Commercials

The following text comes from one of my favorite authors Neil Postman, specifically from his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. I find this quite relevant to Douglas Holt's descriptions of brands in that Postman discuss the nature of adverisements and what information we actually get from them. What do Mountain Dew ads tell us about the actual product? From watching its television commercials, we learn virtually nothing. What does it taste like? What is it made from? Why is it better than Sprite or Mellow Yellow or Kick (R.I.P.) or Surge (ditto)? In fact, commercials very rarely explain the product. More often, they tell us about ourselves.



"The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama--a mythology, if you will--of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claims are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it.




Indeed, we may go this far: The television commercial is not at all about character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country--these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the products but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas."

-Jenny