Conclusion: Taking Life

Abstract

In Visa’s 2005 television advertising campaign, a child is shown skillfully negotiating a series of handrails at a playground (life takes ambition), a pretty blonde woman clumsily sends a bowling ball down an alley, achieving an unlikely strike in the process much to the delight of her companions (life takes luck); a young man tiredly but stubbornly consumes his way through an enormous hamburger (life takes determination); an athletic young black woman feints a male opponent to score (life takes confidence), which is given the briefest but most significant of hand acknowledgments (life takes respect); a young male office worker warily maneuvers sixteen stacked cups of coffee (life takes talent); a young girl merrily skips and weaves across a concrete landscape (life takes joy); and a young couple walk down the aisle of a Vegas-style “Chapel of Love” (life takes spontaneity). These are the attributes being elicited from the contemporary consumer who must undertake life as a personal journey full of purpose and meaning, a life that both accepts and requires—in a general sense—this particular branded form of credit.