What Advertising Is. Without Describing It.

I was at a bar with a group of ’09 Adcenter kids last week before the work started. Back when we still had the freedom to go to a bar. Shots of Bacardi rum were ordered and everyone toasted to what we hoped and prayed would be a successful year. I clinked my glass with whomever I could make out in my alcoholic haze, and took the sucker down, nearly sending it back the second it hit my throat.

‘Revolting’ would be the most succinct way of describing the taste. I mean, that thing was awful. I was in the midst of vowing to myself that I’d never take another one of those again when a curious thing happened.

“My God is that delicious,” proclaimed one of my roommates Jordan, in his hypnotic Southern drawl. Maybe it was just the way he said it but I felt a twinge of something in my stomach that was different from when it is greeted by intoxicating poison. It felt almost comforting to hear him praise the drink.

It made the drink taste better.

I wanted to experience what he had experienced. I went from wanting to hurl to wanting another one.

Now, aside from the obvious fact that people my age drink entirely too much (advertising students in particular), my point is not to say that we are all sheep who simply buy what others tell us to buy. In no way do I mean to discount advertising as an unethical barrage of lies that makes perfectly normal people crave unnecessary things. Rather, I use the story to illustrate the fact that advertising (and branding in particular), when done right, actually become benefits of a product.

In his book, What's The Big Idea, George Lois claims that when you brand something right, “Food tastes better, clothes feel better, cars drive better.”

Think about how true that is and how often we don't even realize it.

It’s no secret that in these days of parity products where everything is virtually the same, advertising is the differentiating factor.

Consider this: Why do we go to the supermarket and buy Barilla pasta when there is store brand pasta right next to it for half the price? The freaking store brand pasta is probably made by Barilla! And we know it! The answer, of course, is branding. We know in the back of our minds that it is the exact same product, but we want the comfort of seeing that Barilla box on our kitchen shelf. We want the reassurance of knowing that it’s Barilla simmering in our pots and not some inferior, generic pasta, regardless that it tastes exactly the same.

The same goes for Target-brand facewash that has the exact same ingredients as Neutrogena, or polo shirts that aren't Ralph Lauren.

Why is a 1/2-inch pink pony worth $30 more?

Getting back to the shot of rum, had Jordan not said what he did, had he not acted as an unintentional ambassador of the damn thing, I never would have given it a second thought. His liking it was validation enough for me to like it even though I had hated it seconds earlier. I find this absolutely incredible, likening it to the powerful sway that advertising has over us all. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.

Maybe we’ll go out for shots again at the end of the year when the work dies down. And maybe then I'll relax a little and not feel compelled to document it.

dubs. out.