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Principled Stand or Publicity Stunt?
To penetrate the veil of corporate virtue signaling, never judge a company by its commercials.
Over the decades, advertisers have used all sorts of marketing ploys to get people to buy their products.
Driving this car will make you more successful, wealthier. Buying that handbag will make you popular; buying this perfume will make you irresistible.
Marketers have used sex, stardom, and status to sell us things over the years; they’ve used pride, greed, envy- everything.
Advertisers and the companies who hire them have jumped on every potentially lucrative bandwagon to come along over the past decades. If patriotism will sell us things, they use patriotism. When “FOMO” was all the rage, advertisers used that.
None of these has been the favorite of advertisers and marketers though, the ultimate panacea of selling human beings things they didn’t know they needed or wanted.
Using sex in advertising has a sell-by expiration date- it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Fads like FOMO come and go; by the time corporations catch up, the fad isn’t even cool anymore, and the veneer of corporate vernacular certainly doesn’t help.
The advertiser’s favorite trick by far- the best, most versatile, dependable sales device ever used on mankind- is using…