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Ads, The Work of Satan

Fear, money, sex, violence. All common themes in modrn America. Constantly fed to us through television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. These themes have even reached into the domain of advertising. Money and sex used to promote some lifestyles as glamorous and full so that many will be tricked into "jumping on the bandwagon." Fear and violence used to convince people to change their ways and buy certain products or do certain things to be safe or protected. Unfortunately, because it works, it continues. Even today with an understanding of the propaganda many are still tricked although we all want to believe that it isn't us and that we do and buy things for genuine reasons. But the advertising gurus are not fools and continue to profit from our emotions and desires.

While flipping through the pages of the latest edition of Cosmopolitan in search for something of interest for this assignment I was startled by an ad put forth by the "Ad Council" depicting a child as an airplane mechanic. This kid, no more than ten years old, was standing in front of life size jet engine with a wrench that was half his size and a look blanker than this page before yesterday. In bold lettering at the bottom of the page it says, "You'll be flying in a jet maintained by Tommy." "No, I won't," I replied to the ad, "I just won't be flying." The writing continues in a smaller font and says,

"When Tommy grows up, he'll be an aircraft mechanic. Perhaps he'll work on a jet that you fly in someday. By then the job will require an advanced knowledge of chemistry, physics, and trigonometry. Unfortunately, very few kids are being prepared to master such subjects. If we want children who can handle tomorrow's good jobs, more kids need to take more challenging academic courses. To find out how you can help. . . "

This ad, very effectively, uses scare tactics to get your attention. They put an incapable person in charge of a huge responsibility. The reason we are drawn in by this is because we could be on that plane and we wouldn't want a person like Tommy in charge of our lives. We are also affected by the look of this child; he is what is socially accepted as cute. This therefore spawns our feelings of compassion for him. He doesn't stand a chance against the massive plane, so we want to help him. So we read on and realize the point of the ad: to ask us, the reader, to help this child through education. With education he stands a chance, and that's what we want, for him to be able to face the plane with confidence. In this situation, everyone wins, Tommy fixes the plane and we feel confident flying. The proper means of achieving this goal are supplied and we can go on to finish this edition of "Cosmo" in peace and happiness knowing we are good people.

With this belief of being "good people" comes the self inflicted responsibility of "saving our society." This idea of "saving" profits off of the common man/woman's desire to be a hero. Through this ad we are given an opportunity to save." "Unfortunately, very few kids are being prepared to master. . .." This sentence cries out an infamous sob story of helplessness depicted through choice words like "Unfortunately" and "very, few, kids, being, prepared." None of these words are accidents, nothing in the advertisement is. People get paid real good money to do this, and they do everything with a purpose, especially word choice. Henceforth these words were chosen with a certain purpose in mind. This purpose was to invoke certain thoughts and feelings regarding the issue at hand and the desire to be a savior. Very often, these ideas do not even occur to the person consciously, but rather, without them knowing it, they are deceived into feeling and thinking what they feel and think. Tommy's face is begging for your help, that is exactly what they want you feel and think.

So why is it, if we know this, that we still fall for the "oldest trick In the book?" Faith, we want to believe that we are not getting sold, that what the advertisement says is true and real and possible. We want it so bad that we truly believe it. We have an excuse, we were taught to look for such things, such genuine and true things. We were convinced that it was possible, that someone out there had to be telling the truth and we all think that we found it. A good example of this is Budweiser, and there slogan, "this Bud's for you!" As mentioned in the Jack Solomon article, "'You're one of the guys,' Budweiser assures the assembly-worker and truck driver, 'This Bud's for you!"' And so your average blue-collar individual hears and reads this advertisement and sees themselves in it, part of it, and so to them it is genuine and true. They have a newfound faith in Budweiser. The list goes on and on and, quite possibly there is honest, true advertisement, but in world where so much of can be proven as not it becomes increasingly hard to know the difference [note: author apologizes for this last paragraph].

Scare tactics and tricks to get our compassion, if we only realized, we would feel awfully manipulated. But no, because it is too easy to feel good and more fun to be happy and to believe that these ads are genuine. It is too hard and time consuming to analyze them and realize that we are being fooled and used like tools of the industry. Sad but true, so pay attention if you care. But isn't he just soo cute in that mechanics suit and that big wrench, he is just precious!