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Advertising
I am ready to bet that in your naivety you believe that advertising is the art of convincing people of the remarkable qualities of your products, of persuading them to prefer your product to any other make, and of keeping certain brands permanently in the public eye. This is a misconception. Advertising is the art of convincing people that they want certain things they do not want at all, of making them dissatisfied with everything they have, of making them thoroughly unhappy.
Advertisements in America are ubiquitous: they fill the newspapers and cover the walls, they are on menu cards and in your daily post, on pamphlets and on match boxes, they are shouted through the loudspeakers and shown in the cinema, flashed electrically and written on the sky by aeroplanes and whispered in front of your window while you sleep so that you should dream of toothpaste, shoe polishes and soap flakes.
Advertisements have a special logic of their own. They tell you indirectly that if you use a certain orange squeezer in your kitchen, you remain young, lovely and beautiful; if you wash with a certain soap, you become rich; if you wear a certain type of underwear, you inherit a large sum from a wealthy uncle and if you use only a special kind of tomato ketchup, you learn foreign languages more easily. Of course, people are much too intelligent to believe such silly statements. But as after all there may be something in it – why not try ? And as people who inherit large sums from wealthy uncles do wear some type of underwear and a few others who insist on a certain kind of tomato ketchup do learn French with the greatest ease, the proof is soon to be found that the advertisements – amazing as it may seem – spoke the golden truth.
The word ‘scientific’ has a magic effect. You may put up a notice: ‘Scalp massage’: this is quite ineffective. But if you say: ‘Scientific scalp massage’ – that is a different matter. After all, the least you can expect is that your scalp should be massaged by a scientist. A shoe polish manufacturer invented the verb ‘to lanolize’. Other shoe polishes just clean your shoes – nicely, cleanly, efficiently – but E. Shoe Polish ‘lanolizes’ them. The word has no meaning whatever, but it is quite obvious that everybody would rather have his shoes ‘lanolized’ than only cleaned. If you have 50,000 dollars to spend persuade other people that while other toothpastes just clean your teeth, Atlantik toothpaste “saturnizes” them, that any other soap just washes your clothes, but Atkantik soap “kepplerizes” them. And all good people in America would much rather spend their time lanolizing, saturnizing, kepplerizing, saharising and patagonizing than washing and cleaning, because washing and cleaning are rather dull.
The other approach on the same line is to give people statistics. You state, for example, that Amalda floor polish gives 42% more shine to the floor with 37% less effort than any other make. If anybody questions your statements and declares its stupidity is too obvious for any child over the age of four, you smile in a superior way and explain to him that this has been ‘scientifically’ proved. If he is still unconvinced, tell him that the real explanation lies in the fact that any other floor polish just cleans the floor, but Amalda ‘platonizes’ it.
If the sales fall off, spend more money on advertising. But beware of one thing: do not improve the quality of your goods. That will leave you a smaller sum to spend on advertising – and then you are ‘lanolized’. Maybe you are ‘lanolized’ for good. (source: George Mikes)
