The Parable of Good (and Bad) Food

While advertising did shift to focus on the visual, there still is plenty of texts that use the strategy of the parable as outlined by Marchand in Chapter 7, "The Great Parables" in Advertising the American Dream.  The advertising of the 20's and 30's used parables to sell products and "reinforce a modern, secular "logic of living."

The advertising parables did this by using the techniques of biblical parables- vivid/radical comparisons, hyperbole, focus on practical moral lesson from incidents of everyday life (p. 207). Advertising parables "offer comfortable rather than distasteful truths," seek to persuade versus confront and promise that there are "no insurmountable limitations" and offer "a reality easily within reach of their hearts' desires" (p. 207).

Today, we already have bought the modern, secular "logic of living." Today, the parables are used in only slightly more subtle ways.

From side of box of pasta:

Did you know that pasta really is a GOOD CARB?

PASTA has only a moderate effect on blood glucose levels, unlike other starches such as white bread, rice and potatoes, which means PASTA is not as readily converted into sugar.

PASTA is low on the Glycemic Index (GI)- and low GI Foods are digested more slowly, stay in the digestive system longer and help to naturally satisfy hunger! So, eating a delicious meal that includes PASTA can truly be one of your more healthful alternatives.

The dramatic characters of the text are the addressed "you" and PASTA. The moral of the story is that there are good and bad calories, good and bad food and that you have the power to choose the healthy, the right, the good- PASTA with its low GI- from the unhealthy, the wrong, the bad (potatoes, white bread and (white) rice with their high GI. According to the text, if you choose, PASTA, which in all but one case is printed in bold and all caps, you can know that you eating good for you food. The text does not have to do a lot of work because of the society wide obsession with choosing "good" food. This is not just related to obesity; it also pops up in the natural/organic food movement.

Selling chubby hubbies vacuums

Wendy sent me this snap she took of the sign in front of National Vacuum (corner of NW 23rd Ave & NW 6th St.). She wondered if we both could use it. I suggested that it was all to the good to have posts across the blogs that tangentially connect.

National Vacuum is a local legend. The sign's message changes about once a month. The owner uses it to make (often very bad) jokes and puns, send seasonal messages and spread bits of folk wisdom. The sign indulges in "dadisms" (not dadaisms, dad-isms). It uses slogans and maxims to entertain. Most the time the posts have nothing to do with vacuum cleaners. The "goodwill" of the sign and the way it transforms a business location into a local landmark are advertisement enough.

I cropped it to get at the meat of the image; the meat of the message. This message is a sing-song rhyme and advertising slogan rolled into one. The ad suggests that doing housework is a way to burn calories, but instead of focusing on the addressed wife in focuses on an unseen husband. Anxieties about weight are displaced to someone else's body.

Most jokes have an edge; most jokes deal with anxieties. This one deals with anxieties about weight, how household chores are split up, who has more power in a relationship, the ways that long term partnership can lead to complacency about one's looks and the sometimes necessary subtle (and not so subtle) manipulations to get loved ones to do what's good for them. The rhyming and jokey quality of the phrase is like a feint, so all those other meanings can slip into the back door of our brains while we are looking the other way. All those other issues slip in and work on our emotions. We laugh while our fears are played on. The jokey quality of the sign hides the slightly vicious nature of using peoples' anxieties about being fat to sell an appliance. The sign maker isn't trying to be vicious; these advertising strategies are almost a reflex response. We use them without thinking about them; we don't second guess them as a choice.

If I were to classify this slogan as one of the great parables (following Marchand in Advertising the American Dream), it comes closest to being a parable of First Impressions.  (more here later)

Becoming more visual

In Chapter 8, "Visual Cliches: Fantasies and Icons," Marchand lays out why ad men in the 20's and 30's began to emphasize the visual over the textual in their ads.  Marchand, following Jerome Singer, suggests that visual imagery is the predominate modality for thinking involved in fantasy and that fantasy is a way to rehearse practical future action (p. 235). Ad men were not selling practical solutions so much as a fantasy of having all the benefits of modernity without cost (pp. 362- 363, and other places in text).

Psychologists of the 20's and 30's advised that that text stimulated thought leading to conflict and competitions and that pictures deflect criticism, best stimulate emotion/belief and had the added bonus of being able to convey more than one message at a time (p. 236). The biggest problem with text for ad men at the time was that some things sound exaggerated, ridiculous, or blasphemous, when written out but not when suggested with visuals.  The ad men used all sorts of visual tricks, but I'm going to focus on their use of beam of light. 

