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 of money on someone or something because ‘it’s normal’ or ‘everyone will expect it’, remember that they only expect it because they’ve been told to expect it. There are no natural laws of humanity that say you have to buy anything, let alone spend two months’ salary on it. Think beyond the norms and put your money towards the things that will mean the most to you and serve your unique personality and situation the best.
TACTIC 4: COOL VS CAREFUL
There was a TV advert in 2012 which showed a series of small kids trying to resist Haribo sweets. They had been told that if they could resist the small squishy treat set before them for a few minutes, they could have another one. A funny montage ensued where the kids picked up their sweets and put them back down again, sniffed them and touched them with the tip of their tongue. A girl put her hand between herself and the sweetie and told herself, ‘No, don’t do it!’ In the end, all the kids cracked and ended up eating their sweet and an actress announced that Haribo was ‘just too good’.15
This advert, whether we realised it or not, was an instruction video showing us how we should behave around Haribo, i.e. give in to temptation. We would be powerless to resist.
Advertising has done a fantastic job of making it cool not to be careful. It celebrates being impulsive and sneers at anything that speaks of self-control. This plays into the hands of marketers, because the more we think things through, the less likely we are to buy something. What advertising wants from us is automatic responses.
What to do?
When it comes to decision-making, don’t discount your first instincts, as they often have something valuable to say. But take the time to question that instinct when it comes to purchases.
Of course there are times to be completely in the moment. They can be the times that make life worth living. Just make sure there isn’t a credit card in your hand.
TACTIC 5: CELEBRITY POWER
Celebrity culture and marketing are now so intertwined that sometimes you can’t tell where a person ends and the