One day, I will write a long and extended blogpost about why I hate ads. (I’ve been willing to do that for years…)

In the meantime, I’m quoting a book which explains something really interesting, and I’ll let you with your own reflections.

an ad is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country – these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market reseach. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.

Marva J. Dawn in Reaching out without Dumbing down
quoting Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.