The current state of business and sales in the world is built of extensive fiction and stylized advertising that rarely depicts the truth of the product and its value in the life of the consumer. A myriad of factors have influenced the current trends of glamorized advertising that attempt to seem candid, and many of them originate from deeply-rooted human qualities, wants, and needs. Essentially, a substantial amount of products is sold with the aid of appealing to a consumer’s vulnerabilities or insecurities and providing them with what they believe is a solution. In the age of social media, the pursuit of the perfect life has become inescapable and a great tool for companies or individual sellers.
According to Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, people are experiencing an extreme form of envy through the interaction with social media, especially advertising (Sarner 2018). Many users cite a feeling of inadequacy or anxiety when observing posts by friends, colleagues, strangers, or companies that depict success and happiness. This affects an issue that is common to everyone, the restlessness of inactivity and being inadequate when measured by the standards of society. It is the very horror of inaction, which makes people themselves into play every day precipitate (Kames 2005, 74). Companies often use social media to project the perfect life that is missing, and how their product is the solution. However, this promise is built of vague notions and predominant lies that appeal to human vulnerabilities.
Businesses incorporate the appeal to the human senses into every advertisement, campaign, and product promotion. Though the reasons are obvious for doing so, they affect the customer in ways that are subconscious and directed at primitive needs, often not to the benefit of the buyer. As summarized by Henry Home, Lord Kames, advertising works with the notion that we are in a world surrounded by things that give us either pleasure or pain on a very basic level of interaction (Kames 2005, 82). Individuals build a collection of sounds, smells, touches, visions, and other sensations that often get divided into the simple categories of beneficial and dangerous. However, through interactions with these senses can be constituted as real, the ways in which advertising presents them may not be.
Aesthetics and familiarity, or excitement and innovation are delivered in ways that trigger a positive association with the product that may not be reflected after purchase. Marson (2021) notes Belgian Trappist beer that is to be produced by monks; however, since the number of monks tends to reduce, they can supervise it, but it is still perceived by customers as they produce it. It becomes easy to forget that such breweries employ thousands of workers and cannot have a distinct personality or attitude towards clients, it is an illusion. All of this is stimulated by physical appearance, which itself can be considered an illusion. Not only does color add to a fictional, romantic, and appealing ‘world’ the advertising creates but it propagates the association of human traits with the brand.
The world is made romantic by color, something that could potentially be fiction as one does not know truly how it registers, but they dress the world, making it its attire. Without this romance, life is less livable, similar to how without the fiction of freedom, people’s lives are less livable. Therefore, many businesses try to generate romance and fiction as an illusion. Companies are able to appeal to attributes that are more abstract than simple needs as well. They attempt to not only promote universally appreciated values such as kindness, justice, and duty to their clients but to present an image of themselves embodying these qualities in all their practices.
However, because of the notion that “being taught by nature to connect every external sign with the passion that caused it; we can read in every man’s countenance his internal emotions” such unnecessary and false tactics are effective and instill a sense of responsibility in the client (Kames 2005, 72). Both the ability for companies to be exposed to lying about their morality and to present an adequate front is exaggerated in the age of social media.
Humanity upholds a hierarchy of morality that is invisibly being handled by brands. An individual is more likely to judge benevolence and charity over justice, despite the fact that “Justice, however, is a virtue of much higher importance, as without it there can be no society among men; more than among lions and tigers” (Kames 2005, 82). For example, the employees of the Three Square Market were offered to implant microchips to unlock doors and access computers (Paquette 2017). However, it causes concerns regarding a humane and morale nature of such decisions.
The appearance of the company and its leaders plays a significant part in the advertising and general overview of the brand. According to Kames, “when we consider a single man, abstracted from all circumstances and all connections, we are not conscious of any benevolence to him” (Kames 2005, 42). The same principle applies to the CEO and other representatives of a firm, whose ability to make their first impression positive and lasting is crucial to future transactions. Because “benevolence will not justify a man for a donation even to the most indigent”, every motion made by the leaders of a firm must also act as a positive advertisement for its benefit (Kames 2005, 93).
