Have you ever had a visit from one of those pesky knife salesmen? If they're anything like the ones I've seen, they always seem to have overpriced, inferior merchandise and a hard sell to go with it.
When one of these folks arrives, it is unlikely that he will be received well. Every once in a while, he will happen upon someone with a genuine need for new knives, but this is rare. After all, anyone who has been thinking about how much they would like a new set of knives is either buying it on their own, or doesn't have the money to purchase yet. The goal of a knife salesman is not to find people who need new knives—it is to find ordinary people, then convince them that they need new knives. It's no wonder they're so unpopular—they're trying to create a need so they can make the sale.
On a slightly less obnoxious level, advertisements also peddle desires instead of products. After all, the ultimate goal of advertising is to implant us with needs that we wouldn't otherwise have. In recent years, advertising has taken an almost Freudian turn and focused in on our ids, to the exclusion of reason and logic. With the goal of invoking skewed perceptions of reality, from "my family's safety depends on having this SUV" to "people will finally be friends with me if I drink X brand beer", advertisers do their best to aim low and hit below the belt.
The most pernicious form of this is advertising to young children, who cannot perceive the difference between fact and fiction. Here, the target of the advertising (the kid) doesn't have much money, so the goal is to create in the child a need strong enough that he persistently nags, wheedles or cajoles his parents into buying the latest whatsit. How low can you go?
Modern advertisements, like knife salesmen, are selling the need, not the product. Are you buying?
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