The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (Vintage)

by DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

  Planning an endorsement requires as much finesse as planning a newsworthy interview, or any other successful pseudo-event. It is partly, as Freeman says, a matter of “good casting”—of matching the right product to the right name. “The celebrity, of course, need not be always the actual user of a product,” Freeman explains. “On a household item such as an air refresher, the testimonials are wanted from the domestic staffs of well-known persons. The resulting advertising then would say, ‘This is the product used in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood Star.’ Presumably the celebrities would not know what products are used in their establishments, and the endorsement is all the more believable when it comes from an employee.”

  The dangers of “miscasting” are considerable, observed Edward Carroll, sales promotion manager of Hess Brothers Department Store in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a store noted for its progressive merchandising methods. He notes the mistake of using pretty girls indiscriminately to sell all kinds of products. “Sleepy, seductive models shouldn’t be shown in advertising holding pots and pans. The Marjorie Main photo-type of model belongs with the pots and pan ads, while the mannequin who looks like Marilyn Monroe is just fine in bathing suits. No sincere advertiser would think of advertising a roasting pan for $1.95 and then marking it up to $2.95 when the customer came into the store.… That would be outright misrepresentation. And so is a beautiful, enticing Marilyn Monroe type pictured in an ad holding a mop in a typical family kitchen scene. The same goes for a Marlene Dietrich shown struggling over the kitchen range or the Ava Gardner counterpart wielding a vacuum cleaner. The latter role should cast the Spring Byington type.” The sense of appropriateness must often be delicate. Mr. Carroll advised that Marilyn Monroe herself, although an eminently appropriate endorser for bathing suits, strapless and backless evening gowns, negligees, diamonds, and furs, should not be “cast” in underwear advertising. Here credibility would be sacrificed, since as he says, Miss Monroe has actually stated publicly that she does not wear such garments.

  Experience and know-how are useful in securing endorsements. Certain celebrities are unobtainable, or will endorse only certain kinds of products. For example, Clyde Beatty, the lion trainer, will not endorse anything linked to alcohol; Buster Crabbe, starred on television as Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, will not endorse any product he does not think good and healthy; Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and some other celebrities who appeal primarily to a juvenile audience, are reluctant to endorse a cigarette or any other product not for young people.

  Endorsement agencies maintain lists of the most-wanted names, arranged both by the fields in which each name is a celebrity and by the kind of product for which each would be appropriate. Almost any celebrity has a well-knownness which can be attached to some product, service, or institution. In the decline of American “Society,” as Cleveland Amory notes, an epoch was marked when the first member of authentic Society signed her first commercial testimonial. Mrs. James Brown Potter, under a Tuxedo Park address, endorsed Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s cold cream. Soon thereafter, in 1923, two agencies, William Esty and J. Walter Thompson, made heavy use of Society names: Mrs. Oliver Harriman and the Duchess de Richelieu of Baltimore for Hardman pianos; Mrs. Oliver Harriman, Mrs. August Belmont, and the formidable Mrs. Longworth of Washington for Pond’s cold cream. Amory remarks that by 1960, whether because some persons of Society (for example the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) had worn out their names by commercialism or simply because fewer celebrities were real Society, not a single authentic Society name was on the “most-wanted” list.

  A more attenuated form of endorsement does not even make any statement about a person’s use or approval of the advertised product. This is the so-called “implied” endorsement. In this technique, the big name does not say in so many words that he uses the product. Instead his name is associated with the product in such a way as to give it the aura of his name. A series of advertisements was run by the Cyma Watch Company, announcing, under a large portrait of J. Edgar Hoover, that he had been given the “Cyma Honor Award Watch.”

  In the fabricating of endorsements, the planning and casting are all-important. The least troublesome problem of all is how to make the statement true. In many cases (the implied endorsement, for example) the project is accomplished, the pseudo-event is created, merely by public association of the celebrity’s name or photograph with the product. A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services. For an endorsement the use of a name is frequently all that is wanted. A legend, true as fable if not as fact, tells that at the end of the Civil War an insurance company offered its presidency to General Robert E. Lee with the salary of $50,000 a year. General Lee was puzzled by the large salary, saying he did not think his services worth so much. “We don’t want your services,” he was told, “but only your name.” “My name,” Lee is reported to have said, “is not for sale.” There are, of course, a few literal-minded celebrities who are hard to get. Some will actually refuse to say they use a product which they are not already in the habit of using. General Douglas MacArthur, for example, before 1957, had endorsed only the Cyma watch; Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt had endorsed only the Cyma watch and the Zenith hearing aid.

  Sometimes the endorsement itself makes the endorser into a user; he is given a large supply of the product as payment for the endorsement.