With an abundance of resources, they can make this possible and oftentimes they do. In the instance of Tony Hsieh, the ex-CEO of Zappos, he engaged his people in nitrous oxide inhalation, considering it to be a legal and safe way to achieve spiritual enlightenment (Grind and Sayre 2021). The investigation also revealed that Hsieh and his colleagues discussed the issues of growing hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Another vivid example refers to Jacob Gottlieb, whose initial company, Visium Asset Management, garnered national attention and led to multiple legal cases, dishonest actions were undertaken to improve his reputation. Members of the company were accused of and charged with multiple counts of offenses, including wire fraud, insider trading, and security schemes. Shortly after, Gottlieb began a new company and hired a reputation management company in order to combat the negative news coverage he and his company were often at the center of. However, this resulted in a significant increase of articles with positive opinions about Gottlieb, which often praised his investment acumen and philanthropy (Levy 2019).
All of this false reporting and image-building strategy can be made to sway the opinions of investors and clients, as all they can know about Gottlieb came from the Internet. These coordinated changes in perception of the company can be more inconsequential, such as the new job titles of Elon Musk and his finance chief, Zack Kirkhorn. In fact, their new titles of ‘Technoking of Tesla’ and ‘Master of Coin’ are simply an illusion of grandeur that is typical in such celebrity and corporate head circles (Grossman 2021). However, there is still a trend of false promotion towards clients and the general public that is not subject to much legal or even ethical debate at the current moment.
Companies create an illusion of value and thousands of positive qualities personalized to their consumers with their advertising and general presence. They appeal to the client’s primary senses, their moral obligations, through a positive image of the corporations’ leaders, or through physical associations with factors such as color and language. It is crucial for them to seem moral and ethical in the eyes of the client. “Our perceptions are no doubt the test of truth”, it is essential for the company’s existence to not contradict any of the values it promotes (Kames 2005, 99). Due to this, in scenarios where the morals and the outcome of the firm do not correspond, suspicion appears.
Though insurance companies promote themselves as essential, affordable, and protective, current statistics reveal that the majority of the COVID-19 deaths in the United States are attributed to uninsured individuals (Scism 2020). This fact destroys the illusion of life and vitality the insurance companies work very hard to promote, as they are not affordable.
In the entertainment industry, famous for the illusion of a perfect life with the exclusion of negative connotation, the case of Harvey Weinstein was a revelation of the number of resources used in the effort to hide such misconduct (Twohey et al. 2017). In the end, “justice is useful, so is food; and nature has provided us with an appetite for both” is the sentiment that corporations employ when creating diverse and engaging, but often false, advertising of their products or services (Kames 2005, 94). Kames attributes the drive to morality within humans to God, and whether one is religious or not, it is obvious that the ingrained senses of appeal, obligation, and morality are effective in the field of brand promotion.
References
Grind, Kirsten, and Katherine Sayre. 2021. “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Bankrolled His Followers. In Return, They Enabled His Risky Lifestyle.” The Wall Street Journal. Web.
Grossman, Matt. 2021. “Tesla’s ‘Technoking’ Musk Joins Long Line of Odd Job Titles.” The Wall Street Journal. Web.
Kames, Lord, Home, Henry. 2005. Essays on Principles of Morality and Natural Religion. 3rd ed. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Levy, Rachel. 2019. “How the 1% Scrubs Its Image Online.” The Wall Street Journal. Web.
Marson, James. 2021. “Trappist Beer Needs Trappist Monks to Brew It, but the Vocation Is Dwindling.” The Wall Street Journal. Web.
Paquette, Danielle. 2017. “Her Dilemma: Do I Let My Employer Microchip Me?” The Washington Post. Web.
Sarner, Moya. 2018. “The Age of Envy: How to be Happy When Everyone Else’s Life Looks Perfect.” GetPocket. Web.
Scism, Leslie. 2020. “Those Dying From Covid-19 Are Least Likely to Own Life Insurance.” The Wall Street Journal. Web.
Twohey, Megan, Jodi Kantor, Susan Dominus, Jim Rutenberg, and Steve Eder. 2017. “Harvey Weinsten Complicity.” The New York Times. Web.