Advertisement Victims

We have discussed, earlier, about how watching television make us unhappy. We saw too many rich people and beautiful actors and actress that undermine our confidence toward our wealth and appearance. Ladies consistently compare their body shapes with those of supermodels and inevitably feel discontent about their own. Gentlemen dream about the romantic lifestyles of lawyers and doctors created by scriptwriters.

Last weekend, i invited a few close friends of mine to have a little party in my place. It was nice to chat with them about anything from work to hobbies, from relationships to sex. After a bottle of Scotch whisky and some wine, a girl started to sing songs. The men started to check out one another's belly. Not surprisingly, we all looked like being three months pregnant.

One lectured us how to train up the abdomen muscles. He just joined a fitness club and enrolled in a training program. He claimed to have every reason to look good because he was single. Honestly, he is a neat and kind gentleman in a highly respected profession. He won't lose out to any gymnastic marshal men in front of ladies. Still, he recently started to worry about his muscles.

Honestly, we all want to look good, married or not. We all did pay serious attention to the lecture he gave. And we agreed to meet in a few weeks and see the progress of each of us. Great! Peer pressure is a great driving force for anything.

Men at our ages of late twenties and early thirties are so worried about our bellies as well as hair. We have, since long, passed (or failed) the school exams, settled in a profession and, yet, have no kids to worry about. We are still young and want to look so. Hair in the bathtub and tightening pants raise red alerts. This is a stage everyone has to go through. But the anxiety grows exponentially when all people around you are watching. Ladies face similar situations for their skin and body shape.

Advertisers see this crack and punch right at the spot. For example, Listerine was invented in the nineteenth century as a surgical antiseptic. It was later sold as a floor cleaner and a cure of a sex disease. But it wasn't a big hit until 1920's, when it was applied as a solution for bad breath. Listerine aired an ad featuring young women and men eager for marriage but put off by the bad smell from their mates' mouths. "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" one woman, in an ad, asked herself. Freakonomics cited advertising expert James Twitchell's writing: "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitoisis (bad breath)." Believe it or not, the company's revenues multiplied by 13 times in the seven years following the launch of the ad.

Advertisers usually promote services or products by triumphing how good they are. Timeless advertisement to me is the one selling Vitasoy (345), featuring a warm bottle of soybean beverage in the cold winter. In another unforgettable one, Leslie Cheung's musical performance, selling the fast food chain Cafe de Coral's (341) "100 score points" service. More recently, power company CLP's (2) "Hopes-lightened-up" ads are delightful. However, some advertisements do the opposite by telling you how bad you look without those products and services. They try to highlight the opportunity costs of keeping your wallet closed. Avoiding their services and products, you would look ugly, be socially isolated and unhappy.

Advertising is powerful enough to wage a social campaign. A typical beauty service advertisement stage a fat lady upset by her body shape, and how the beauty salon "transforms" her into a slim and confident woman. Now, many girls become unsatisfied with their body shapes and always want to become slimmer than they are now.

Then, middle-aged men become the next target. The close-up shot of a middle-aged man's half-deserted head is the deadliest weapon. More recently, that a man has a belly become a sin.

If the trend continues, more and more people would be victimized in the future. i predict they would include people with sweaty palms, if there are the cures to sell. Let's call such a hypothetical cure the "Hoi's sweat-stopper", in the form of hand cream or spray. Believe me, even if you think you don't have the sweaty-palm problem. After seeing the ads, you will worry about the condition of your own palm every time you need to shake somebody's hand. Inevitably, you will become mindful about shaking somebody's sweaty hand. You would also wonder what other people might think about your hand and you. Hoi's will eventually become a runaway success.

You may ask: "Isn't it nice to keep palms dry before shaking hand? What's wrong with that?" The problem is not the product itself, but the anxiety it brings to all people. Even though the sales of Hoi's would add to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country, the anxiety it brings cannot be subtracted from the GDP. The economy would grow. But, would we be happier than now?

i once joked with a friend how to promote Quamnet. The story line goes like this: After losing all the money due to a series of bad investment decisions, a wife loses the control of her diet. That leads to spots on her face and rising body weight. Her husband leaves her, and she started to lose hair. The story comes to a twist when she, one day, joins Quam. Three months later, she wins back all the money, seamless skin, perfect body shape, charming hair and starts a new romance.

This is legitimately blackmailing. i dared not propose this idea to the marketing colleagues.

We are getting more aware of our health, which is good. Bad breadth, excess fat and hair loss might be caused by hidden health problems. We should be careful about that, and should mind our diets and habits. Excess fat could cause other health problems as well. But living in the shadow of unnecessary threats about our own appearance could possibly raise blood pressure as well.

Jul 27, 2005
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