They're Messing With Your Head
by
Dave Palmer
A correspondent wrote:
>I'm curious to know what commercials have tricked me into believing. My
>mother pointed out to me when I was very young that the "sudsing" of
>soaps didn't necessarily having anything to do with how much soap you were
>getting, and now after all these years I see every day how commercials
>assume the hypothesis that "sudsing" is what counts. I'm wondering what other
>examples there are that I have missed.
>...
> Anyway, what else am I suckering into that I should realize and stop
>wasting my money on?
Jim, Jim, Jim....
*sigh*
I think you're asking the wrong question here. What you REALLY want to
ask is: "is there anything in commercials I SHOULD believe?"
The answer to that is: not really, no.
See, Jimbo, the advertising industry is not your friend. It exists for one
purpose: to sell you stuff (and ideas...) you might not otherwise have bought.
The more successful at that they are, the more money they get paid by
their clients.
Advertisers have a long and infamous history of creating "basic human needs"
out of thin air, just to sell products. Once the "needs" are firmly rooted
in the national psyche, people tend to forget that there was ever an
alternative. Hey, it sells soap.
A few of the more egregious examples that spring to mind:
-Despite the claims of the Virginia Slims ads, the social acceptance of
women smoking in the US had nothing really to do with emancipation. Rather,
it was a carefully orchestrated ad campaign (the "Blow Some My Way" ads)
that, over a period of a couple years, gradually depicted a woman and a
cigarette moving closer toward each other, until the woman was finally
actually puffing on the coffin nail.
-In the fifties, "medical science" suddenly "discovered" the horrible
scourge of body odor and (gasp!) halitosis (bad breath). This was ALSO the
period of time when cigarette ads featured doctors touting the "health
advantages" of smoking, but never mind that for now. Up until this
time, people more or less accepted the normal smells of the body as natural.
Madison Avenue saw to it that people were informed about this serious health
hazard, and conveniently informed about the latest miracle products to
battle it. (Comedienne Mo Gaffney on "feminine hygiene" products: "they
say they'll make you 'fresh as a daisy.' I'm not sure I WANT my vagina to
smell like a daisy. And I'm SURE I don't want my daisies to smell like...")
-Around the turn of the century, the de Beers company, which to this day
has a virtual monopoly on the world's diamond supply, decided they needed a
market for those hard little rocks that littered the ground in Africa, so
they launched a worldwide media blitz that created a mystique about diamonds.
Today, everyone thinks diamonds are incredibly rare gemstones that have
been prized above all others for thousands of years. Hogwash. Diamonds are
as common as dirt in some places (most of those places owned or controlled
by de Beers), and the belief that they are the most prized of gemstones is
almost entirely a modern (and carefully indoctrinated) notion.
-Most shampoo and hair conditioner ads. Hair is dead tissue. Period. The only
place it's alive and growing is at the base, in the follicle. "Brings hair
back to life?" Foo. To paraphrase Python, "mate this hair wouldn't VOOM if
you put a million volts through it. It's bleeding DEMISED!"
-Even the government gets into the act: when the Bush administration was
itching to get into the Gulf War, there was a series of hearings before
congress where Kuwaiti refugees told of the horrors perpetrated by the
Iraqi invaders. Most notable among these was "little Nayirah," who
testified to such atrocities as babies being pulled out of incubators in
a hospital and thrown on the floor to die. Trouble is, not only did many
of these things never happen, but even "little Nayirah" herself was a
phony. Turns out she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the
US. Some of the other "refugees" were also carefully coached actors. The
whole gag was staged by Hill and Knowlton, a PR firm hired by the White
House (the fact that the firm was headed by Bush's former chief of staff I'm
sure had NOTHING to do with it...) to "sell" the war to the American public.
The White House also conned people into forgetting that, up until a couple
of years before this, Saddam Hussein was a US ally, who received everything
from arms shipments to spy satellite data.
Of course, there are those who claim the entire Regan presidency was an
advertising stunt ("I'm not REALLY the president, but I play one on TV..."),
but never mind...
Back