# Does anyone here think advertising does not affect them?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-think-advertising-does-not-affect-them/365803>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 24, 2006, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-think-advertising-does-not-affect-them/365803 "2006-07-24T11:13:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-think-advertising-does-not-affect-them/365803/61 "2006-07-28T01:02:47Z")

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I had a very early bad experience with advertising. The commercials were for Zest, and they promised that for the first time in your life you would feel really clean. Catchy little jingle.

So, we went on vacation. We ended up at my aunt’s house and–she had Zest! I was so excited. I was going to take a bath and, for the first time in my life, I was going to feel _really clean!_ I couldn’t wait.

And then it was just soap. Just . . . soap!

Maybe it would have worked if I’d been a little older. And, you know, dirtier. Not that a 5-year-old can’t get dirty, but…

So by the time I was seven or eight I was debunking the ads as they happened. Crest? It wasn’t the toothpaste that was so great, it was the fluoride, they said so themselves, right there in that very ad. (“The same formula _without fluoride…_”)

So, during the course of my adult life, the time I was most influenced by advertising was during my brief but very lucrative foray into the business itself. Not that I believed any of the claims–but I could admire a well-done campaign and would be willing to try a product like, say, Henry Weinhard’s (beer) or Zee paper towels. This was when I learned that annoying ads are actually good ads.

I’m not much influenced by advertising now and I don’t see that much. I watched one tv show for about half its first season (okay, _Desperate Housewives_) and other than that I haven’t watched tv since the days of _Dallas._ I will watch the Super Bowl just to see the ads but it’s not like I’m gonna go out and buy some midcap fund or a Dodge Ram or whatever (see I can’t even remember).

I never had to worry about my kids’ being influenced by ads because for most of their lives we didn’t even have a tv. However, there were still screaming fits, they just occurred when I wouldn’t buy something that they saw in the store. Usually something really inappropriate, like hamster food–did we have a hamster? No, we did not. Maybe they thought there was one in the box.

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**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-think-advertising-does-not-affect-them/365803/62 "2006-07-28T02:10:17Z")

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> [@mhendo](#):
>
> Actually, the way kids’ programming works, she doesn’t even need to see the commercials. A huge amount of childrens programming nowdays is part of an integrated marketing scheme, whereby the characters in childrens’ shows are also products on the shelves of the toy stores. The programs themselves are, in effect, little more than advertisements, designed to turn kids into consumers-by-prxy as early as possible.

And the best example of this is the _Pokemon_ TV show.

Gotta catch 'em all! Gotta catch 'em all!

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