Dwayne!
Our two observations are not incompatible. I was decidedly NOT arguing that the plebs are putty in the hands of asinine admen and brand managers. Indeed I acknowledged that there is a sharp degree of skepticism and ironizing out there. And I would actually argue, unlike some, that not all skepticism and ironizing can be reincoporated back into the logic of rampant, recursive commodity signifying (and blah blah blah). But the fact remains: this shit seems to get more and more pervasive all the time.
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Ah, got it.
And I agree that it is more pervasive.
In my view, the advert putsch is fueled by flop sweat.
Ad creatures are out of ideas. To use the example at hand, the Pepsi campaign is pathetic. Soda drinkers stroll through time, passing from one sleep walk your way through history scene to another: the 1945 Time Square kiss, the hippie mud dance, the streaker, the Berlin Wall's crumbling...a temporal daisy chain of memetic death.
The ads are everywhere and on everything because the creatures, in their secret hearts of darkness, know we're ignoring them. They're now reduced to the status of the lovesick mixed tape makers of days gone by: sending would be lovers their gifts.
Which are left unopened.
No wonder they look with moist eyed longing upon "Mad Men". That was their Valhalla.
.d.