways to walk, and then

different women entering either from the “average” or the

“beautiful” marked doors are displayed. Various women

explain to the camera which decision they made, and their

thoughts and feelings about it. Some of them regret their

choice, some of them question it, and some of them are

satisfied with it. Towards the end of the video, the question

“Beautiful is a great word, so why not see what’s on the

other side of that?” is asked, and the video closes with the

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words “#ChooseBeautiful”, and then Dove’s name and logo

appear in a white background.

In media and popular culture, various elements of feminism

have been taken into consideration, however by using

concepts such as “empowerment” and “choice”, they are

modified and made more individualistic. Then they appear

as recent and contemporary ideas about women, as an

alternative to feminism – more specifically, as “faux

feminism”.( McRobbie, 2009, p.1) In the consumer culture,

by the usage of various feminist values and discourses,

feminism is used as a tool of bringing in a sense of novelty

and vivacity to the products of companies. ( McRobbie,

2008,548) Many advertisements utilise the terminology of

empowerment, self-control and self-realization which

determine conventional feminism, so as to talk to female

viewers that associate themselves with those ideas.(Sturken

and Cartwright, 2001, p.225) In the “Choose Beautiful”

advertisement, this type of utilisation of feminist values is

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evident. The campaign especially uses the concepts of choice

and empowerment, as it indicates that the power to make

the decision about their appearance is solely in women’s

hands. However, under the guise of this seemingly feminist

message, the main purpose of the advertisement is to sell the

products that it is promoting, by creating an identification

between choosing “beautiful” and choosing “Dove” products.

Furthermore, as Angela McRobbie argues, there is a flow of

undesirable subversive patriarchalism concealed under the

festivities of female independence, in feminine popular

culture. (McRobbie, 2008, p.539) In other words, it appears

that the anxious field of male approval is substituted with

self-imposed feminine standards, as women can make their

own decisions now. Thus, patriarchal control remains within

the system of self-policing, which requires women to

constantly and over and over again judge themselves.

(McRobbie, 2009, p.63) Accordingly, in “Choose Beautiful”

there is not a presence of patriarchal authority as it is

women themselves who decide whether they are beautiful

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or average; however women are challenged to measure,

criticize and put themselves in one of the two very limited

categories. Moreover, as Winship indicates, advertising has a

significant role in the belief that beauty is attainable by all

women, if they use the appropriate products, and it is not

something that is naturally given to someone. (1983, cited in

Lury, 1996, p.134) In this advertisement, beauty is shown as

literally only a doorstep away from all kinds of women.

However, by making beauty so easy to achieve and asking

“Beautiful is a great word, so why not see what’s on the

other side of that?” the actual message that is wanted to be

given, by encouraging women, is that any women can

“choose” to be beautiful, if they simply use the Dove

products.

In summary, this essay presented a detailed examination

about the ways in which the consumer culture utilizes or

constructs identities in a capitalist system, the ideologies

around these identities and the influences of these on

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branding and marketing, and additionally analysed the

“Choose Beautiful” advertisement by Dove.

Bibliography

Arvidsson, A. (2006) Brands: Meaning and Value in Media

Culture. Oxon:Routledge.

Bennett, T., Grossberg, L., Morris, M. (2005) New Keywords:A

Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Malden:Blackwell

Publishing.

Lury, C. (2004) Brands: The Logos of Global Economy.

Oxon:Routledge.

Lury, C. (1996) Consumer Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Lury, C. (2011) Consumer Culture-Second Edition.

Cambridge:Polity Press.

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McRobbie, A. (2009) The Aftermath of Feminism. London:

SAGE Publications.

McRobbie, A. (2008) ‘Young Women and Consumer Culture-

An Intervention.’ Cultural Studies, 22(5) pp. 531-550.

Moor,L., (2007) Rise of Brands. Oxford:Berg.

Sturken, M. and Cartwright, L. (2009) Practices of Looking:

An Introduction To Visual Culture. Oxford: Oxford University

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Williams, R., (1999) Advertising: The Magic System. in

During, S. (ed.) The Cultural Studies Reader. London:

Routledge, pp.410-423.

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