I recently stumbled across an old list of the most common advertising techniques. We studied this stuff in my high school English class if my memory serves me correctly. Here’s a quick summary for the uninitiated:
[ol]
[li]Avante Garde: The assertion that a product will put you on the cutting edge of fashion, style, or technology. E.g. A Calvin Klein commercial with lots of half-naked skinny people.[/li][li]Bandwagon: An appeal to herd mentality. E.g. “Over one million Americans use Tide, and so should you!”[/li][li]Facts and Figures:The use of facts and figures to convince you that a product is superior to all others. E.g. “Lasts 50% longer than the leading brand”.[/li][li]Glittering Generalities: Seemingly positive statements which mean absolutely nothing. E.g. “New and Improved!” or “America’s favorite car!”.[/li][li]Hidden Fears: The use of scare tactics. E.g. “Failure to rinse with our mouthwash can lead to gingivitis!!”[/li][li]Magic Ingredients: An appeal to scientific ignorance. E.g. “Contains Dihydrogen Monoxide for added moisturizing power!”[/li][li]Patriotism: An appeal to your love of country. E.g. “Made in the U.S.A.”.[/li][li]Plain Folks: An appeal to wholesome, old-fashioned, plain-and-simple, down-to-earth sensibility. E.g. “My great Granddaddy ate Muslix every morning on the farm.”[/li][li]Snob Appeal: The association of a product with something elite and glamorous. The opposite of plain folks. E.g. any commercial for an automobile worth more than $30,000.[/li][li]Transfer: The association of a product with something positive, even if it has nothing to do with the actual product. E.g. a beer commercial with beautiful, scantily-clad women.[/li][li]Testimonial: A famous person endorses a product. E.g “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV”.[/li][li]Wit and Humor: Supposedly, a person is more likely to remember a product if the commercial is funny. E.g. Jack-in-the-Box commercials.[/li][/ol]
By the gods, this is not advertising, this is propaganda! With the possible exception of facts and figures, these techniques are nothing more than a list psychological warfare tactics designed to play our own hopes and fears against us! Advertising is the underhanded manipulation of human emotions for profit!!
What’s more, advertising completely saturates Western civilization. You can’t get away from it! You find it on TV, radio, billboards, and buses. It pervades the Internet. It garnishes sporting events. It fills our mailboxes. It’s written across the sky, stamped on T-shirts, and plastered on the sides of buildings. It’s even creeping into public schools. What’s next? National monuments? Churches?
As a result, modern culture has become almost entirely commercial. We have been dehumanized into a race of consumers — our value as human beings is based directly on how much we can consume. From a very young age we are trained to equate the act of purchasing with personal gratification. We foolishly believe the myth that money can buy us happiness, and we are lured into wasting our resources on useless frivolities, such as cars with heated steering wheels or lights that respond to the clapping of hands. We are becoming desensitized to visual and audio stimuli as commercials become increasingly louder, faster, and more bizarre to capture our attention for the split-second required to imprint a brand name onto our brains. Anything not endorsed by a company — anything lacking an official sponsor — becomes a waste of time. If something doesn’t have a brand, it’s worthless. The things in life that money can’t buy — a sunset, a summer breeze in the treetops, true friendship — are worthless.
My Naive and Wildly Impractical Solution (NWIS) is to ban all forms of advertising. Think about the consequences! First of all, lacking any input as to how we should properly spend our money, consumers would be forced to do research on all the products we buy rather than rely on brand recognition. Smaller companies without the resources to advertise would have a better chance at competing with the big boys, since the preferences of consumers would no longer be based solely on a product’s commercial success. The result: more opportunity for small business to make money.
The prices of all goods and services would fall drastically, since companies would no longer need to waste money on expensive advertising campaigns. The postal service would become more efficient, due to the elimination of junk mail. Terabytes of Internet bandwidth could be reclaimed if spam and banner ads could be eradicated. Of course, services that were once free (such as Television and gulp the Straight Dope Message Board) would have to start charging, but the quality of the service would improve because providers would no longer be forced to bow to the whims of finicky sponsors. Besides, we’d save so much money on other products that any extra fees would likely pale in comparison. Best of all, we wouldn’t have to look at so many damn commercials!
Fire away!
- JB