Another ad I scanned out of the July 17, 2006 issue of Newsweek, page 7:

The advertisement features a young family hiking through pristine wilderness. The father of the family has dropped back several paces, and in front of him have appeared three dimensional words, which cast a shadow on and separate him from his family, as well as from enjoyment of the moment. The words read:

“WILL WE BE ABLE TO AFFORD COLLEGE AND TAKE TRIPS LIKE THIS? WHAT IF THERE’S LAW SCHOOL? OR MED SCHOOL? WOULD THOSE BE CONSIDERED ROCKS OR BOULDERS?”

First of all, we see the socio-economic demographic of their intended audience by the mention of law school or med school. Or rather, we probably see the socio-economic demographic that their intended audience would like to believe themselves capable of, whether or not it’s actually true. It flatters the reader by causing them to worry about a future which might be outside of their means.

More important than that though, this ad vividly illustrates a technique that a good many ads use: separating you from your experience. The words stand between the man and his family and his enjoyment of the moment. We’re supposed to identify the words with the naturally occurring concern that a man has for his family and their well-being. But the advertisement further hammers in this wedge between the reader and their own experience of similar fears, by forcing them to project themselves into the irreal scene of this advertisement. So the person looking at this advertisement feels their own fear about their family, which separates them from the fullest experience of their own life. But then by sucking them into this idyllic advertising world, that recursive escape from personal experience into worry and fear is compounded exponentially.

They want to draw you as far out of the “real” world as possible, and get at you once you enter into the quasi-trance this opens up. It’s the same technique a car salesman employs when they say, “Can you picture yourself in this car?” Once you slip into your imagination, they can then manipulate your imagination and reinforce your identification with the imagined concept, service or product, so that when you come back to the real world, you naturally feel the urge to change your reality to suit this new image which they have built up and rewarded.

The proof is in the pudding, in this case, because at the bottom of this ad, you see the small print slogan, “For 150 years, people have been coming to Northwestern Mutual to put their minds at ease.” And they refer to themselves as “The Quiet Company.” So we see that the real service that they offer is not insurance at all: it is offering you a way out of the trap which they manuevered you into in the first place. They only put your mind at ease by enhancing or triggering your dis-ease, pushing you into an indefensible mental-emotional construct, and then offering you a way out in exchange for money.

Brilliant…