Buy It, Just Don't Ask Why

In the old days, people advertised their business based on what it could do for the customer. A blacksmith advertised his shop based on the fact that he could do a blacksmith's work for people. This "marketing campaign" was usually limited to a sign above his door with an anvil on it, and the word-of-mouth testimonies of his customers.

There was dishonest advertising back then, of course; there always has been. A man in the marketplace might shout out that he had the best fish in the world, when in fact they were a three day-old catch that was getting a bit spoiled. Typically, though, the majority of advertising was limited, not very gaudy, and focused on the benefits of the product itself.

Modern advertising is wholly different. Like the picture at above left, which is a very mild example, our marketers make very little connection between the product at hand and the words and images that try to make people buy it. After all, what does "Coke adds life" mean? We can be sure it doesn't add a half-second to the life of anyone who drinks it, and whether it makes your life more interesting is entirely up to you.

There are two reasons, I think, for why advertising has come to this state. The first reason is the general demise of logic over the past few decades. The roots of this demise are deep, but most notably since the 1960s a great many people have come to value emotional and physical "highs" and mental bedazzlement over any deep, intrinsic meaning or logical cohesion. That's why big-budget movies with multiple explosions do better at the theatres than films that focus more on ideas and characters than high-speed chases. That is also one of the greatest reasons why advertisements can get away with having nothing at all to do with the product at hand. Let's take a beer commercial for another example. One of the slogans for Busch Beer is "Busch Beer. Head for the mountains." If anyone can find the intrinsic logical connection between the statement Busch Beer and the command "head for the mountains," I challenge him to show it to me. In all honesty, drinking beer has nothing to do with hitting the trail, and I highly doubt that many people who drink that brand ever do go to the mountains, or even take that injunction seriously. It just doesn't relate to Busch Beer in any sense. The chain of logic is broken at the most fundamental level, and few people seem to care, or even really notice.

The second reason is somewhat related. A host of the products produced today are not really that useful, and certainly not very necessary. Our blacksmithing friend was an essential member of his community, since he could make horseshoes, crowbars, knives, axes, and all kinds of other useful tools. Beer as a general commodity is not really necessary at all, and the world could easily say farewell to the Busch company without quivering to its foundations. Not that there's anything wrong with beer (taken in moderation). The problem arises when marketers feel that they must not allow the public to just choose for itself--in the which case Busch might just get shoved aside. The public has products waved in its face in a variety of clever ways, but because many of these products are just amenities, there is no real concrete logical principle to which their makers can appeal to attract public attention. What they have to do is select something they think will capture many people's attention, and then toss it in with the same pot as the product in the hopes that, while ogling at the Interesting Thing, the public catch sight of the product and, when browsing through the store, remember the product's picture and buy it instead of a competitor. And because of the logical disconnect problem in today's society, that isn't a big deal.

Neil Postman, a social commentator of great perception, compared advertisements in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death to myths. Advertisers don't create reasons for buying products; they create myths around them that make them look like answers to life's problems. This observation seems to be quite true. Here are a couple of the "myths" of advertising that I have observed. I'm sure there are many more, since I have watched no TV in my home for many years.

• Look at that babe!--Popular with shower products, men's cologne, beer, automobiles, and most everything else, this is the advertising ploy that using sensuality to catch the public eye. The camera will give us plenty of barely-restrained shots of a woman washing her hair in the shower, or a lady in a bikini on the beach, without really saying whether Dove soap actually keeps your hair cleaner or whether Coors Light has really been confirmed by popular opinion to have the best taste, or some freak health benefit, or what have you.
• A movie star's doing it, so I should too--Also popular with just about anything, this will have, say, Adrian Brody walking cheerfully down a road and infecting everyone with his energy...all due, we are supposed to believe, to Pepsi. Apparently the fact that he steps in front of a camera and speaks pre-written lines while dodging a gigantic ape (or pretending to stab Joaquin Phoenix) makes him a leading authority on soft drinks.
• Vicarious coolness--Popular with cars, beer, camping gear, and much more, this is usually marketed to male teenagers and young men, and usually features, say, Mazda cars being driven in a flashy and noisy manner through desert landscapes or some urban bridge, or a muscular man in a nightclub with some adoring girlfriend holding one hand, and a Budweiser in the other. In this way the young men get a vicarious thrill from fast car-races or a successful date without having to take the trouble to seek one or the other, and associate the same "coolness" with the product at hand. That way, even though one may never have the skill to spin out his Mazda in the Alpine snows and come out not only unscratched, but with no snow on the tires, he still associates owning a Mazda with being respected.
• Haha! That was funny, I guess I'll go buy something--Perhaps advertising's biggest trump card along with pretty women, this acts on the assumption that eliciting a laugh from the customer will make the featured product memorable, and so encourage him to buy it. That is why Budweiser had a commercial during (I think) the Olympic games. It ran something like this. A man sits on a couch with a blond-haired girl kissing him (and, I think, with a beer on the table by him). The girl excuses herself, probably to go to the restroom or something, and the man calls his friend. Asked what the girl is like, he says something to the effect of, "she's pretty weird, but I'm desperate." The girl returns, and her pet parrot suddenly starts squawking, "she's pretty weird, but I'm desperate," over and over again. The last shot is the man getting kicked out of her house, and then the camera shows a bottle of beer with the Budweiser name. This doesn't even try to say, "getting this product will put you in the way of pretty women" or "buying this will make you cool." All it does is set up a situation of domestic strife that some people, I suppose, find amusing. I am actually not certain whether the marketers care that the customer even remembers the gag--only that the image of the beer stays in his mind so Budweiser makes more money.

It would be quite possible to go on with these examples, but the point has, I think, been made. Advertisements are a multi-billion dollar industry of logical disconnects, feel-good stories that build of a false mythos around products that, in the main, don't mean much at all. They are strong-arm tactics to try to make gullible people buy things they do not need and, unless prodded, would probably never even think to buy. Only a society like those of our modern age that are so full of extra cash, unprecedented leisure time, and populations filled with softies out for a good time at any price (except strenuous exertion) could produce such an industry.

As long as it continues to turn a profit, this industry won't go away. But we can contribute to its demise by not giving in to its ploys. After buying necessities, choose your amenities wisely and with any eye to God's glory and your pocket book. Drink the beer you like the taste of most, not the one Lindsay Lohan drinks on TV. Buy the car that gets you where you want to go, not the one that couple drove at 115 through the Arizona wilderness.

Let us try to infuse a little logic into our consumerist society.

~Connor