Advertising manipulates consumer fears by 1926, as Time magazine observed.
Evidence
The omnipotent buying public carries in its mind only a dim conception of the part played in its daily life by this enormous new pseudoscience, advertising. How did that tube of Pepsodent toothpaste, for instance, reach your bathroom shelf?…It got there, obviously, because somehow Lord & Thomas had at least made you suspect that of all toothpastes Pepsodent is the one most imperative to your health and happiness. You may not remember but somewhere you read that you had a film on your teeth and that gritty Pepsodent was the thing which would polish that film away. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 194
Categorization
- CANDY: The famous earlier-century realization that your toothpaste ‘had a film on your teeth’ was manufactured by an adman is a great conversational nugget about manufactured problems.
- XREF: connects to: Advertising manipulates consumers into wanting what they are made to want. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 258; Modern advertising manipulates desires through images largely unconnected to the product. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1819; Advertisers weaponized social shame and judgment to sell products to women in the 1920s — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 217
Broader Connections
- Advertising manipulates consumers into wanting what they are made to want.
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 258 - Advertisers weaponized social shame and judgment to sell products to women in the 1920s
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 217 - Modern advertising manipulates desires through images largely unconnected to the product.
#expands(0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1819