The earliest ads (as far as I can tell or imagine) were claims: "Our product will fix your problem!" "Our product will fix your problem better than the other product will!" These smoothly segued into lies: "Our product is necessary for your survival!" Without regulation, all ads would be lies—or enough that you wouldn't be able to tell lies from truth (which is why, I think [based on a couple semesters' Phil], old Kant would've Just Said No to lies). I would put sugar in a bottle and say, "Sugabot cures the common cold," or even "Sugabot cures headaches better than Advil," and why the hell not?
Two reasons not: (1) customers eventually might get wise and put me out of business; (2) the government has instituted a strict no-lies policy for advertising.
Problem solved!
But wait: so what do ads do if they don't lie? What is their function? Do they simply provide us with information so that we, as consumers in a consumerist society, can make the best possible decisions about our consumption? (Anyone who said "yes" should now leave the room and proceed downstairs to Mrs. Slackjowls's classroom: I'm afraid you're going to have to repeat a few grades—like, all of them.)
Why do corporations part with small fortunes to finance high-concept, big-budget commercials? Because (this is a capitalist society, remember) it's an investment they expect to pay off: they'll make much more money than they spent.
Why will they make much more money than they spent? Because the ads will lead people to give their money to the corporations. (We could just stop here, evaluating-our-relationship-with-advertising-wise, but let's follow it along a step or two further, word?)
So: how do ads get people to give the corporations money? By making the people want—or even, very often, think they need—what the corporation is selling.
How?
Not by providing information. That kind of ad works only if the corporation has the best product, and not every corporation can have the best product (definition of "best") (and in fact they'd actually need not just the best but the very clearly and self-evidently best), and a hell of a lot of 'em are advertising, yeah?
Not by [outright] lying. That's illegal!
Why...then HOW?
How?
Not by providing information. That kind of ad works only if the corporation has the best product, and not every corporation can have the best product (definition of "best") (and in fact they'd actually need not just the best but the very clearly and self-evidently best), and a hell of a lot of 'em are advertising, yeah?
Not by [outright] lying. That's illegal!
Why...then HOW?
I believe the most accurate word for it is "manipulation." I don't mean evil mustache-twiddling manipulation; I just mean, in the very most basic sense, the process of causing people to do something that they, you know, wouldn't quite do if left to their own devices. Think about any ad. What does it do? Does it simply convey information? No: it does try to affect your opinion, but not by giving you facts.
One example for that ass:
Axe body spray. I've only talked to two people with experience of this scent, both of them women, and both said that it smells revolting. And here's the beauty/horror of these commercials: basically what they're saying is, "Hey, guys! Use our product and women won't be able to control themselves: they will all want to fuck you!"—an obvious falsehood—but because it's an obvious falsehood, because it's so wink-wink and self-evidently meant to be a joke/parody, no one could ever successfully accuse them of false advertising because they (and lawyers and judges and juries and the man on the street) would scoff and sneer and say, "Are you fuckin' kidding? It's a JOKE, man, get over it!" And yet, why then do they bother putting the commercial out there? Just to amuse us? In that case, why not have a commercial indicating that wearing Axe body spray will make you, say, super-strong? or, hell, funnier yet, incredibly repellant to the opposite sex? Because at the same time as they're frantically winking and nudging, at the same time that they rely on the fact that any sensible person would know that it won't really make women want to fuck you, their ad still does in fact create an association in the consuming audience, and that association, very specifically, is: Axe = sexual attraction.
So I can't say, "My product will cure the common cold," but I can say, "My product will stop global warming, lower the price of oil, and bring your dead grandparents back from the grave!" If I lie hard enough, it magically stops being a lie!—but I've still managed to stick it in your head.
I'm going to go so far as to say that advertising like this is MORE insidious than flat-out lies—because the wonder of today's all-over-the-place, everywhere-you-fucking-look advertising is that it lies to you AND says, "Of course I'm lying to you! It's a JOKE!"—and we're left just a little too uncomfortably close to defenseless...
2 comments:
In a marketing class I took the teacher helpfully pointed out that the root of "marketing" is "market," and that the original pre-advertising form of advertising was simply a person standing there in the physical market with his/her box of tomatoes or donkeys or what-have-you, actually telling you face-to-face why you should buy the tomatoes/donkey. Surely plenty of lying went on there, but if you found out later your tomatoes were rotten or your donkey listless, you could go right back on the next market day and be like, WTF to the seller, plus tell all your other friends. But once the market gets too big for this to work, market*ing* as we know it starts taking place, and the message gets more and more mediated and more and more easier to manipulate.
This "no" obviously works in the tomatoes/donkey industry. Go shill somewhere else!
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