Marchand, on the other hand, writes that advertising aided the transition from traditional life to modern life. He argues that advertising in the 1920s-1940s pushed modernist ideology by focusing intently on issues of reality/non reality through a distorting mirror he calls a Zerrspiegel. Rather than seeing ads as a reflection of actual social realities, Marchand saw ads as a manifestation of fantasy and desire. ". . . ad creators tried to reflect public aspirations rather than contemporary circumstances, to mirror popular fantasies rather than social realities" (Marchand: xvii). Ads presented a kind of vicariousness through which the consumers could imagine how their lives could be. It is in this way, argues Marchand, that ads can be read as social texts that point to the hopes, aspirations and dreams of American consumers. His idea of the social tableaux is one in which advertisements serve to resocialize the American public. In a state of anomie in the 1920s, the American people needed to be socialized to the new consumer culture. "The social tableaux depicted an ideal modern life - one to which the consumers presumably aspired, but also one specifically discerned by the eyes of ad creators" (Marchand: 167). Relationships in modern consumer culture were idealized, reflecting the transition from a traditional culture to a modern one.

Ads drew heavily on, and actually enacted, the American dream ideology; that is to say, "American advertising portrayed the ideals and aspirations of the system more accurately than its reality. They dramatized the American dream" (Marchand: xviii). Marchand calls the "American advertising man . . . the most modern of men" (1); in fact, he goes so far as to call them "apostles of modernity." These were the members of society who were always at the fore, always had the newest, best, improved -- modern -- products at hand. They embodied what it meant to be modern -- they were symbols and vessels of progress, and they "preach[ed] a gospel of modernity" (Marchand: 2). These advertising men, then, equated modernity with the good life in America; in fact, says Marchand, "[i]f modernity implied youthfulness, mobility, optimism, and a tolerance for diversity and speed of change, most advertising leaders immediately recognized such qualities in their self-portraits" (Marchand: 2-3). The American buying public were the least predictable element of the economic system (Marchand: 2) because they were not yet used to the new consumer culture. To acclimate the public to a consumption oriented lifestyle, the advertising men focused on the social fears of alienation. They found potential consumers were more and more willing to experiment with products because they feared being left behind in the wave of modernity. But the advertisers did not stop with simply selling products; they began to actually shape the collective mind of the buying public by concentrating on people's desires rather than simply their needs.