  By the law of pseudo-events, the staging of the event inevitably becomes more interesting than the event itself. Everybody knows that big names are usually paid for their endorsements. A clever advertiser can actually increase interest by describing the process by which the endorsement was secured—even if it was paid for. The advertising agency working for Thom McAn’s low-priced men’s shoes published an ingenious series which attracted more than the usual attention simply by having the endorsers purport to explain how their endorsements were paid for. In each case, a photograph of the endorser, wearing Thom McAn shoes, appeared with a facsimile of his signature alongside the statement. Admiral J. J. (“Jocko”) Clark, U.S.N. (Ret.), for example, included the following in his endorsement:

  MY PREJUDICE AGAINST THOM MCANS

  In general I have made it a personal rule to buy expensive shoes—at $25 and $30 a pair. When asked to join the Thorn McAn Shoe Jury, I was frankly skeptical. It’s not always easy to teach an old sea dog new tricks.

  But Thorn McAn’s offer to send a check to my favorite charity, Navy Relief, was a strong inducement. Also, my Navy experience has shown me that it’s never too late to learn. So I approached the test with an open mind.

  In America today—where popularity and well-knownness are themselves such valuable qualities of a product—the consumer himself is given an enticing opportunity to make advertising prophecies come true. The nationally advertised product is a celebrity of the consumption world. It is well known for its well-knownness, which is one of its most attractive ingredients. Just as each of us likes a movie star or television celebrity more when we think we have had a hand in making him a celebrity, the same is true with commercial products. We know that by buying a product we increase its popularity; we thus make it more valuable. Each of us has a power to help transform it into the leader in its field. This itself makes it more attractive to us and nearly everyone else. Each of us has the power to help make true the assertion that Chevrolet is the most popular car in the low-price field.

  One of the most effective efforts to increase beer consumption among women (and incidentally among men, too) was the ingenious campaign by Liebmann Breweries, aided by Foote, Cone & Belding, Chicago advertising agency, and by Paul Hesse, the well-known photographer, to promote Rheingold beer. Their simple device was to let the consumers themselves vote for Miss Rheingold. This attractive model would then declare that Rheingold was her favorite beer and help entice those who had chosen her to entice them. The first national election for Miss Rheingold took place in 1941, when Ruth Ownby won. (Jinx Falkenburg, who was the first Miss Rheingold, was undemocratically appointed, not elect
ed.) By 1957 the 20,000,000 ballots cast in the election of Miss Rheingold made it the largest election in the United States outside of that for President. The fact that customers were allowed to vote more than once simply added to the tantalizing verisimilitude.

  Customers themselves seemed more effectively persuaded, more personally interested in being sold by a pseudo-event which in this fashion they themselves had helped create. No one worried much over how to fabricate the essential fact—how to persuade the most popular model of the year to prefer Rheingold over all other beers. The contract which candidates were required to sign contained no mention of beer. A cynical advertising man observed that since beer was fattening, it was always unlikely that a model slim enough to win the election would actually be a heavy beer drinker. Reputedly only one of the early winners drank much beer. But was it untrue for Miss Rheingold to say, “My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer”? Any model who won the election, with its $50,000 in fees and prizes, would have been preternaturally callous not to like Rheingold best of all. What better way of securing truthful testimonials?

  In a world where brand names dominate, the consumer’s power to bring the brand name into common use can make the brand name synonymous with the product itself. This, despite the legal perils of dissolving the right to the name, is much desired by the manufacturer. This is a verbal symbol of the consumer’s power to make the product the success it claims to be. By daily use of the product and the word, the consumer actually makes “Kodak” his synonym for camera, “Kleenex” his synonym for paper tissue. In an expanding economy, where the very function of a commodity is often an aspect of the claimed qualities of a particular brand (for example of a mouthwash like Listerine, or of a deodorant like Dial soap or Ban), the consumer, by believing in the function and by developing his “need,” actually gives the product a new reality.

  (3) The appeal of the half-intelligible. In fast-moving, progress-conscious America, the consumer expects to be dizzied by progress. If he could completely understand advertising jargon he would be badly disappointed. The half-intelligibility which we expect, or even hope, to find in the latest product language personally reassures each of us that progress is being made: that the pace exceeds our ability to follow.

  Who would want to live in an economy so stagnant, in a technology so backward, that the consumer could actually understand how products were made and what their real virtues were? The very obscurity of advertising language proves that manufacturers are really at work for our benefit—developing new processes, discovering, perfecting, and adding mysterious new ingredients, elaborating subtle and complicated new features. The consumer cannot be wholly satisfied, then, unless he is partly bewildered.

  Advertising is, of course, our most popular reading, listening, and watching matter. Precisely because it transports us to where the rigidities of the real world have dissolved. As we stroll through the world of advertising, the half-intelligibility of what we see and read and hear encourages us to hope that our extravagant expectations may be coming true.

  To people who want the latest model, but who do not understand automobiles, a “V-type” engine, “hydro-matic drive,” “wide-track wheels,” and “uniweld body” are especially appealing. These are scrupulously true statements of fact. Their appeal consists in our half-understanding.

  When the function of newly contrived objects becomes more attenuated, when an automobile is no longer merely a transportation machine, but something we wear and luxuriate in or something that gives us “that carefree feeling” and “that sense of indescribable luxury”; when a ball-point pen is no longer something to keep accounts with or to write checks with, but something vaguely useful for writing on butter or under water; when a soap is not merely for washing, but to give us “round-the-clock protection”—then we can no longer be “deceived” about the “function” of anything.

