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references)

1. In what ways do advertisements interpellate us as individuals? Ideally, the chosen ads

should have commonalities. The delivery of those ads, how and where, is critical as

well.

As George Floyd's murder triggers another wave of protests from Black Lives Matter,

companies are capitalizing on this moment in the name of professed solidarity. Converging

activism with business raises questions concerning the agenda behind brands opposing police

brutality and systemic racism, whether their political awareness is just cynical marketing.

Either way, this social phenomenon casts a light on the way they commodify the need for

revolution for their branding to resonate compellingly with consumers. Recognizing its place

in consumer culture entails illustrating it with case studies, including Activision Blizzard's

recent political tweets following the aftermath of Floyd's murder and Nike's Dream Crazy

commercial. Unravelling corporate advocacy is to fathom advertising's interpellation, how

advertisements invite individuals into internalizing an ideology's ideas and attitudes keeping

them under its spell (Althusser, 1973), towards postmodernism by applying postmodern

insights—from Roland Barthes's birth of the reader to Jean Baudrillard's hyperreality. The

sustained advertisement of these societal inequities ultimately engenders them to be one of

the sources driving people's postmodernist mentality.

The Statement

Brands usually post online statements aligning themselves with causes their audience

considers momentous as if weaponizing their image for social justice. When consumers

realize they share the same ideals as them, they nurture loyalty due to the palpable

authenticity and commitment in what they believe. Seeing as 78% of consumers expect

brands to address public injustices and 87% will purchase products based corporate advocacy

for relevant issues ("Americans willing to," 2017), brands exploit this opportunity to

advertise messages they are predisposed to accept tacitly since these messages conform with

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their progressive ideals. Once brands publicize their sociopolitical stance throughout social

media, they position consumers into validating their ideological power when consumers

adopt their message as these consumers like, share, and reply online. To quote Procter (2004),

advertising's interpellation "[makes] us feel we are free to choose while actually choosing on

our behalf" (pg. 16). For this case, this level of conscious engagement is characteristic of how

users comply with brands representing a simulation of advocacy. Look no further than

Activision Blizzard's tweets supporting anti-racism and non-profit organizations dedicated to

fair educational access.

Figure 1 These public tweets were Blizzard's stand against racism (Activision Blizzard,

2020).

A reception of over 28,000 likes and 7,000 retweets is a testament to how much people derive

more engagement from images of activism considering they produce rather than reflect a

reality. Without explicit mentions to Floyd's murder or the international Black Lives Matter

protests, Blizzard's tweets impart a hyperreality, an activist sign without an original referent.

For Debord (2002), "all that was once lived has become mere representation. … [Spectacle]

epitomizes the prevailing model of social life," the "very heart of society's real unreality" (pp.

12–13). Blizzard projects a progressive display regarded as real by mystifying the reality

behind the tweets, repressing it to the point of making the display equally sincere and more

appealing. Why bother going outside to protest for reform when consumers could do the

same thing conveniently online through liking and sharing posts? They would rather

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experience a contrived image of advocacy, enhancing and re-enchanting their real-life

encounters (Kitchen & Proctor, 2002). Collapsing activism's reality with hyperreal branding

situates Blizzard's activist tweets for the present moment. No longer does Blizzard commit to

authenticity when it packages activism as contemporary media consumption.

Stripping these tweets of their origin, why Activision Blizzard posted them in the first place,

magnifies postmodernism's ahistoricism. By phrasing Blizzard's advocacy in broad, timeless

terms and choosing to donate to educational access organizations, over bail funds for

protestors, Blizzard renders the history and social context behind its tweets vague. Blurring

the acute, candid reality behind its anti-racist advocacy devalues historical discourse.

According to Baudrillard (1994), proliferating the competing hot takes on momentous events

through the media marginalizes what actually occurs in these events. Simply put, how

accessible and appealing Blizzard communicates and represents activism is what matters

most. Historic protests are consequently something to be consumed in the present as

packaged spectacles mediated by screens. In so doing, they immerse consumers into a time or

lifestyle, "but only voyeuristically to experience it for the moment [it] excites and titillates the

senses" (Firat & Shultz II, 1997, pg. 189). When Blizzard's followers merely experience

advocacy as a contemporary fad, it diminishes the capacity to perceive historicity critically as

the context is assumed and imagined. Considering Blizzard's tweets are so removed from

their reality and history, their contents are juxtaposed with their background to expose the

truth behind Blizzard's message.

