The car made me love the song (or how advertising failed)

According to Wikipedia, advertising is "a form of marketing communication used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience to take or continue to take some action" - usually, to buy a product. I find it interesting that the term "manipulate" is used in this definition, because that's exactly what marketing does, in the end: it manipulates you into thinking you really need this product (even though you probably really don't).

I work in a supermarket, so I see it everyday. Offering free trinkets with every purchase - for instance, "if I buy this packet of biscuits I usually don't eat, I'll get a batman wallet" (ok, I fell for that one. And I'm not even using the wallet!). So-called discounts spreading the lie that the more you buy, the more money you'll save ("buy two, get the third one free"). 100% reimbursed products - but how many of us are really going to bother sending back the product packaging and receipt to the manufacturer along with our contact and bank details in order to get a few euros/pounds/dollars back?

Advertising uses carefully crafted images to convey its message, and its bottom line is "buying our product will make you happier". It pulls all of our strings, from our need for security to our desire for sex - how many brands use irrealistically beautiful and "sexy" models to make us long for what we see? As Tyler Durden famously said in Fight Club, "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need". I find that to be increasingly true now that I make a conscious effort to be aware of it. There are so many things I see in shops and on TV that, truth be told, I really don't want at all. Of course, I still have some weaknesses. I am a sucker for clothes, as I have explained elsewhere (1); yet, I don't feel the urge to buy new clothes as much as I used to, and I rarely look twice into a shop window these days. I'd rather buy secondhand (if anything, it's cheaper!). Socrates is reported to have said, while looking at a mass of things for sale, "How many things I have no need of!". I would like that to be my philosophy when it comes to shopping.

I can get really annoyed at TV adverts. Take so-called breakfast biscuits. Advertisers would have us believe that they are healthy, nutritious, and will fill you up until lunchtime, when at the end of the day, they're no more than glamourized biscuits - or so I shouted at the TV, much to my boyfriend's amusement.

Lately, I saw a car advert on TV and I quite liked it. It had interesting aesthetics, changing a cityscape into an Arizona landscape, together with elderly people throwing crumbs to eagles rather than pigeons. It also used a very catchy tune that I hadn't heard before.

But the advertisers completely failed in their goal. I have never had any interest in buying their car. However, I did really want to know about the tune they used. So now, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros can thank Peugeot for directing me to their song, "Home".

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(1) If you remember this story, where I wrestle with the idea of buying a new dress, you may want to know that I didn't buy it new. I found a similar one of the same brand on a second-hand website. Yay!