THE WANT MAKERS The World of Advertising:...

THE WANT MAKERS The World of Advertising: How They Make You Buy by Eric Clark (Viking: $19.95; 416 pp.) We can believe British journalist Eric Clark when he claims to be “pro-advertising”; his interest in the trade, after all, was sparked when he helped launch a magazine for the industry. Like so many authors who have tackled this subject before, however, Clark ends up assuming a highly critical tone. This is, no doubt, unavoidable, for the basic premise of advertising--evading our intellect (which might remind us that all soap is the same) in order to play upon subconscious desires (thus convincing us that the right kind of soap will purify us like an Irish spring)--seems to offend our self-image as rational thinkers.

In public, of course, advertisers insist that spots simply provide consumers with information. Clark’s absorbing investigation, however, reveals that the reality is fundamentally different. American ad expenditures, for one, have soared so dramatically in the past two decades (General Motors and Ford spent nearly $1.4 billion each in their 1985 campaigns) that only the very largest corporations can afford to “inform.” Thus our “free” market is often governed less by the survival of the fittest products than by the strategies of the richest companies.

Straightforward information is also becoming harder to find as social scientists, Madison Avenue’s new cognoscenti, probe “the inner world of imagination, private language and play” in order to wage increasingly sophisticated subliminal campaigns. In a play-acting research experiment, for example, one housewife approaches another, who is seated, only to be met with protests. “Go away, you rotter. You’ll scratch me, upset me . . . Oooo! Ugh! It’s like rape!” When a third housewife approaches, however, the seated woman says, “I want you. Mmm, lovely. Smooth me. Caress me.” The seated woman, we learn, is playing a kitchen sink; the object of her lust is a new brand of kitchen cleaner.

All of this is certainly as disturbing as it is amusing, of course, especially when one ponders the fact that these subliminal appeals are increasingly being used to sell presidents as well as soap. Unfortunately, though, Clark’s account, while engaging, fails to break new ground. He sounds familiar warnings, but doesn’t grapple with the more difficult issues of industry reform (Should we require independent consumers’ unions to conduct the product comparisons quoted on TV?) or study advertising’s changing role in culture. Many younger Americans, for example, have come to see TV’s new, avant-garde spots as dramas in themselves, leading some ad directors to claim that their work is more expressive than older, now-floundering styles of visual art.