Publicity, Advertising and Spirituality

Advertising industry is more and more often associated to brilliant minds in areas such as: psychology, sociology, anthropology, who turned a job into a full time task of “penetrating the collective public mind, (...) its manipulation, exploitation and control”. That is why, ever since its beginnings, the advertising industry was admonished by social critics for taking materialism to the highest levels; to replace inner happiness and intrinsic motivation with the wish to be productive in society only to the extent of consuming and buying happiness. Therefore, over time, advertising and publicity have raised pros and cons; while some voices describe advertising as a motor of society, driving economic development, there are others that strongly criticise advertising creations, blaming it of manipulation. Conversely, reality proves that a number of other factors exercise a major influence on the customers: experience, price, traditions, age, fashion, religion, etc thus, the fight between advertising pros and cons has led to the emergence of theories regarding its efficiency. Controversy related to the relationship between the rational and the emotional is still ongoing, the more so as the conventional alternative states that we should not let ourselves be affected by emotion when we make decisions, also, religious doctrines state that the mind and the body are two separate entities.