Authors: John Bowen
“You do go on about rheumatism, Ralph. I can’t
believe
there’s anything in it.”
“Most consumer goods of mass consumption are bought habitually; food, toilet and household articles are
constantly
being used up and need replacement. Choice of such goods is made at least in part because advertisers have surrounded them with pleasant associations; loyalty to any one brand in an area where differences between brands are minimal is most likely to be stimulated by the signals ‘pleasure’ or ‘approval’ set off by the sight of a packet or label with which those sensations are associated in the complicated electronic computor which is the human brain. This holds true, not only for habitual
purchases
, but for what are called ‘impulse’ purchases, of which perhaps the most frequent are confectionery and cosmetics. Other goods are bought, not simply for the
use which consumers may get from them, but as symbols of status within the community. An example here is the gold-nibbed fountain pen; when anyone can buy a
ballpoint
pen for ninepence, the possession of an expensive fountain pen marks one out as a person of some
consequence
, or at least some affluence. In all these purchases, the decision to buy will not be made only, or even mainly, at the level of rational choice. We must accept that the advertisers will wish to approach us at an irrational or subconscious level, and there are few Agencies
nowadays
which are without the services of a psychologist.
“We may say, therefore, that for excellent commercial reasons advertisers combine to strike at the fiction which is the basis of democratic society, for democracy is
conducted
on the principle that men’s decisions are rationally arrived at. It may be objected that this is true of important decisions and that the decision to buy one brand of
washing
powder rather than another is not important. In general terms that may be true, but in the individual terms of a single housewife (the same single housewife whose vote helps to decide which party shall be returned to power at an election), it is important that she should buy the product likely to wash her clothes most efficiently, and when we discover that she may be strongly influenced in her choice by the colour of the packet,
without
knowing
that
this
is
what
influences
her,
we may reasonably feel
perturbed
.
“I cannot see how ‘depth’ advertising can be in any way forbidden; the practical difficulties of the
enforcement
of a ban are too great. Nor do I suggest that it is only advertisers who exploit the irrational motives of human beings. Men have, after all, looked for a
father-figure
long before Messrs. Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn helped to ‘sell’ General Eisenhower to the voters of the United States. It seems to be one of the prices we pay for our increased knowledge of the processes of the human mind that it gives us power, not only to control mental illness, but to ‘manipulate’ human preferences. The limits of this manipulation are not yet known, even to the manipulators, and manipulation brings its
problems
even to them, since all human society is dynamic. An
obvious extension of our earlier example is that when knowledge about the desirable colour for a packet of detergent becomes common, then most packets will be of that colour, and it is a packet of a different colour which stands out on the shelf of a self-service store.
“What remains as something which must concern us, if not the advertisers, is that it should be accepted by the leaders of a democracy that an irrational appeal will usually beat a rational appeal at the polls, and that any set of men—they themselves
or
the advertisers—should deliberately and without consent given, set out to win power over the minds of other men by means of which those others are not conscious. To return to our earlier question, ‘What is truth?’ we must reply that the conduct of civilized life depends on the general acceptance of
certain
fictions, of which the fiction of man as a rational, political animal is one of the most important. If a fiction is lived in for long enough, it becomes at least partly fact, but if it be not lived at all, it is seen as only fiction, and there is nothing behind it but anarchy.”
“I did get a bit carried away there,” Ralph said. “It’s not really scholarly. I could cut that.”
Harvey Bodge said, “Ralph, I’m going to be frank with you; I’m going to be fair. I want you to cut the lot. No! Wait! No, I don’t want you to cut it. I want you to keep it. I want you to publish it, because there’s some important stuff there; no doubt of it. Reading it over with you beside me, I’ve become convinced. It isn’t right for us. That may still be true. But it is right for a book, Ralph. A really good book.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m sure of it. What’s more, it’s the kind of thing we’d like to help you do. We’d make time. We’re not exactly slave-drivers here, as you know.”
“But my thesis….”
“Of course. There’s that too. You must finish that.”
“Do you really think it would make a book?”
“Expanded, yes. What’s more, we might get it
commissioned
. I’ll ring up Gollancz in the morning.”
“I have become rather interested in it all since I started. There’s a lot of stuff I didn’t have space to use in this article.”
“I knew it. Here and there, you know, it was very compressed. Good—but compressed. I’d say ‘
dehydrated
’, if that didn’t sound pejorative.”
“I had to compress, if I was going to——”
“You’ve compressed some of the goodness out of it, Ralph. Some of the juice. Put it back in. Expand. Let it grow. We’ll help, if you’ll let us.” He made a note on his memo pad, and murmured, “Ring … Gollancz … morning,” just loud enough for Ralph to hear. “
Anybody
who’s interested will probably want to see a
chapter
, but you won’t mind that.”
“There isn’t a good book on advertising, as a matter of fact. Some good popular stuff, most of it American. But not a scholarly book.”
“Just one thing,” Harvey Bodge said. “If we’re going to save most of what you want to say for a book, it does seem a pity to waste the space we’ve been keeping for you in the paper. Of course I could fill it a thousand times over, I suppose, but I’d been looking forward to doing a full-length piece of yours. This paragraph here now, the example you give of conspicuous——”
“The Foundation Soap thing? It’s quite genuine. I had it from——”
“If you could just expand that a bit. Fifteen hundred words would do. Just write up the facts and figures, and a bit more of the background. We could use it now, and you could print it again later as an Appendix or
something
. It doesn’t do any harm, you know, to have some sort of a platform like
The
Radical
so that people will
already be used to thinking of you as an authority. It’s a lot of nonsense really, I don’t deny, but it gives
confidence
, and the reviewers are more inclined to take you seriously.”
