Because some advertisements encourage entirely self-centered behavior, "human survival is at stake" when these advertisements run in various media outlets, Jhally, a communications professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said. The future demise of society is inevitable given the advertisement-driven culture, he said.
"Twenty-first century advertising is the most sustained form of propaganda in human history and unless quickly checked, it will destroy the world as we know it," he said.
Advertisements have colonized all sectors of society and almost "everything" is now corporately-sponsored, Jhally said.
"Pepsi-Cola even wants to use laser technology to put their logo on the moon," he said.
After the 1920s, companies stopped advertising the quality of their goods and instead began marketing products in terms of consumers' personal happiness, according to Jhally.
This happiness, however, benefits the individual consumer rather than the overall society, Jhally said.
Although advertising is "not a trick" since advertisements show real depictions of human happiness these images are often false because they inaccurately associate products with arbitrarily positive emotions, according to Jhally. Advertisements successfully appeal to a consumer's "visceral desire," he said.
"Advertisements are a fantasy-factory," Jhally said.
Kimberly DaCosta, associate dean of students at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and Dartmouth film and media studies professor Mark Williams spoke at the panel following Jhally's address.
The panel, moderated by Randolph, focused on academic approaches to the study of advertising.
DaCosta discussed the presentation of race in various advertisements, particularly the depiction of multiracial couples in the media.
AdMad will host a second panel Friday afternoon featuring Chief Marketing Officer for Images USA Ricki Fairley-Brown '78, Tuck School of Business marketing professor Kevin Keller and Joe Santos '95 Tu'00, formerly of Leo Burnett and Proctor and Gamble.
Friday's panel will be "less controversial and more academically focused," Holly Sateia, former vice president for institutional diversity and equity at the College, said. Sateia most recently served as the coordinator for the Bildner Program.
"It also offers a chance to present successful Dartmouth alums in action," she said.
The panel will present a different point of view than that discussed by Jhally, according to Santos.
The panel discussion will be conducted in Kreindler Auditorium.
"In [Friday's] panel we will be looking at the practical side of marketing and will walk people through the process of how markets actually come up with the campaign," Santos said.
Employees at the Leslie Center believed that an advertising symposium might be "attractive" to students because advertisements constitute "such an important part of our world," Randolph said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"Advertising is one of our major media for thinking through who we are it is emerged, it is everywhere," he said. "It is on our graphical interfaces on the web, on TV it is in our environment."
The Leslie Center, an interdisciplinary space for the production and advancement of humanistic knowledge at the College and beyond, organized the AdMad symposium with the Bildner Endowment, Randolph said.
"[Jhally] is a major critic of media culture," said Randolph, "His name came up immediately when [the Leslie Center] started conceptualizing this symposium."
The Bildner Endowment, established by Allen Bildner '47 Tu'48 and Joan Bildner in 1992, funds initiatives that encourage the study of human and mixed-demographic relations, Sateia said.
Jhally's lecture, "Advertising and the End of Community," took place in Filene Auditorium.
