Avoiding personal responsibility used to be clean and simple. Caught red-handed? The devil made you do it. End of story.
But today we have a dizzying array of bogus blaming options. We can choose from rap music, movies, TV, video games, the Internet, Twinkies, genes, society, the neighbor’s kid, our upbringing, the booze talking, atheism, evolution, the definition of “is,” planets, stars, lunar phases, the ever-vague and passive “mistakes were made,” the economy, being an only child, not being an only child, and more. Just keeping track can exhaust the most adept excuse-maker. Call me extreme, but some days I wonder if it might be easier simply to say, “I made a mistake.”
I saved the excuse that accuses my profession for last: “The advertising made me do it.” If you fed your kids fast food until your spouse mistook them for the minivan, blew the budget on a video game system, or bought trendy clothes you didn’t need and that went out of style as you were paying for them, take heart. You can blame us slick advertising people and our so-called hypnotic work.
Just one problem. No advertisement has the power to make you act against your will.
More than a few presumed experts have claimed otherwise. In 1957, aspiring researcher James Vicary claimed to have boosted soda and popcorn sales by splicing subliminal images into the movie Picnic. Three years later, he admitted to having made the whole thing up. (The claim that he flashed images at 1/3000th of a second should have provided a clue. Film moves through a projector at 24 frames per second.) But like most retractions, Vicary’s went largely unnoticed. Today, even in advertising circles, people cite the bogus claim as fact.
Alarmist author Wilson Bryan Key took the nonsense up another notch. In his book The Clam-Plate Orgy, he alleged that Howard Johnson restaurants lured people who hated fried clams to order them anyway. How? By means of subliminal, sexually arousing images embedded in photos of the clams. All I can say is, if you were around at the time and found those photos arousing, the more likely explanation is that you have a thing for dead clams. Not something to bring up on a first date.
Though I have never met one, for all I know there really are advertising people who employ so-called subliminal techniques. Let them. There is no evidence that subliminal advertising has any effect. Unless, of course, you count book sales that result from sensationalizing it.
Many people, ad people included, believe that when advertising is “truly creative,” sales follow as a natural consequence. Many equally argue that success is assured when advertising “stands out,” “is remembered,” or “increases name recognition.” These claims certainly smack of mind control. The only problem is, you must use selection and confirmation bias to defend them. You can dredge up as many creative, noticed, recalled and recognized advertisements that sold — or that didn’t — as you set out to find.
No matter how well crafted advertising may be, the inescapable fact is that the market always has a choice. The most skillful advertiser cannot foist a product on a public that doesn’t want it. There’s a reason for the failure of products like Bic disposable underwear, Cosmopolitan (magazine) yogurt, Colgate kitchen entrees, Ben-Gay aspirin, Smith & Wesson mountain bikes, and McDonald’s clothing. Though respected, experienced advertising agencies threw their best at these products, the market voted NO with its collective checkbook, leaving ad agencies powerless to do anything about it.
But markets can and often do wield the checkbook irrationally. When that happens, advertising makes a handy scapegoat. Advertising couldn’t make us buy Coors bottled water or Harley-Davidson perfume, but people still prefer to believe it makes us reach for Apple Jacks instead of apples.
This is not to say that all advertising is ineffective (though much of it is). The right ads can boost a product’s sales. Conversely, the wrong ads can drive them down. Taco Bell’s experience with its spokes-Chihuahua illustrates both. Prior to introducing the pooch, the chain had enjoyed steady sales. When the Chihuahua came on the scene, his popularity soared, but sales plummeted. When Taco Bell switched to dogless commercials with close-ups of savory ingredients, sales rebounded. (Ironically, by ad industry standards the Chihuahua campaign was “highly creative,” whereas its successful replacement was woefully lackluster.)
Good advertising does influence, and often in a big and profitable way. Not too many people thought they needed a Swiffer, Tide stain-remover pens, overpriced coffee, or Post-It Notes before advertising brought them to our attention. Nor does advertising only promote frivolous purchases. Advertising has had a significant hand in gaining acceptance for toothbrushes, deodorant, breast exams, regular dental check-ups, immunizations, safety belts and, for that matter, the likes of the JREF and TAM.
Moreover, not all advertising people subscribe to the above-referenced myths. An admitted minority regularly conduct evidence-based, controlled advertising tests — and learn from them. Such testing has been going on for over 100 years, generating and amassing valuable information about which advertising techniques work most often, and which don’t. You might be surprised at what I know about your (collective) habits as a result of a career in evidenced-based advertising. But that’s a topic for another article. In fact, look for it next month. Sneak preview: You prefer toll-free numbers displayed with a 1 in front of them. And headlines without punctuation.
Still, if there is one thing that a century of controlled advertising tests have revealed, it is that there is no way to force people into buying. We can highlight benefits, entertain, badger, entice, add urgency, sweeten the deal, appeal to emotion, remove barriers, and put a 1 in front of the toll-free number — but always, the final choice of “to buy, or not to buy” rests with the market. That’s good news if you don’t like the idea of being pushed around. It’s bad news if you want to blame your choices on someone else. So if you charged a big-screen TV you can’t afford, bought an overpriced gas hog when the old heap was running just fine, or spent too much on JREF products, I’m truly sorry. But neither my colleagues nor I made you do it. Oh, and thank you for buying the JREF products. Click here to buy more.
Two Closing Thoughts:
Children’s advertising is an emotionally charged issue that deserves separate mention. Children can be influenced more easily than adults, and some children do not distinguish advertising from programming. I shall leave you to decide if these findings are de facto damning of kid-targeted ads. (I think they are not.) Either way, let’s not overlook the absence of any law compelling parents to purchase the moment a child points at the tube and says “I want that.” Nor has anyone abridged the right of parents to monitor younger children’s viewing, feed their kids healthy diets, and avoid buying them every advertised toy. What’s more, the evidence suggests that parents can do these things without producing social misfits and, in a few cases, without breaking out in hives.
Ads that deceive also deserve mention. To find examples of legal but deceptive advertising practices, you have only to search through ads for alternative medicine, political candidates, diet plans, hearing aids, stock market predictors, multi-level companies, or subliminal self-improvement CDs, to name a few. Many such ads toe the legal line by placing qualifying language in small type that occupies five percent of the ad space, and using the remaining 95 percent to mislead. A five percent weasel does not unmake a lie. Though falling short of mind control — consumers remain free to fact-check — the practice is heinous and should be outlawed.