This explains the extremely rapid development, for example, of hygiene and cocktails. No one, before the advent of advertising, felt the need to be clean for cleanliness' sake...The human tendencies upon which advertising like this is based may be strikingly simpleminded, but they nonetheless represent pretty much the level of our modern life. Advertising offers us the ideal we have always wanted (and that ideal is certainly not a heroic way of life). Advertising, in effect, became the medium through which humans are able to collectively standardize their culture, which includes their beliefs, traditions, attitudes, and lifestyle, among others.

On a more philosophical level, Ellul considered the creation of a "mass man" through advertising signaled the advent of the 'objectification' of humans. Ellul noted this phenomenon as occurring...

That is, the author noted how more people, mostly users of technologies, "have become preoccupied with rediscovering a purpose or a goal." This assertion meant that as more and more people became immersed with technologies, society became more aware of technologies' capability to help human society progress socio-economically. Ellul went on to argue that in achieving this objective, humanity is willing to become the "objective (and also the total object) of techniques," where humans would cease to become the center of life's grand design. Instead, as society progresses towards technological progress, humans would become part of this grand design, and humans' re-discovery of their purpose or goal in life would then take center stage.