crucially for our kids, ads are the top pushers of the materialism drug – the mechanism that makes us crave material objects at the same time as isolating us from each other. In 1978 researchers Goldberg and Gorn studied two groups of kids. One group watched a TV show which included toy commercials and the other watched it without. Later, the kids who had watched the adverts chose to play alone with the advertised toys instead of with their friends in the sandbox.10
Today, TV isn’t the only place selling to children; 87 per cent of the most popular websites for kids include adverts.11
Another popular tactic marketers use is called ‘cross promotion’. This is where they take our kids’ favourite characters and use them to sell them unrelated products, usually fast food. Kids trust these familiar heroes who are so good and noble in stories. So of course, they would never suspect their favourite character was pushing food that was bad for them.
What to Do?
• Join and be active in the online campaign for a commercial-free childhood: www.commercialfreechildhood.org.
• If you have children, it’s worth knowing that the Academy of Paediatrics recommends no screen time at all up to the age of two. TV and computer products designed for babies do not increase their ability to learn language.12
For older children:
• Most importantly, teach children what adverts do:
TACTIC 2: REAL FAKERY
Advertisers know that we’re more likely to buy something if the ad feels ‘real’. When I worked in advertising, we even used to cast real parents and kids in our commercials so that we could leverage their genuine love and intimacy to sell stuff. Ick!
But some of the information adverts give is just plain false, as false as false eyelashes. In fact, false eyelashes are regularly used in mascara adverts, making it impossible to tell which mascara is better than another. For example, CoverGirl launched a mascara claiming it was so good you wouldn’t need false lashes. ‘You may never go false again,’ it boasted. But if you looked in the corner of the ad, you’d see a line of writing so small it looked like a smudge admitting that the model in the advert was wearing falsies.
This is just the tip of the swiftly melting iceberg when it comes to the deception in advertising.
In one of the ads I filmed, we had to use a kid’s treat from a rival brand to get the ‘enjoyment shot’ on the kids’ faces as they chewed, as they had repeatedly spat the actual treat out in disgust.
‘Hopefully no one will ever find out we did that,’ said the account manager as we left the shoot.
It’s not only the food that can be fake. Showing ‘real people’ reacting to a product makes the viewer feel that they can trust the brand more. However, people in ads are never ‘real people’. They might not seem like actors, but:
1. They probably are actors.
2. Or want to be actors.
3. Even if they’re not actors, they’ve chosen to appear in a commercial and they’ll usually have been paid to do so.
4. Even if they’ve not been paid, they know they have a camera on them and are expected to be positive about the product.
5. If there’s any danger of them reacting the wrong way, such as in hidden camera filming or blind taste tests, the ad agency will film enough people to show some of them loving the product.
6. Most ads are around thirty seconds and it’s very easy to make everyone look delighted with a product for thirty seconds.
Many of the statistics in ads are also based on very small sample sizes or surveys skewed by the lure of a competition, misleading language or tricky surveying. For example, Colgate ran a billboard campaign proudly stating, ‘Eighty per cent of dentists recommend Colgate,’ which led people to think that only 20 per cent of dentists would recommend a different brand. In fact, when the dentists were asked which brands they liked, they could pick several, so other brands could have been equally or more popular.13
What to do?
There’s only one solution to this issue: if in doubt (and we should always be in doubt when it comes to ads), trust no one and nothing.
If this sounds depressing, fear not. There are plenty of excellent places to get information to help you make buying choices, including customer reviews, unbiased experts, consumer reports and Chapter 13.
TACTIC 3: SOCIAL MANIPULATION
The holy grail of advertising is when an ad campaign manipulates the whole of society to create a new norm. For example, when men go out to buy engagement rings, they’re often told that the rule is that they have to spend between one and three months’ salary. But where did this rule come from? I asked a few of my friends and family if they knew. ‘Tradition?’ they said vaguely.
In fact, it was a brutally clever advertising campaign by De Beers, the diamond brand. They ran ads saying, ‘Two months’ salary showed the future Mrs Smith what the future would be like.’ In Japan, De Beers got greedy and increased it to three months.
Not only did De Beers set this arbitrary price on love, they created the idea that engagement rings should be diamonds in the first place. In the 1940s, only 10 per cent of engagement rings were diamonds. Then De Beers ran their famous ‘A diamond is forever’ campaign and by the 1990s 80 per cent of engagement rings were twinkly bits of carbon.14 Nowadays the rule that an engagement ring should be a diamond seems as old as the world itself.
What to do?
The next time you find yourself buying something or spending a certain amount
