This post refers to a specific type of advertisement that we see all around us on TV, billboards, and the like. A sort of advertising that does not deal with rational attributes of the article, but instead, by triggering emotional and unrealistic emotions, seeks to bypass the intellect altogether.
I refer to those ads that paint a false lifestyle, and lead us to believe that if were to consume that particular article, we could attain it. Picture to yourself an ad for say, a certain item of clothing. The ad shows us a young man not only wearing the suit, but possessing a large number of other attributes as well. In other words, the ‘Successful’ man. This man is present in just about every ad, and he possesses the following characteristics explicitly, or implicitly irrespective of which ad it is:
1. He is handsome
2. He is rich
3. He has lots of free time
4. He’s a big hit with women, or has a stunning girlfriend.
5. He is young
6. He is a corporate executive in a large successful company earning a handsome salary.
7. He is talented
8. He has a great body
9. He is happy, confident, and has everything under control
10. He has exquisite taste in clothes, or whisky, or or cars, or something of the sort.
One need hardly point out that this is a ridiculous picture, and I doubt if there is even one man on earth who fits the bill. Nevertheless, for the sceptical, I shall point out the anomalies. First, a man working in a corporate environment getting a big salary cannot have the amount of free time that is implied in an ad. He cannot go around on boats, play golf, and womanize indiscriminately. A man in such a position will most probably not be young. There is also no way he will have the body of a model since you need lots of time to maintain a body like that. Such a man will be harassed, pressurized in work, and will not be happy and fulfilled.
In addition, there is no way the product advertised can confer the above benefits. Whatever it is, it cannot make a person handsome, and give him the kind of fulfillment as implied in the ad.
There are plenty of other ads with other motifs, the likes of which are too ridiculous for me to really mention. I remember with a nauseating feeling, a ‘Hi Style’ ad in Chennai which shows two young women claiming to spend their shopping time in the aforementioned store, also saying that ‘Cheerleading‘ was their favorite hobby. And this is targeted towards Indian audiences! Where in any Indian Schools do we have cheerleaders? It’s a sick attempt to befuddle young girls into trying to attain a false lifestyle image. The young filly gets visions of prancing young cheerleaders while shopping at ‘Hi Style’. Yuck.
It is precisely this sort of insidious advertising that makes me want to puke. These companies actually insult my intelligence. The problem is that you need to pay attention and dissect the picture, which most people don’t. This is in effect, a sort of semi-hypnotic suggestion used by firms to set an emotional value on their products instead of a rational value.
It’s immoral because it aims to manipulate a person’s desires in a sneaky way instead of directly. If a cigarette manufacturer blatantly claimed that smoking his cigarettes will give you a cool handsome image, it’s not really immoral because the suggestion is direct, enabling a person to accept or reject the suggestion rationally. However, when the manufacturer shows a handsome man smoking the cigarette, the suggestion is subliminal and bypasses the logical faculty. The customer does not feel manipulated because no overt suggestion was made.
Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about this sort of advertising, damaging though it may be. Neither should we. We can’t take decisions for other people. We can only try and tell people, and hope that they will see the lie of the ad themselves. We must hope that they will look critically at an poster and decide on a rational basis what the manufacturer implicitly claims. In other words, we need to wake up and make up our own minds about what we want, what we can actually achieve, and not be influenced by popular images of the ‘Successful’ person.