Why Advertising Loves Your Depression

The best consumer is an unhappy one. The fact is, unhappy people are willing to take more action than someone satisfied. So how do you find an unhappy consumer? Create one. It’s easier to make someone into a customer by creating a problem for them and having a solution, then finding people with real problems.

How advertisers create a problem - 

The first tactic advertisers use is to take normal everyday behaviors and make them into problems. One example is 5 Hour Energy Drink. In their commercial, they say “Do you feel tired when you wake up in the morning?” What they are doing is asking something we all feel and reframing it into a problem. They want people to think “Am I not supposed to feel that way? Do most people not feel tired in the mornings?” and then show a good looking person working out in the morning versus the lazy fat guy in bed. The majority don’t wake up refreshed and the ones who are "morning people" are rare. Most of us like to sleep in. That's normal not lazy.

Drug commercials use this tactic too. They list a few common symptoms and create a disease. It’s usually some combination of tired, lack of focus, low energy, anxiety, sleepy, upset stomach, etc. For example, Restless Leg Syndrome was completely obscure and rarely seen anywhere before the commercials. They ask in the RLS drug commercial "Do you have the urge to move?" This is serious manipulation.  According to Wired Science’s The Business of Disease, Requip(RLS drug) sales skyrocketed after GlaxoSmithKline created commercials for the drug and RLS “education”.

The other way advertising tries to distort reality is by showing happy people all the time. If you’ve noticed, commercials have stop listing product advantages and instead sell you emotions and lifestyles. The commercials show people having the most wonderful times of their lives. Everyone is laughing and prancing around being affectionate. If it’s a detergent, it’s a grass field with a young mom and happy children. If it’s an investment brokerage, it’s an older couple having fun on their dream vacation. Why would advertising agencies do this? How does it work?

What the advertisers are doing is pairing their product with happiness. These people use product “A” and look how happy and successful they are. A single commercial may not have an effect but if you see thousands of happy people, you’ll start to question your emotions.

Consciously we understand that those people are actors. However, our brain is adapted to work under the theory of “seeing is believing”. There is a section of our brain that processes everything we “see” as real experience. It can't tell the difference between a television and real life. This part of the brain was necessary for living in a hunter gather tribe. It was made to mimic what the successful members were doing.  If everyone in the tribe was doing well except you, there was something wrong and you needed to correct it immediately. Since all we see are “happy” people everyday in advertising, the brain is sending messages such as “There are happy people all around me. Why am I not happy like everyone else?”

If you want the truth, look around at your friends. See how happy and satisfied they are with their lives. "Don't compare yourself to anyone" advice is nonsense.  We can't help it, our brains instinctively judge ourselves with other people. So if you're going to do it anyway, at least make it a fair comparison. Don’t just look at your successful friends but look at them all. Then determine how far off you are from the happiness trail. Don’t compare yourself to famous people or people you don’t really know. We usually only see the positive aspects and don’t know what problems they really have. Look around at the people you have daily contact with and then judge. This is the only way to gauge what “normal” or “happy” is. If you don’t do it, advertising will for you. Advertisers want you to be depressed so you fill that hole with products. Don’t let them manipulate you.


Maybe we aren’t so depressed after all.