October 09, 2003

Yoga and the Advertisers

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The tyranny of yoga

Megan Lane reporting within the BBC News Magazine on the tendancy for advertisers to jump on the 'spirituality' bandwagon.

"Well-being is one of the mega-trends in the High Street now," says Richard Hammond, the managing partner of the advertising agency Spirit.

"Advertisers have latched on to that and well-being is now terribly over-used. The same thing happened with fitness about a decade ago - I remember a Mars bar ad with women leaping about in an aerobics class."

Personal space

As it is easier for women to imagine themselves doing yoga than following Paula Radcliffe's lead, it is regarded as both aspirational and accessible. Research for the advertising agency, St Luke's, describes yoga thus: "It is a reliable medium through which the advertiser can communicate with the Special K demographic."

I particularly liked one of the comments:

One of the philosophies of yoga is to encourage detachment from material things. This flies in the face of using yoga to advertise consumerist goods and services. Maybe there should be a warning on the bottom of every advert, similar to a cigarette packet, reminding people that "material wealth may harm your spiritual wealth".
Robin Bose, UK

It comes back to the points being made by Beyond Branding in terms of Authenticity as a value. Those companies/agencies usng the Yoga image aren't being authentic becuae they are selling something that isn't the truth. Eating a breakfast cereal is not going to make me supple or relaxed. What's more as Robin points out it flies in the face of the eastern culture which looks at the spirit rather than the material.

Posted by Paul Goodison at October 9, 2003 11:23 PM | TrackBack


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