Decontextualizing Activision Blizzard's tweets to a specific time and actuality, as if it has

always been and will continue to be anti-racist, means they are open to contextual

contradiction. Case in point when Activision Blizzard's chief executive, Bobby Kotick,

asserts why Blizzard's gaming platform is not the place for political views as it is "not the

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operator of the world's town halls" (Shanley, 2019). This irony goes to show how Blizzard

does not genuinely believe in anything because it is operating in the moment, adapting its

brand values and beliefs to suit the current progressive landscape of its customer base. As

anything goes for Blizzard in terms of its self-image, it destabilizes its identity to liberate

Blizzard from a coherent, rigid philosophy. Hence, Blizzard imbues its associated games with

postmodernism's floating signifiers wherein their signified ideas are whatever its consumers

want them to stand for. The relationship between signifier and signified is constructed

arbitrarily, presenting opportunities for advertisers to connote brands with multiple meanings

(Cova, 1996). Even if these meanings emanate paradoxical messages, Blizzard's tweets

essentially relativize and personalize itself to eclectic gamer demographics. Not committing

to a coherent brand naturalizes not only postmodernism's disbelief towards metanarratives but

also the conflicting subjectivities of postmodernist consumers.

The Commercial

Some corporations go as far as to evoke progressivism in their commodities with

commercials, elevating the appeal. Attributing and purposing these commodities with

allegory urges consumers to cherish the social aura they offer as tokens for them to represent

their activist standpoint. These virtue-signalling products take on a life of their own

exclusively in terms of comparable products in the market, alienating their labour from

consumers out of subjugating them (Stahl, 2012). What this subjugation necessitates is

producing media imagery. Images that are continually projecting progressive desires

corroborating activists to consume passively without questioning the production's

depersonalization. Doing so validates capitalism's prevalence by hindering the capacity to

"engage in [meaning-making]" freely and earnestly, "[ensuring] social control and seriously

[constraining] our political freedoms" (Hearn, 2017, p. 45). Corporate advertisements linking

branded products with messages end up enticing individuals into submitting to a sign system

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of status symbols. Take Nike's Dream Crazy commercial as an example, which celebrates

athletes facing adversities to attain their achievements.

Figure 2 The 30th-anniversary celebration of Nike's "Just Do It" slogan features activist

football player, Colin Kaepernick (Nike, 2018).

Since the ad features Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee against police brutality during

America's national anthem, Nike characterizes its merchandise as a stand against this issue.

Buying said Nike merchandise allows consumers to appropriate the activist narrative as part

of orienting their self-image. Progressive perception instead displaces utility as the rationale

driving Nike's commercial as it seeks to entertain what consumers could believe and value. In

fact, the ad hardly emphasizes Nike's signature sneakers in favor of spotlighting those

athletes. Its contents are about selling this bold activist image, whereas Nike's merchandise

merely lives up to that image rather than projecting it (Dholakia et al., 1995). Favoring what

Nike's sportswear signify, rather than the sportswear itself, instils Nike buyers into

reinforcing postmodernism's sign society in capitalism. No longer do they spend things to

clothe themselves with, they buy, wittingly or not, signs of advocacy from an array of

competing virtue-signalling clothing. From Jean Baudrillard's outlook, commodities are

"exchanged and valued only in relation to other signs, … the system of signs itself" (Elmore

& Koch, pg. 565, 2006). If what matters to Nike is the perception of Nike's clothing, the

activist sign and its relationship to other politically loaded clothes, then that commercial is

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nothing more than a performance of activism lacking sincere commitment. Instead of a

promise to integrate anti-racism throughout Nike's organization and vision, the ad is simply

an aesthetic endeavor to target a dynamic customer base.

Given postmodernism rejects structural coherence making sense of people's personality, it

champions the self as fragmented in that it is unstable. Postmodern individuals actively

search for new experiences liberating them from the monotony and conformity of a consistent

identity. They want to "feel good in separate, different moments by acquiring self-images

[making] them marketable, likable, [and] desirable in each … moment" (Firat, 1992, pg.

