Enlightenment 2.0 by Joseph Heath

Author:Joseph Heath [Heath, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443422543
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2014-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

One can see some obvious improvements here in the fluidity of the prose. And yet problems remain. The ad contains what looks like, from a modern perspective, too many arguments. (Do you drink it to cheer? Or do you drink it to sleep?) And strangely, it continues the curious practice of drawing attention to problems with the product (it causes “nervousness and indigestion”) before attempting to rebut the charges. The reader is being given a lot of credit. Next time she is offered coffee, she may immediately think “indigestion,” but she is supposed to go on to think, “Oh yes, but that is caused by caffein, and Sanka has no caffein.” In order to get to the positive thought about the product, the consumer must consciously suppress the negative thought that springs to mind unbidden.

After the Second World War, advertisers became significantly more sophisticated. Most importantly, they realized that, in the typical run of cases, the seller could not count on having people’s full attention, and that this had important implications for the way that a product should be presented. The Fell & Co. coffee ad is clearly written on the assumption that the prospective consumer will be sitting down, reading through the copy carefully, following the argument, making note of the specific claims being made. In the early twentieth century, advertising copy was still being written as though it were for an audience who could be expected to be paying attention. This all began to change in the 1940s.

Things changed in part because of an increase in the sheer volume of advertising. Consumers became not only less likely to believe what they read, but also more likely to skip past ads or skim through them very quickly. Furthermore, advertisers began to realize that fewer consumers were starting out by reading ads, then going and buying the product based on the information they had received. The development of self-service stores, such as modern supermarkets, created a situation where instead of having to ask someone behind the counter for a specific good, consumers found themselves confronted with a shelf full of unfamiliar products, free to pick their own. In this situation, the most important thing is what they are able to remember. Even just recognizing a product name, in the absence of any specific information, can have a powerful (positive) impact on purchasing decisions.

The immediate postwar era is often described as the golden age of the “unique selling proposition.” This was largely a consequence of diminished expectations with respect to the consumer. Advertisers realized that most people looking at an ad are not going to read through a big long argument, much less remember it. In fact, you’d be lucky if you could get them to remember just one thing about the product. And so ad agencies began to ask their customers, “If you could tell people just one thing about your product, what would that one thing be?” Companies were encouraged to figure out the unique quality that distinguished their product from its competitors, and to focus all of their energies on that.

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