Also see: source stripping, where we remember 'facts' without remembering their source.
Slightly OT: I used to think all ads were stupid, and the industry run by morons. Then at some point I thought that at least some of the ads seemed clever. At that moment, I realized that I'd shifted, and become a target demographic. The ads before weren't clueless, they just weren't aimed at me.
This particular quote isn't about advertising, but its something Steve Jobs said that reminded me of your post.
"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."
The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.
No, the networks are in business to create desire. As a rule, people generally want what their peers want, so the chief goal of advertising is to create the impression that everyone wants the product. The very act of putting it in a prominent place is the first step, since everyone seeing it knows that everyone else is also seeing it.
In response to the anonymous downvoters, it's quite clear that in a competitive market, settling for giving the people what they want is inadequate. You have to make them want what you're selling. As someone pointed out above, many consumer goods are essentially identical and are distinguished chiefly by their marketing efforts. And even with Apple's own products, one might wonder whether the exact same product introduced by say, Dell or HP, would've been as successful.
Contrary to popular belief, the market isn't a simple system of people with inherent needs meeting those with products, but a complex web of collective psychology driven by a combination of the social network and mass media.
To put it in a slightly hyperbolic yet entirely honest way: I want Apple (or brand of your choice) to make decisions for me; to tell me what I want and what I want more; to assure me my decisions are unequivocally right and indeed, mine. In this my desire for desires is validated, encouraged and fulfilled.
Excellent point. My 'favorite' comment on the article page is the guy who says ads don't work very well, except for the majority of people, whom he calls "sheeple."
You can't say that ads don't work and also argue that most people are too mindless to ignore them!
Slightly OT: I used to think all ads were stupid, and the industry run by morons. Then at some point I thought that at least some of the ads seemed clever. At that moment, I realized that I'd shifted, and become a target demographic. The ads before weren't clueless, they just weren't aimed at me.