 (The following paraphrasing of Marchand is pulled mainly from pages 276 - 284). Beams of light were used for practical visual effect to focus the viewer's attention in a way more subtle than a pointing finger.  Beams of light were used to instill passion/awe without awkward, labored analogies. Ad men probably not overly aware of what they were doing because beams of light had already become a secularized image that retained soft, spiritual tones.  You couldn't write, "God endorses this product," but you could cast radiant beams on or from within a product to imply God's favor (p. 236). The ad for a toilet seat that used the text "Seat of Eternal Whiteness" sounds pompous, ridiculous, idolatrous, a soft glow from it might not.

Ironically, today, advertisers could use the pompous text because readers/viewers enjoy and even expect advertisements to play with over the top text and images as an ironic gesture- "yes, we are using hyperbole to sell something to you, yes, it is ridiculous and yes, we know you know better, so laugh along with us all the way to the check out counter/cart."

Making a Conceptual Persona Sing

In an email I tried to suss out an instruction by treating a conceptual persona (Pascal's gambler) and vital anecdotes from philosophy (Pascal's Wager) as if it was like a campaign for Betty Crocker.

We see a roulette table in an upscale betting parlor. In the background are a few stylized images of men are in black tie and women are in evening dresses. This is a still image, but there is a sense of movement, like the action was caught, frozen for our view. We see two (male) gamblers at the table; there is a woman on the arm of our protagonist- our gambler. The two gamblers are distinguished by their facial expressions, how they hold their bodies, the quality of their clothes. We should find "our gambler" more sympathetic. It is not that the other gambler is bad, just that our gambler is superior.

They've placed their bets. Our gambler has his money on a roulette slot that instead of numbers has an image of faith/church/belief. The other gambler has placed his money on a slot that represents disbelief. The wheel is caught as if in mid spin- there is a sense of tension, where is the ball going to stop? The faith slot seems to glow, just as our gambler does.

Above the head of the gamblers and the roulette table, we read. "What do you have to lose?" And below the figures, some copy explaining how if you place your bet on the existence of God, you'll win either way.

If we treat the conceptual persona of the concept just like one from advertising- we'd want to do specific things to it. We'd personalize it- informal, chatty, heavy use of "you". We would illustrate it being aware of how formal qualities affect the emotional power of the persona's appeal- we might set if off center to create tension in the image, give it a subtle glow, choose to "photograph" it to make it seem more sincere.

But I don't know how to take the manipulation inherent in this various techniques out of them, so I can create instructions to use. I can list all the ones that seem(ed) to work well for the ad men. But I don't know how to separate the selling out of the techniques.

Me and Commerce's Concept Cylons

Cylon Six
Lately, to take a break from my work (classes, thesis project, bread-n-butter), I have been watching episodes from the first season of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. I do not have a TV in my house; I am a reader more than a watcher, I cannot stand commercials, and I am too impatient to wait a week to get the next installment of a story. I prefer to suck down a series (TV, movie, book) in a short period of time.

I also am using this series as a way to think. I read for or work on a project for a chunk of time and then take a break by watching this bit of sci fi fluff. During this break, my brain doesn't stop; it relaxes, the ideas/concepts/problems are not completely ignored. They are in soft focus, humming softly in the background. And something about the choice of this particular series works well for me right now as I think about the ideas developed in WIP? and Advertising the American Dream.

Right now I am enjoying thinking of commerce's concepts as a type of Cylon; commerce has taken over the concept factory by sending its undercover agents in (they feel like entertainment, they sound like parables, they looks like icons). Most of the following ideas are pulled from a lecture by Ulmer: Philosophy's goal is to tell us what the good life is. Religion (connected to orality) focuses attention on an axis of right and wrong (salvation). Science and much of philosophy (connected to literacy) focuses on true and false (empirical reality). Aesthetics, which most often emerges from entertainment (advertising) (connected to electracy) focuses on pleasure and pain (well being).

Commerce tells us that we can find the good life by buying particular products and (increasingly) services. Like a Cylon, not all of what advertising does is bad. Like the humans in the series, our thinkers have cut themselves off from something vital (the affective). Advertising helps show a way toward the creation of ourselves as aesthetic people (versus literate or oral). But like the sophists, advertising focuses on rhetoric detached from the object.  Advertising has taught us that listening to the sizzle is important, we also just need to cut into the meat at stake. Killing off Commerce's concept Cylons is not as helpful as re-purposing and re-directing them.