Luxury brand advertising in Hong Kong in which the faces of western models and movie stars haunt the urban spaces like deities.
THE POWER OF PERSUASION
Marketing luxury brands in Asia.
The power of persuasion can just as easily assert negative as well as positive outcomes.
For decades advertising has been selling us products by associating them with enhanced and therefore desirable lifestyles. Living on a planet with a rapidly increasing population we are beginning to reach critical mass with our natural resources under pressure from our voracious consumption. Under such circumstances It would logically be our responsibility to take only what we need. This is indeed a mindset and all the harder to achieve as we have to run against the prevailing force of the economics of growth which is in turn driven by consumption.
The world of luxury brands represent the apex of the dichotomy. We don’t need much of what is on offer, much less pay the exorbitant prices being attached to items which only have designer label cachet to set them apart from other factory produced goods made in the sweatshops of emerging economies. Yet we buy into it, and it drives a multi billion dollar industry.
We are quite simply persuaded by powerful and exploitative marketing which uses familiar mythical, spiritual, fairytale and even religious imagery to push our buttons and it’s everywhere. It permeates every aspect of our existence. It occupies the urban spaces which we inhabit
Observing how this works in Hong Kong I was struck how the billboard faces of western movie stars and super models fight for our attention at street level with barely an Asian face in sight. Their scale and presence is a sight to behold and testimony to their power and success. In Kowloon Hong Kong, Chinese shoppers bus in from mainland China and queue for hours outside the likes of Hermes, Louis Vuiton, Chanel and Giorgio Armani’s flagships stores, themselves the size of city block department stores, bejeweled with neon and twinkling lights.
In response to this I have produced a series of images that are cinematic format wide screen urban slices which aim to depict how the all pervasive all persuasive luxury branded imagery powerfully tempts and preys on the Asian urban dweller
The power of persuasion clearly works, albeit misdirected in this case. Would that it could be used to educate and persuade us to be responsible and ethical consumers, so that we may play our part towards global sustainability, but there must be a partnership between consumers and producers.