“Yes, of course. I don’t mind at all,” Ralph said, pleased at the unexpected turn the interview had taken. “It won’t take any time. I’ll write it up today, and it can go straight in.”
*
“Well, I expect you want to hear about the meeting,” Tony Barstow said to Sophia and to Hugh. They did not reply.
“It was quite successful really,” Tony said. “
Considering
, you know, that Keith——”
“Yes.”
“—not being there, and that just left me to——”
“Yes.”
“They were tremendously upset about it, as a matter of fact. They all were, up there. They were really cut up. They said they wanted me to tell everyone how sorry they were to hear——”
“You’ve told us, then.”
“No, really! They were. I mean, you know, something like that, it could happen to—I mean, they’re not monsters, you know; they were really tremendously
upset
.”
“We do know, Tony,” Hugh said. “Sophia didn’t mean to be snappish, but we do all feel sorry enough about it ourselves, without needing Hoppness’
sympathy
at second-hand. We just don’t feel like talking about it very much.”
“I suppose you’ve heard it’s definite about the little boy?”
“We heard he died in hospital.”
“Yesterday morning. Secondary shock,” Tony said with relish.
“It’s not news any more, Tony. All the Agency knows. Did Hoppness say anything about the advertising? That’s why we’re having this meeting, after all.”
“Yes, they did. First time I’d ever run a Hoppness meeting. They don’t really care for it if there’s only one of us, but P.A. couldn’t manage it, and under the
circumstances
, we thought they wouldn’t mind so much if——”
“Yes.”
“Went off rather well actually. They were very
congratulatory
about it; you know how they are. Doesn’t really mean anything, I suppose.”
“And the advertising?”
“They suggested one or two amendments. They say we’re not quite home yet, but they think we’ve made good progress. Have you got a copy of the television script? If we could have that in front of us——”
“Sophia?”
Sophia took a copy from the file. “We didn’t get to the press stuff, as a matter of fact,” Tony said. “But they thought that once we got the television right, the press would follow.”
“At some distance, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
After the last Hoppness meeting at which Keith had made his presentation, the television commercial had been revised, so that the words spoken would now be:
Beauty like the touch of a child.
Natural beauty.
And only Water Nymph, the new cosmetic soap can give it to you.
When you were a little child, you thought make-up …
… was so grown-up.
You
didn’t
know
then
how
beautiful
you
were.
But
now
(over
a
shot
of
the
product
in
use)
you
do
know
that
the
special
deep-cream
cleansing
action
of
Water
Nymph
can
give
you
back
that
natural
beauty
you
had
as
a
child.
Water
Nymph!—remember
that
name!—Water
Nymph,
the
new
soap—obtainable
everywhere.
The
new
soap
to
give
you
beauty
all
the
time,
every
day,
wher
ever
you
may
be.
(Over a shot of the young mother in a night-club.)
Water
Nymph!
The
only
cosmetic
soap
with
thirty-two
special
ingredients
to
give
you
Natural
Beauty.
(Over a pack shot after all, the Agency having decided to put it back at the end with the words “
A PRODUCT
OF HOPPNESS, SILCH LABORATORIES
” supered over it.)
“So what are the new revisions?”
“I haven’t agreed to anything, you know,” Tony said defensively. “I just said we’d think about one or two of the points they made.”
“Such as?”
“They didn’t see why we wanted both the daughter in shot one and the little girl in shot three. Trouble was, when I thought about it I didn’t see why either. I don’t think you explained that to me properly. They said they thought it might confuse the viewers.”
Hugh looked at Sophia, and Sophia looked at Hugh. Hugh said, “You know, Sophia, now that she’s been taken out of the final shot——” and Sophia said, “Oh, they’re quite right. There isn’t so much point to the daughter now. Don’t worry, Tony. I didn’t explain it to you at all, because I didn’t notice it. I’ll have to change the line at the beginning about the touch of a child.”
“Pity. They rather liked that. They said it was the touch of poetry they didn’t want to lose.”
“I’ll think of another one for them.”
“Then, in the third line, they’d like you to think about something stronger than just ‘the new cosmetic soap’. Something like ‘the newest, most exciting’ or ‘the last word in’ or ‘the revolutionary new’ or something like that.”
“Yes.”
“Then they’ve got reservations about all that business with the little girl and the make-up table. They say they don’t think there’s an instant connection there. They’re very worried about the continuity. But I fought for that, so they’ve agreed not to touch it for the time being, and they want to discuss it again in the context of the revised commercial.”
“Thank you, Tony.”
“That’s O.K. I mean, that’s my job, isn’t it, fighting your battles? Then they’d like you to put “
DEEP
-
CREAM
CLEANSING ACTION
” in words on the screen, and they’d like us to consider the possibilities of some kind of diagrammatic treatment of that.”
“Showing Water Nymph getting deep-down into the pores, cleaning out dirt, and beautifying as it cleans?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Christ!”
“Sophia, Sophia,” Hugh said. “Don’t take things so hard.”
“I can’t help it. I’m a woman. Next?”
“Nothing else really. Except that they think the
word-count
may still be a bit low, and they wonder if we couldn’t get in something about no ring round the bowl.”
Sophia said bitterly, “And then at the next meeting the word-count will be too high, and we shall be asked to take out the little girl at the make-up table.”