The Marketing of Lies
There’s an old saying in sales training, “Give people what they want not what they need.”
That’s good advice, if you care more about making sales than helping people and you understand most people are not responsible enough to do the best thing for themselves because they are more focused on doing the easy, fast, cheap, irresponsible thing.
Whether its that second helping of desert or bowing to some low level employee/bureaucrat demanding you provide personal info that you have no requirement to give, its just easier and less stressful and feels better to say, “oh, alright, just this once”.
We’ve been lied to our whole lives and we need to know that and take responsibility for saying “no” more often. From poison in food products, to deadly pharmaceuticals and “we’re from the government and we’re here to help you” or “its our policy” it is all about marketing a lie and expecting everyone will into buy it, even when we know that we shouldn’t.
Marketing isn’t the problem. Salesmanship isn’t the problem. Its the willingness of people to sell a lie for their paymasters and the even more damning willingness of the rest of us to buy the lie we know we are being sold.
More often than not we know its not true but we go along with it as if it were…and maybe grumble about it later. Sad.
I came across this article on the lies of food, pharma and tobacco and it struck a chord. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I think we’ve each been fooled more than twice…
Can you believe this ad from the Soda Pop Board of America in the 1950’s:
“If you really want to give your baby a head start in life by improving their social standing and guaranteeing their happiness, start feeding them Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other sugary carbonated beverages at the earliest age possible. Even babies as young as a few months old will enjoy the many benefits of soda pop.
For a better start in life, Start COLA earlier!
How soon is too soon?
Not soon enough.
Laboratory tests over the last few years have proven that babies who start drinking soda during that early formative period have a much higher chance of gaining acceptance and “fitting in” during those awkward pre-teen and teen years.
So, do yourself a favor. Do your child a favor. Start them on a strict regimen of sodas and other sugary carbonated beverages right now, for a lifetime of guaranteed happiness.
The Soda Pop Board of America
1515 W. Hart Ave – Chicago, IL– Promotes Active Lifestyle!
– Boosts Personality!
– Gives body essential sugars!
“Trust us we’re from the Soda Pop Board of America” and we can trust them because we know that they have our health and best interests in mind first and foremost, right?
Here’s the article. Soda companies pushed pop as beneficial beverage for infants.
You might call the article “food for critical thinking” which seems too seldom available these days, since many people avoid the hard work of thinking altogether and the “experts” abound to do all that thinking for us now.
“More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette!” – Advertisement that ran for years in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Besides, “they” only do it for our safely, security, convenience and social acceptance, right? “They” would never do anything to harm us, would they?
It’s all sold to us with the same covert influence tactics, and we buy it, again and again and again. As one of the original advertising “greats” described it, advertising is the science of engineering consent.
Corporations and governments are masters at engineering consent. They can get people to buy and consume products that are essentially poisons and even get citizens to give up their rights and freedoms without so much as a whimper (grumbling doesn’t count for a darn thing, it just shows you knew it was a lie and you didn’t do a thing about it).
Reality check. How many more lies are you going to go along with? Now its so obvious they are lies we have lost any right to say we were tricked with a lie because we knew it was and did nothing about it.
The emperor has no clothes and even more shocking, there is no emperor.