PRICELESS

Since 1998, Mastercard has sponsored a variety of "Priceless" commercials. Each ad begins with a list of stuff (or services) and a matching set of prices. Then comes a phrase identifying some intangible that can't be purchased. And finally, there's the single word "Priceless," followed by the assertion that "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard." They're great commercials, and they're popular.

The ad executive who services the "Priceless" account at the McCann-Erickson ad agency explains that "what really hit home with consumers is that a company that is fundamentally all about money and paying for things would actually declare that there are things that can't be bought."

But what really hits home with me is how complex this issue is.

MasterCard's "Priceless" ads are obviously designed to respond to the American public's worry that everything is being commodified, and that we're becoming too materialistic. So the ads emphasize the things money can't buy, the intangibles that make the good life really good. Most of these intangibles involve relationships, especially family relationships. It's priceless, for example, to read a book to your child, or to watch your children playing joyfully with the cardboard boxes instead of the toys under the Christmas tree.

MasterCard implies that this emphasis on pricelessness is different, but, in fact, it's textbook advertising strategy. Very few American ads restrict themselves to the intrinsic merits of a product or service. Instead, most of them try to sell us stuff by showing the imputed characteristics of the product. If you buy the car, you apparently get the girl. If you use the shampoo, you get the attention. If you serve the Hamburger Helper, you get the happy family. So, just like other ads, MasterCard's "Priceless" ads try to sell us our own deepest values by selling us commodities. In most of these ads, the "priceless" moment is the direct result of a series of spending decisions. For example, you can't experience the priceless value of "your first dog" without buying it first. You can't show your daughter the place in Ireland where you first met your husband until you've paid to take her there. Often, it seems, the "priceless" moment has a considerable price.

MasterCard takes the radical idea that we can also have priceless moments without buying anything, and turns it into an occasion for spending. The company capitalizes on our idealism to sell us more materialism. But we don't have to buy into this commercial vision. We can acknowledge that many of the "things that money can't buy" are sacred to us. And we can resist the commodification of consumer culture by defending the sacred spaces in our lives and in our world.

More specifically, we can begin to imagine the ideas and institutions that will allow us to live a good life in a good society. The Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies suggests that "the major growth in consumption in the future will be of a nonmaterial nature." What does this mean? As MasterCard knows, people already buy some stuff not so much for the stuff itself but for the immaterial meanings attached to or expressed by the stuff. If such meanings make our lives rich, then it's possible to consume more meanings without consuming more stuff-perhaps even by consuming less stuff. And if we can fulfill our essential experiential needs without buying stuff at all, it might also be possible to pursue more happiness with fewer environmental consequences. The practice of conspicuous frugality won't generate profits for credit card companies, but it might improve our lives and communities-and the planet.

So this holiday season, we can agree with MasterCard: "There are some things money can't buy." And that's a good thing.

Jim Farrell is Professor of History and Director of American Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. As "Dr. America," he gives weekly tours of the magnificent (but wholly imaginary) American Studies Museum on National Public Radio station WCAL. He is currently working on a book called Malls in America: Shopping for American Culture. This article courtesy of the Center for a New American Dream.