Our Dear Rajan,

Love and warm greetings form both of us!!

We are very happy to note all the wonderful news of your studies and extracurricular activities. However, we were not pleased to read that you are interested in getting a Super-X shoes. No doubt that wearing a Super-X shoe is a craze of the time, but we do not consider it a wise investment because of three reasons: First of all. you do not need a shoe at this moment because you already have three shoes required for the different activities in your hostel life, and all of them are new ones. Second, even if you require a shoe there are so many good brands available in the market costing only one fifth of what a Super-X will cost us. Third, you should never decide your needs on the basis of popular fads or catchy advertisements!

Advertisements give us a lot of new information, but ultimately most of the advertisements are doing it are for their own profit. They have a product to sell, and the more glamorously they sell, the more might be the cost because they have to recover their expenses somewhere. Most of the things which come under the category of “essentials” in our daily life do not need any advertisement at all. Even if it becomes necessary to advertise, the glamour will be absent in most of such ads.

In general, advertisement is the art of attacking people’s weak spots. To practice this art effectively, they use all the modern gadgetry of science and exploit every useful aspect of science’ but ultimately their aim is neither to advance science nor to provide you with the essentials of life.

A man usually receives information in three stages. First of all, he collects the information, then he analyses it, and then he applies it. Whenever this is done systematically, he detects all the unnecessary and harmful things at the second stage itself. But the advertisers try to bypass the first two stages to address the third stage directly. By doing so, they deprive most of the people the opportunity to reason it out. When he tells that the X-brand mixie is-the ‘in’ thing the ladies immediately desire an X-brand mixie. They have not stopped to analyse the hard facts about their needs. The advertiser has succeeded in wiping out the first two stages when a man reads that the ‘He’-brand jeans is going to make him a real he-man, he immediately falls for it. His faculty of reasoning has been subverted. The ad. appeals so much to his subjective emotions that reason does not get a chance to analyse the whole gimmick.

All over the world, men and women have certain common desires and interests. Everyone is interested in health, achievements, and security, people just like fun, friendship, physical attractiveness, excitement, romance and adventure. These desires cannot be achieved by everyone or at every time. Even those who are able to obtain them are able to do so only at considerable cost of time, sacrifice, and hard work in life. The advertiser exploits this situation by playing with the emotions of the readers. This is a deception. No person, gadget, clothe, chemical or food can provide these things which come only by hard and regular work. Contrary to the advertisements, no exercising gadget can make you a superman, no tonic can give you instant strength, no spray can make you socially acceptable unless you have an acceptable personality and no clothe can infuse you with inner charm and personality.

One should not be surprised to note that a good number of the advertisers subtly appeal to the baser sexual instincts of the masses. The shoe which you recommended is an example. Its promoters have been advertising that men wearing super-X attract all the girls around them. Let us tell you something sensible, if the girls around you notice you only because of your shoes and not because of your sensitivity, integrity, and character, then they are not worth your interest. Friendship with such shallow persons will bring you nothing of lasting value in mutual relationships.

We do not want to imply that all advertisements are meant to cheat. Rather, we want you to discern the emotional elements of an advertisements so that you can escape the perils of impulse buying. Once the impulse is subdued, such a buyer finds himself left with a gadget which is useless for him. The shoe no longer thrills him; the jeans no longer make him feel masculine; the costly spray vanishes within ten minutes of spraying it on the body; the after-shave lotion does not produce the same glow on the face as the advertisement shows on the face of the model posing in the ad.

With the discernment that you have, we are confident that you need only these brief comments to understand the psychology of advertisement: how it dupes people to buy what they do not need at prices they cannot afford while what they really need await at the shops. As far as the shoes are concerned, we will surely consider your request at its merits when such a need really arises, but we will buy you (at that time) only the best, but not necessarily the most advertised one.

Keep writing to us about all your needs and problems.

yours loving

Daddy & Mummy,

TOM & ANN