  On a full-page, full-color portrait of an enticing woman who might be oneself, the lady reader is told:

  ‘ULTIMA’ GOSSAMER TINTS

  THE ASTONISHING NEW COLOR COSMETOLOGY

  Dedicated by Revlon to the exciting woman who spends a lifetime living up to her potential. For the first time, you can be porcelain pale or spun gold … or any exquisite anything … without the vaguest feel of make-up on your skin. The key to this paradox? The limitless tints and the almost bodiless textures of these gossamer powders, nutrient foundations and lipsticks. Do let a Revlon consultant help you to a gossamer complexion. At only the most distinguished stores.

  THE ‘ULTIMA’ MAKE-UP COLLECTION BY REVLON

  New York * London * Paris

  In a world of functions so vague, so derivative, so attenuated, we read advertisements and listen to commercials to discover functions, ogres, needs, and perils of which we never dreamed and never would have known. Advertising attenuates, making everything more interesting, more fanciful, more problematic.

  (4) The appeal of the contrived. And we enjoy being courted. Like the little girl pleased to see her best beau stand on his head for her sake, we delight in the headstands and handsprings of advertisers. Not necessarily because we especially enjoy acrobatics, or even because the acrobatics are done so well, but because we are flattered that anyone would go to such trouble for us. When we see an elegant living room ensemble by Dunbar Furniture spread on a lawn; when we see “The Pepperell family on Cotton Cay—Imaginary Island in the Sun” poised improbably in an array of three hammocks, one above another; when we see a man hunting, fishing, or playing poker while chained to a large egg (“For a better way to take care of your nest egg talk to the people at Chase Manhattan”) we are pleased. Not so much because we know what is happening or what it all means, or because the spectacle is anything but ludicrous; but because we cannot help being pleased that so elaborate a pseudo-event should be made especially for us.

  The shrewd planner of advertising pseudo-events plays on our puzzlement. Even our own suspicions and doubts themselves become themes for new pseudo-events. An advertising campaign in 1960 by Clairol, Inc., makers of a hair dye for women, featured a photograph of an attractive model with beautiful hair. Over the photograph appeared the question: “Does she … or doesn’t she?” And underneath: “Hair color so natural only her hairdresser knows for sure!” The advertising copy which followed did not answer the tantalizing question. Someone wrote to the company for the facts. The enterprising publicity director then made news by releasing the story of the correspondence, and the company’s reply as follows:

  In response to your letter, the answer to your question “Does She or Doesn’t She?” is “Yes, Always.”

  I guess we at Clairol always knew that somewhere, someone would be bright enough to ask the very intelligent questions which you have put forth. Consequently, for as long as we have been doing national advertising, we have had an iron-clad rule that all models used in our advertisements must use Miss Clairol on their hair … girls who do not use our products on their hair just don’t look good enough to reflect the true qualities of our hair-coloring.

  The unanswered question, of course, was what relation if any there really was between using Clairol and having beautiful hair. The fact offered was that a girl with hair naturally beautiful enough to make her a cosmetic model had not spoiled her appearance by one application of Clairol. Here obviously the real interest centered not on the qualities of the product but on the advertisement itself—the mechanics and mystery of the pseudo-event.

  * * * * *

  When “truth” has been displaced by “believability” as the test of the statements which dominate our lives, advertisers’ ingenuity is devoted less to discovering facts than to inventing statements which can be made to seem true. Making them seem true is relatively easy. With the apparatus of the Graphic Revolution, almost anything can be made to seem true—especially if we wish to believe it. The advertising man resembles the newspaperman for whom he was in some ways the prototype. He artfully develops his pitch as the journalist cleverly develops his story. T
he happening which the reporter sends over the wire has often been incited into being in the same way in which the advertising man has produced the “facts” for his copy. Both aim at newsworthiness and believability. The advertising man who, according to Endorsements, Inc., may approach as many as five big names for a particular endorsement before he secures a single acceptance is like the conscientious Washington reporter who approaches seven senators before he finds the one to make the statement needed for his story. Both work hard to incite the pseudo-event into being. Both are inhibited by prudence and ethics: believability is produced only if quasi-facts are invented within certain limits. But the problem is both complicated and simplified by the fact that in many fields of marketing (for example, drugs, cosmetics, automobiles, or home appliances) a statement cannot be most attractively believable unless it is only partly intelligible.

  The readers of advertisements are always playing a game with themselves. Momentarily they enjoy the pleasurable illusion that an extravagant expectation has been satisfied. Then they enjoy the revelation that they have seen through the illusion: the fairy princess is not really a fairy princess at all, but only Jinx Falkenburg dressed up like one. Ample room is left for the advertiser’s “creativity.” His imagination, like a poet’s, enlarges our world for us. In the contest between the creative imagination of ad men and the disillusioning information and sophistication of ad readers, the successful advertiser stays one step ahead. He can keep us in “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which [according to Coleridge] constitutes poetic faith.” He is always conceiving new legends for a world governed by its own legendary rules to take the place of those legends which have been disenchanted. The citizen-consumer enjoys the satisfactions of being at the same time the bewitched, the bewitcher, and the detached student of witchcraft.