Posted by Luke in 
It most industries I have encountered, advertisers lie. This is obvious to most and the distrust bread in the general public is now at a point where I believe most people have stopped believing what advertising says to us. When the celebrity comes on to our screens and smiles showing us, ‘you can look just like me’ an uneven false image is created. You can’t hope to look like them. Yet advertisers build their campaigns around a deep down truth that is a lie we tell ourselves. Things such as:
You can look younger by using skin cream
You can improve you health by drinking this
Take these pills and you will lose weight fast with no side effects
And so on and so on. Why do we buy these lies? Even television channels do this by piquing our interest with clever editing in the commercials. They place a well-crafted lie in a commercial and we accept it… or do we? I think we know it’s false and realise the lie but buy things in hope. We don’t believe false advertising with our minds, we believe them with our actions, often against our better judgement.
I think this is kind of theatre we have grown accustomed to and expect. Take for example the following advertisement:
In a strange way Cadbury are selling chocolate by way of entertainment. A marketing guru I saw on the Gruen Transfer argued that chocolate sales went up as a result of that ad. I would say it this way: Interest was piqued in chocolate because of that ad and people remembered why they liked it and went and bought it. I don’t think you need to advertise to sell chocolate, just sell it at a reasonable price and people will buy it and this is the point isn’t it?
What Advertising people do so well is play with our Engagement, the way we think and act in social settings. Engagement is a word I have used to talk about how people think and how that influences the way they act. Advertising plays on both. If I was being a pragmatic philosopher I would say, ‘thinking is acting’. That is, advertisers make us think and because that influences our behaviour. That’s no surprise but what is: they deceive us to do it. For my final example, I will use real estate advertising.
Real Estate is a controversial area. So many people have been ‘ripped’ off by agents in one way or another. Yet, the way a house is sold relies explicitly on the honesty of the buyer and the real estate agent. My father in law told me how he recently pulled out of buying a house simply because the building inspection came back as showing evidence of termites. In Australia, especially Brisbane, this is a big deal. It can mean you have massive damage to the structure of the house and you will be up for thousands of dollars in repair bills. He had built into the contract that subject to a building inspection, he wouldn’t purchase the house. So he didn’t. He lost his deposit and recent reports show that the same house has been resold twice in three years. All that pain could have been avoided if an honest approach prevailed. Yet, you can’t sell a house unless you lie… right?
Putting aside all arguments about ethics, integrity and character, there is another pragmatic issue for advertisers here that needs thinking about. That is, the issue of how to sell things in an economy where attention is the scarcity. Does that mean more dishonesty should come in so we pay attention? Are we really to believe the claims of real-estate agents? I think not. Yet, these are the social connections we have forged. It doesn’t mean every real estate agent is a liar or a cheat. Of course not. But, which one that you know would happily point out the termites in a building and say, ‘hey check this out, there’s a huge problem that’s going to cost you thousands of dollars.’ It’s ‘buyer beware’ because that’s the society we live in and that’s what we expect. So it is in advertising, we know it’s pretend so we go along with so-called false advertising and accept it because we know we are being lied. It’s a social contract.
The question is: why have we come to accept it?
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