I had always thought that the reason advertisers target mostly young adult viewers is because they have the most disposable income. I don’t think that’s really true. I think people in their 40’s actually have more money to spend. The real reason is because young adults still have a sliver of a smidgeon of a tiny little particle of belief that what advertisers are telling them is true. I know the feeling, just as sometimes I can remember what it was like to be an adolescent boy and to have fantasies of power or great suffering or genius. After a while you grow up, but not everybody grows up, and not everybody thinks the same thing makes you grown up.
You know that most ads lie or exaggerate but it just might be possible, you think, that this one product or service or whatever will gratify some desire or another. Sometimes you even ignore advice that you know is good. You just need it. You just need to try it. You buy it and, inevitably, it disappoints. You store up that information. By the time you are about 40, you are inured. You are immune to the scam. And advertising no longer works.
We’re the only culture in the world that has grown up bombarded incessantly by millions and millions of lies. We allow it. We are shameless. And I am pretty sure that most people, as with most things, tend to think it could never be otherwise. This is our system, our culture, our economy. There are a lot of things we like about our lifestyles– we wouldn’t want to throw it all away by trying something radical. So we abide the lies.
So I sat there one day and tried to imagine a world in which most advertisers had some kind of moral feeling about truth and decided that they would try to make their ads as reasonably accurate as possible. In a world like this, really lousy products would not survive because no one would agree to advertise them. But most of the products we see around us would probably still be around us. We just wouldn’t be under great illusions about what they can do for us.
So, again, imagine a world in which most of what you hear and see is generally true.
It will blow you mind. It’s a freaking wild concept. The biggest difference is that it would matter. You would care about stuff you hear. You might react. You might take it to heart. You might be moved occasionally.
When something really important came along, it would sound really important, and you would believe it was really important.
We might find out that there are a lot of things we’d like to change about our lives, because we know the truth about our chances of eventually winning the lottery or looking like Katie Holmes or Brad Pitt. We would know that this is what we are and we have to live with.
Truth
A TV production company approaches your airline company. Imagine you are the president of this company. The TV Production company wants to tape your staff in action, your pilots, your stewardesses, your customer service representatives. Nothing is out of bounds. They want to record what it is like to travel on your airplanes.
Your first question is, can we control what you show on TV? We can cut whatever we don’t like, right?
The answer is no.
You say no way, right?
That’s what most U.S. airlines did. They probably thought to themselves, are you crazy? They could show anything! They should customers complaining and saying that they will never fly your airline again!
But Southwest Airlines in the U.S. said yes. And they really had no control over the content. They were not pleased, for example, when the program showed that they charge fat passengers for two seats. They would have preferred that that little episode stayed on the cutting room floor.
But some smart people in the pr department of Southwest Airlines prevailed and the program was made. They gambled on the idea that people are not children, that they can understand reality, and that they will have more respect for an airline that is “transparent” than for one that tries to hide all of their faults.
I think they’re right. I hope they’re right. The jury is still out, but I’m betting that their sales increase and pretty soon all the big airlines will want a piece of the action.
Note: the program was based on a similar program that has been airing in Britain for 6 years.