Does anyone remember the book from the 70s titled, “Subliminal Seduction” by Wilson Bryan Key? He argued that deep within all print and TV advertising are subliminal suggestions about either sex, wealth, or sex. Mainly sex. Key showed advertising images where you can barely make out nudity or other symbolic sexual references, some Freudian. It was very revealing. By the 70s advertising sleight of hand, today’s ads, both video and print, are clumsy, ill-conceived or confusing, not to mention abysmally woke, which I just mentioned anyway.

Subliminal seduction is the idea that sex will sell you anything. Remember the film and print car ads that always featured a beautiful woman seductively caressing the car’s shiny paint job? That is supposed to make you think that buying the target new car, a BMW or a Buick, will get you dates. Or more.

Then there are the obvious devious ads for a hundred dollars worth of groceries free for seniors if only they will subscribe to their debit card or something. That’s just wrong and malicious.

Among the top awful advertising woke ads are those depicting grossly overweight (usually) women who are tasked to sell you insurance, vacations, drugs, cosmetics and body products, some of which get sprayed into areas I’d rather not see in my mind. The trend toward using obese females to sell anything is not wise. If you want to sell a product, make the seller attractive. Only the avoirdupois-philes will find these women attractive.

I have three pet peeves in advertising — loud ads, classless ads, and racially contrived ads.

In the first category are the shyster lawyers gesticulating wildly about their law firms, how they “work for YOU!” (pointing a finger toward you) and how their offices are local and how you get personalized attention. This is just vaguely disingenuous distasteful ambulance-chasing. A little dignity is in order for the Bar. Many Americans, especially Christians, are also ticked off about Broadway-like performances in advertising which glamorize gambling. Large groups of people dance through American streets cheering and singing about how you can gamble by using their internet website. This sends the wrong message about what American life should be.

There are also various and sundry hawkers who think shouting and using their hands will sell product. Next time you are being targeted in a video ad, notice the hands. The more hand gestures, the less reliable the product probably is. Maybe these gestures will work for the not-so-sophisticated, but I find it off-putting and enough to warn me away from the product or service.

And of course, there are everyone’s favorite ads du jour — the contrived mixed-race families and all-black ads pitching to white folks. It’s not the depiction of racial couples that is bothersome; it’s their cynicism and the fact that they insist on being woke long past their stale date. DEI is over, yet almost all family dinners, soirees, or festivities feature mixed-race participants. But generally, people tend to stick with their own cultural members. While there certainly are such gathering and mixed-race families, their numbers in ads far outstrip their numbers in the general population. Only about 17% of new marriages in the U.S. are mixed-race marriages but if you gauged the number of mixed-race marriages by what you see in TV ads, you would guess it’s more like 95%. It’s a contrived American picture and its purpose is to force dead DEI attitudes on the American watching public. I resent being manipulated into thinking that I am a better person because I am virtue signaling.

In essence, one has only to look around at American advertising to see that nothing is free except bad advice, and that you, too, can have sex, wealth, wisdom, beauty, and respect if only you would buy their products. We have seen this sales pitch before — early in the Book of Genesis.

Image from Grok.