Better Living Through Advertising

An industry of lies or window to a more perfect world? Josh Russell asks whether life could do with a rebrand.

In the world of adverts we are all either young and beautiful or old and oozing with proverbial wisdom. There a very few problems that cannot be overcome with a cup of tea or a watery microwave korma. No one is ever lonely or sick; there’s no stain on the soul that can’t be shifted with a squirt of Vanish or a spoonful of Cillit Bang. Pets comfort us in our darkest hours, distracting with their boundless mischief and never once taking it upon themselves to lick all the upholstery or piss all over your new shag carpeting. People bend the dimensions of space with their flexible phone contracts. Technicolour TV screens chase each other down the street. Car headlights dance in the desert to the soundtrack of a rising sun.

It is undeniably a seductive world and one that any sensible human mind rails against like Rupert Murdoch against state-owned broadcasting. There is very little truth to the promises we are made and yet somehow, infuriatingly, it is incredibly difficult to break the hold advertising has over us. The question we have to ask ourselves is that given the fact we all know there is little actual substance lurking behind the sleek veneer, why do we fall for it time and time again? Is it that we are so desperate to part with our hard earned cash that we’ll buy any old tat endorsed by a familiar face or is there something deeper going on?

I am here to propose a new theory to you. The thrall advertising holds over us is nothing to do with gross commercialism or greed. It’s not even that we have grown used to its ubiquitous presence like an unpleasant odour in a stairwell or the hum of a laptop fan. Our love affair with advertising is based on one fundamental truth: the glossy world of adverts has it right. It’s our world that has got things wrong.