Further developments in mind control

Some days I feel like I’m the only person in the audience of War Horse who just sees a load of people waving bits of Meccano around inside a pair of tights.

When I see advertising copy, I don’t think “I will buy that” or even “I am going to ignore that” – instead my mind is thrown into a paroxysm of trying to work out precisely why the hidden persuaders have chosen those particular words.

For example: for most people “better than half price” just says the same thing as “less than half price”. But if that’s all it means, why not say it in the simplest way? Are we so prone to influence that we will think negatively or your product if we associate it with “less than”?

“Better than half price” is the plain clothes copper at the rave – it almost fits in, but ends up standing out by trying a little bit too hard.

Previously, I wrote about the infuriating apologies for “any inconvenience this may have caused” issued by so very sincere automated railway station tannoys – but in the toxic aftermath of Xmas, my current least favourite phrase is “own it now on DVD and Blu-Ray”.

First of all, even if I had a Blu-Ray player, I wouldn’t buy it on both formats. Like 99.9 per cent of the rest of the population, I’d buy one or the other.

Oh, but if we say “on DVD OR Blu-Ray”, then we are telling you NOT to buy both. Which you might do. If we hadn’t told you not to.

I can assure you, that you telling me not to would not affect whether I did or not.

However, my real hatred in this sentence is reserved for the word “own”.

“Buy it now” is just soooo vulgar. Emphasise benefits not features. It’s not “hand over your cash”. It’s “Martin Laurence’s hilarious ‘Big Momma’s – Like Father, Like Son’ could be yours to treasure and cherish until the end of time, and to have buried with you, clutched in your loving, dead embrace”.

Why not just say “buy it now”? That’s what you WANT isn’t it?

However, the prize has to go the above-pictured description of Clover Light.

As a way of saying “this is not butter” while giving you the impression that it is saying “this is like butter” it is absolutely unsurpassed.

I even went to their website, and I still don’t know what Clover Light is.

Doesn’t stop me eating it though.