ads where the selling point is that the product turns you into a covetous zombie

the disturbing part is that these are some of the most true-to-life ads.

wow.

it's marketing genius. sidestep the whole extolling the virtues of your product thing, and prey directly on people's desire to keep up with the joneseseses.

keeping up with the joneses isn't what these ads are suggesting, except to the extent that ALL ads suggest that. the people in these ads barely recognize that the outside world exists outside them and the product described. the relationship between them - the consumer and the product - is like a drug relationshop, almost. the "sunday ticket" commercial featuring that guy from "curb your enthusiasm" almost even belongs to this category, although it's pretty tenuous. he gets the product and all of a sudden he's in a musical where everyone is singing about how great he is, and how wonderful his football lineup is, and they all dance down the street hand-in-hand (i suppose because they know they will not see him for the next four months of sundays, because he will be sitting on his couch.) the drug in question here being a particularly strong psychotropic, i guess. consumer gets product -- consumer almost literally goes insane.

oh i'm thinking of a different car commercial then.
i'll show myself out.

Point being adverts don't sell you a product, or, pace Bill Burroughs, sell you to the product. They define which one of the multiple products is you. They clue clever Mods in to the particular brand of hair gunk will make them Modernist. Yr consumption is assumed. They wrassle 'mongst themselves to define you.

moolatte!

i just thought of another one, which twists this a little - axe body spray. there's another body spray now, too, whose ads are so similar as to be identical. in them, a youngish man sprays himself with the product, either intentionally or inadvertently, and young ladies find themselves irresistably, animalistically, drawn to him, flinging themselves across dangerous obstacles just to touch him. in these ads the young man actually TURNS HIMSELF into the product! he cleverly inserts himself into the product relationship so that the women desire not whatever frifrelins they normally would be depicted desiring, but him. smooth move, stud.

How about that Direct TV ad where the guy is sitting, watching sports - a vase hits him on the head and kills him - his ghost drifts up from the chair, through the roof and up into the sky, and eventually up through the bottom of the exact same room (but up in heaven) and back into position in his chair, to watch sports for all eternity.