Oh no... Duffy gets on her bike in Diet Coke spot

A glass of water has value... you can dip your bits in it.

And advertising could be used to up the perceived value of that water, agreed.

The point that I'm trying to make (away from economics) however is that you may drink that water and then feel that bobby-joe who drank the exact same water with the same signifiers got a better deal than you because he's seems much more satisfied. You may also feel that the water at Bobby-joe's house tastes worse than at your own home, you may tell him this even though you believe it not to be true because you'd like to see that smile wiped from his face. You may tell Mary-joe the opposite as you'd like her to invite you round for water more often. You may drink the water because you feel it will quench your thirst, you may drink it for a million other reasons, none of this is down to advertising. We create the complex, inferred, varied reality that we experience everyday and we also create unrewarding relentless signifiers.

Advertising responds to our own desires and lives within our inferred reality, it responds to individuals in the same way a corporation responds to the demands of customers and the needs of the board. It's a monster that everyone has a part in, not just the "ad man".

A good illustration of "real value" versus "false value" would be to imagine a hypothetical situation in which advertising is used to inflate the price of a Unipack beyond that of a Giant Bowery. The Unipack weighs a ton and isn't very durable - it's true value is indisputably lower than the Bowery. The price increase from the advertising in this case would be "false value".

Surely real value would be the individual's satisfaction with the lighter Bowery rather than the heavy Unipack? (As otherwise it's just a characteristic of an unknown object.) What happens if Mr non-LFGSS is more satisfied with his Unipack than Mr new-member-LFGSS who now wants a custom build and can't stand the sight of his Bowery? What happens when the Unipack becomes at the forefront of "cool" because it falls apart so easily and goes against the opinion of the masses? Where's the true value now? Nothing exists until it is experienced or linked to our reality and that very process removes the concept of true value IMO.

Did you mean to write vice versa, as opposed to vis-a-vis?

Yep, I don't often use long words in the correct way... not that that was even a long word, gah. All of my posts are simply my opinion by the by, I weighed in as I felt the thread contained loads of anti-advertising bull.