Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves

Evidence

What is really most notable about this marriage of word and image is that, unlike the traditional ads, which offer a cure for a problem—new snake oil in old bottles—Lansdowne’s advertisement holds out the promise of a better life. It sells the reader on herself, a new self, better than the old. Here was an innovatively oblique way of pushing the product by connecting it to the consumer’s deepest yearning to be beautiful and desired. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the transformation of advertising from snake-oil claims to identity/aspiration selling that recurs across the book’s later chapters on television and digital advertising. — connects to: Advertising budgets, not product merit, determine what consumers buy — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 175; Post-war advertising shifted from selling products to manufacturing and commodifying desire. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 119; 1960s advertising made a turn from fear-based to love-based persuasion — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 587 (+12 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the pivot to aspirational marketing as distinct from problem-cure advertising.

Broader Connections

• Advertising converted attention into revenue by selling consumers a receding ideal #corroborates (0.88) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 225
• Brand advertising aims to convert consumers rather than persuade them #expands (0.82) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 273
• Advertising manipulates consumers into wanting what they are made to want. #qualifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 258
• Corporations shifted from advertising products to engineering youth culture itself #exemplifies (0.72)