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In some earlier posts I talked about the idea that advertisements can be privately profitable for firms but still be socially harmful due to uninternalized negative effects on their targets. In the comments, Glen Raphael asked me for an example. Here are a few of my favorites.
1. JIF peanut butter. The slogan "choosy moms choose JIF" is famous in marketing circles for having been extremely effective. The reason, of course, is that the implied corrolary to the slogan is "crappy negligent moms who don’t care about their kids give other brands of peanut butter." The harm here is that it gets moms into the habit of thinking that the place to concentrate their efforts to be better moms involve choice of peanut butter, instead of things that might actually work.
2. Disney. One could write a whole book about how horrifying Disney is (I think maybe someone even has). But my specific example is a commercial for Disneyland where the camera is in real tight on the face of an ecstatic awestruck looking kid. After a few seconds, the parents chuckle knowingly and say something like "Timmy, this is just the entrance, let’s go inside the park." The idea is that Disneyland isn’t just a fun place to eat junk food and go on roller coasters and stuff, it’s a source of wonder; the very essence of childhood. The harm here is obvious.
3. Any one of a million beer commercials. Beer commercials overwhelmingly involve attractive women. This is either because the advertisers want you to believe that drinking their beer will actually improve your chances with attractive women, or at least they want you to associate drinking their beer with being as attractive to them as you wish you were. I think it’s pretty clear that encouraging young men to think of women as ornaments that go nicely with getting loaded is not a recipe for subsequent success in matters of the heart, not for the men and certainly not for the women.
I could go on.
Ads that Hurt
I hate summer school. it sucks beyond all reason. Thank you for understanding me.
Ooh - I have one!
One of the ads I saw before watching 2 movies last month was one about "Little Deviants". It tries to sell a very boring-looking car (the Scion) by showing society as divided into 2 classes: the Sheeple, who look like sheep; and the Little Deviants, who gleefully kill and eat the Sheeples. The end of the commercial shows a Sheeple desperately running away from one of the Little Deviants, who has just killed all his companions, and looks to rescue to a Scion that just pulled up at the curb. The window opens, and another Little Deviant leans out the window, and eats most of the Sheeple, flinging his dismembered head out onto the front of the car to become a hood ornament.
Toyota also has a video game to go along with the commercial, which explains further that the "Sheeple" have "spread their gray disease" throughout the world, and that your task is to kill as many of them as possible (although they don't seem to be doing anybody any harm). Then you use their body parts as equipment. Eventually, you use their blood to produce new Scions.
I know that comparing somebody to Hitler is considered bad form, but really - they're begging for it.
Toyota says, in response to questions, that "People that find it offensive are not our target."
I googled for comments on this ad just now, and the only people I found who were upset about it were, sadly, right-wing conservatives:http://www.rightwingnews.co...