We are no longer the consumers

Back in 1920s, women didn’t smoke. It was taboo. This posed a problem for the tobacco industry — half of the population wasn’t consuming their product. And that’s when Mr Bernays stepped in. The man’s largely unknown (he was Sigmund Freud’s nephew) and so is his contribution to society (he is the reason we know advertising for what it is today.) How Well, till he arrived on the scene, advertising was rationale-based. It was believed that people buy things based on cold, hard facts (and hence women weren’t lighting up). Mr Bernays changed all that. He figured, its insecurities and deep feelings of inadequacy can make people buy anything. And boy was he ever right. So, he called cigarettes torches of freedom and showed some women light up. As a group, feminists had just acquired the right to vote in the US and they were thrilled to enjoy lung cancer just as much as their husbands did. You want to sell a car Screw the safety-feature, talk about masculine features such as strength and reliability (not quite a male attribute, but heck). Want to sell makeup, tell women it is a way to be more loved or that they’re worth it. Don’t sell beer for its taste, sell it as a way to have fun and be the centre of attention at the party. Coke is sold as happiness and not diabetes. Diamonds are sold as forever, whatever that means. Skin products, toothpastes, shampoos, soaps, deodorants, disinfectants, food, health supplements, condoms. If you’re insecure about something, advertising has got your back.

Many of Bernays ideas are the norm in advertising today, just with different terms (a rose with a new name). Paying celebrities to use your product (what we call “brand ambassadors”) was his idea. Creating fake news articles that are actually subtle advertisements for a product (what we call native advertising) was also his idea. Staging controversial public events as a means to draw attention and notoriety for one of his clients His idea as well. Though Rakhi Sawant and Baba Ramdev would like us to believe they came up with it, mastered it and took it to another level altogether.

Advertising has a term for these insecurities: “pain point” — take whatever is bothering people and show how your product can better it. But why stop there Take whatever is not bothering people too and show your product can better it. In other words, create problems that didn’t even exist. So, Father’s Day was invented to sell men’s wear during the “Depression of the 30s”. The greeting card industry and trite messages never had it better before that. Gillette convinced women they need to shave their armpits and other body parts a century ago in 1915. But advertising made it seem like a necessity. Insecure that women were, they lapped it up. Of course, advertising doesn’t target women alone: there is the diamond industry that makes a guy cash out two months’ salary on a small ring by calling it the symbol of love (whatever happened to dowry ). The concept of body odour was invented by advertising way back in 1920s too. Till then, people didn’t smell. They just sweat, and that was fine by everyone.

But that’s not good enough for advertising: no way. It had many more milestones to reach. It didn’t just want to stop at habits; it wanted to create cultures. Advertising’s real moment in the light, its greatest achievement was coming up with the red Santa Claus. What Coke has done for Christmas, even Jesus couldn’t have dreamt of. (In fact, in a recently conducted survey in Khan Market, people often thought Christmas was about Santa Claus. Who’s Jesus Yes, just like Id is celebrated for Salman Khan). Of course, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer may argue (the origin of Rudolph has nothing to do with Jesus or Santa but with Mr May — a copywriter for Chicago’s Montgomery Ward department store.) Arguing fiercely with it will be Green Bean Casserole — a favourite on Thanksgiving — just a little something started to sell Campbells. And of course, there is the Valentine’s Day Candy.

Closer home, in India, advertising didn’t even need to try so hard to come up with customs and traditions — we already had enough of them. Advertising just had to own them. So, while Diwali was always about giving each other sweets, chocolates became the new meetha.

We’ve come up with newer and newer insecurities. We’re coming up with newer and newer ways to talk to consumers. So much so, we’ve stopped being just consumers. Today, Facebook is less about your friends and more about brands advertising things to you. YouTube doesn’t always let you skip ads anymore. The last bastion, social media’s Winterfell, Instagram, has fallen too. We are not safe anymore. Truth be told, we are no longer the consumers. We are the products. And we are being sold to brands; who are selling things back to us. Onward and forward. And just once in a while, as we continue selling fairness as a mantra for success, backward.

Omkar Sane is the author of the bestselling novel Welcome to Advertising. Now, Get Lost. It is currently out of print, so he writes in all other forms of print.