204). Consumer culture empowers this opportunity to reinvent themselves ceaselessly due to

the multiplicity of consumer choices. With that in mind, this fragmented identity

contextualizes Nike's Dream Crazy commercial in a network of unalike Nike ads varying in

content and spectacle. From sneaker culture (Nike, 1995–1997), to sporting greatness (Nike,

2012), to the progressivism as mentioned earlier, Nike's advertising offers consumers aspiring

lifestyles to have, incentivizing them into exploring themselves. Its sportswear embraces

diverse cultures, images, and attitudes they can objectify to decide if it contents them.

Embodying this postmodern fragmentation consequently renders advocacy as superficial

consumption. Owning activism replaces being an activist, so there is no deep down or inner

self.

Ergo, Nike ingrains its consumers with postmodernism's rampant consumerism, the cultural

logic of late capitalism. Thanks to the activist sign value of Nike's merchandise and how they

fragment these consumers, buying them is buying into commodities which mediate and mold

human relations. Their circulation, transaction, and consumption comprise the language

people communicate, while this language's discourse is about seeking self-objectification and

personal fulfilment (Baudrillard, 1998). Pursuing these desires core to consumerism begets

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disappointment once individuals discover the images commodities promise do not hold up to

reality. Regardless, they still believe in this fulfilling narrative as advertising sharpens its

rhetoric to suit them personally. Such is the case when Nike deceives them into thinking that

owning Nike sportswear will cement their activist belonging and place in society. The $163

million in earned media, $6 billion brand value increase, and 31% increase in sales Nike

claims following its Dream Crazy commercial (LLLLITL, 2019) is indicative of the

significant resonance advocating reform has on people, upholding the spell of advertising's

contentment narratives seducing them to the consumerist cycle. Accordingly, Nike's

sportswear amount to a fashion accessory offering a woke sensation. Nike inevitably leaves

consumers in a buying compulsion where they perpetually interchange one woke product for

another in hopes of reliving that high, subjecting them to a cosmetic, commodified existence.

The Counterargument

Inasmuch as Nike's commercial and Activision Blizzard's Twitter statements exude advocacy

to interpellate postmodern ideology among consumers, several of these consumers refuse to

accept the meanings these advertisements send. Their opposition is a resistance against the

perceptions and sentiments these advertisements regard as orthodox, whether it is the

progressive message or the brand's hypocrisy. Many Twitter users pointed out Blizzard's

banning of a player for supporting the Hong Kong protests or lack of censorship on the n-

word in match chats. Likewise, others have resorted to boycotting Nike's merchandise or

burning them in outrage. However, this negative reception is another extension of

postmodernism's ideological power because it naturalizes the reader's place in deciding an

advertisement's various meanings. After all, postmodernism rejects the notion of media

producers imposing and limiting the point of a text in support of the subjective interpretations

consumers offer. As Barthes (1977) would put it, "the unity of a text is not in its origin, [but]

its destination" (pg. 148). What was a counterargument against postmodernism's

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interpellation turns out to be the opposite since those opposers were simply rebelling against

the contents of those advertisements. They were uncritical of the postmodern ideology

beneath. After all, Blizzard and Nike expected their activist responses to be divisive, fostering

both notorious and positive publicity bolstering their relevance in people's cultural

consciousness.

Conclusion

At heart, postmodern ideas play a significant role in shaping the way brands advertise societal

inequities like racism. For Activision Blizzard, publicizing its anti-racist stance exhibits

postmodernism's hyperreality as well as the ensuing implications. Namely, Blizzard

decontextualizes its position from its branding and the recent Black Lives Matter protests

compelling its advocacy, even if its anti-racism comes across as ironic and vague. For Nike, it

connotes its merchandise as a symbolic sign of progressive activism, validating a postmodern

sign society in which people buy commodities as a momentary objectification of their

dynamic identity. Subsequently, Nike attracts them into the consumer cycle of indefinite

fulfilment. Although several consumers will criticize Blizzard's stand in solidarity and Nike's

activist advertising, this opposition is also symptomatic of postmodernism's emphasis on their

subjective readings. Regardless of the intention of these brands in promoting social justice,

subtly assimilating hyperreality and consumerism stimulates the postmodernity situating their

activist advertising. Naturalizing postmodernism is emblematic of their interpellation as these

consumers presume these postmodernist ideas are logical and typical.

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