Describe, Don't Evaluate

“Superlatives belong to the marketplace,” says David Ogilvy, founder of the Ogilvy and Mather advertising agency, not in “serious advertisement; they lead readers to discount the realism of every claim.” The same could be said about praise given to others: superlatives should come from the recipient of the compliment.

What Ogilvy means is that describing what a product can do for the customer, that is, explaining its benefits, is the essential requirement of good advertising copy. Hyping a product with evaluative “s-t” words—best, greatest, most wonderful thing since sliced bread—is seller’s puff and is devoid of the information prospects need to help them make a purchase decision. (Puffery is extravagant praise, a combination of exaggeration and evaluation.) If a “we” is included in the copy—we are the best, most wonderful, etc.—the advertising is called “brag and boast.” Evaluation, preferably of the positive superlative type, should come from the customer after product use.

This principle—describe, don’t evaluate—has broad application and includes relationships not just of sellers to customers, but also of parents to children, teachers to students, and employers to employees, among others. The principle is recommended as a replacement for negative criticism: “The milk spilled!” (describe) as opposed to “I don’t believe you did it again! How could you!” (evaluate). Name-calling, sarcasm, threats, berating, and the like, undercut self-esteem and cause defensiveness by attacking the other person’s character or personality.

Factually describing the incident helps the other person (child or student or employee) avoid drawing negative conclusions about him- or herself. The recipient of the criticism is then allowed to regroup and correct the situation. “Constructive criticism,” child psychologist Haim Ginott in Between Parent and Child says, “confines itself to pointing out what has to be done, entirely omitting negative remarks about the personality of the child” (or, by extension, student or employee).

Ginott goes on to apply this principle to the extravagant praise that is often heaped on children, such as the ubiquitous “Good job” or “We’re so proud of you.” Says Ginott, “Direct praise of personality, like direct sunlight, is uncomfortable and blinding. It is embarrassing for a person to be told that he is wonderful, angelic, generous, and humble. He feels called upon to deny at least part of the praise. . . . [and he] may have some second thoughts about those who have praised him: ‘If they find me so great, they cannot be so smart.’”

The same applies to the puffery heaped on students and employees. The Wall Street Journal said as much recently when it chronicled the current praise-inflated culture of schools and employers. One such employer, said the article, dishes out praise every twenty seconds. Concerning the praise mania, the article quotes education critic John Holt*, who asks, “Is not most praise of children a kind of self-praise?” Certainly the schools that issue bumper stickers saying “My child is an honor student at XYZ school” are bragging and boasting about themselves.

So what is the proper way to express compliments to another person? For Ginott the principle remains: describe effort, accomplishment, or effect on you; let the other person draw the evaluative conclusion. “Thank you for washing the car, it looks new again.” is one of Ginott’s examples of what he calls helpful praise; “I did a good job; my work is appreciated” is the child’s possible conclusion. “You’re an angel,” says Ginott, is not helpful. Note that it is the child who concludes “good job,” not the adult who says it.

The phrase “effect on you” must be qualified and used carefully. “We’re so proud of you,” for example, can be an appropriate emotional response to a child’s accomplishments, but it often is heard as an evaluation, meaning “You are worthy of us.” To a child this is worse than direct sunlight, because the implication is that sometimes the child is not worthy. Properly described accomplishments should produce pride in the recipient.

“Thank you” is an appropriate expression of effect, when used in moderation. Some companies in today’s age of excess apparently overdose on thank you notes, according to the Wall Street Journal article mentioned above. Unfortunately, the WSJ confusingly lumped accolades and thank yous together. The bitter irony of the praise culture is that strokes are supposed to promote self-esteem, but disbelief and the perception of being manipulated, as well as a defensive need for more praise, are often the result.

Now the praise culture of superlatives poured on a product is not quite the same as extravagant praise gushed on a person, but those “s-t” words have the same effect on the prospect, as does praise on a child, student, or employee. Superlatives produce a big “why?” in the mind of the prospect. “Why do you say that? Why should I believe you? The sunlight is so blinding,” to use Ginott’s analogy, “that I can’t see the product or its features in order properly to evaluate it.”

Just as prospects need the space to pronounce for themselves that a product is “the best, greatest, most wonderful thing since sliced bread,” children, students, and employees must be given the freedom to judge themselves as someone who is doing good work and as someone who is good.


*John Holt is author of many books, including How Children Learn, How Children Fail, and The Underachieving School. The WSJ article did not provide the source of Holt’s quote.

Does Subliminal Advertising Exist?

Starting a new blog—and especially since the paperback edition of my book defending advertising has just been published—I suppose I should begin with a post about advertising. So let me deal with a question that frequently arises: “What about subliminal advertising?,” to which I typically respond, “What about it? It doesn’t exist!”

That’s the short answer. Some elaboration is required.

The term “subliminal” means beneath the threshold of perception. Many things are subliminal, such as the circulation of our blood, which we normally do not feel, experience, or perceive moving throughout our bodies. And it is possible to have our skin touched in such a way that we do not notice the touch. Subliminal advertising, however, is supposedly the power to motivate action based on something that no one can perceive, such as a message flashed on a movie or television screen at 1/3000th of a second or the word “sex” unrecognizably embedded in ice cubes in a liquor print ad. James Vicary and Wilson Bryan Key, respectively, are the two proponents of these claims. See this brief recap of their roles in the history of subliminal advertising. Marketing professor Stuart Rogers argues that Vicary’s movie theater “experiment” was a hoax. (A probably unauthorized copy of Prof. Rogers’ article is available here.)

The notion of subliminal perception is a self-contradiction because it is not possible to perceive something that is beneath one’s threshold of perception. Add to this the fact that advertisers exert great effort to make their messages blatantly explicit—innuendo, sexual or otherwise, is intended to be noticed—and you have no grounds for the subliminal advertising complaint. Critics are never satisfied, though, so they now talk about “semi-subliminal” advertising and “secondary imagery” that is often missed on an initial look. The latter is just a variation on the subliminal-embed theme of Wilson Key. The former is what Ayn Rand would call an “anti-concept.” Either something is above the threshold of perception or it is not; it cannot be half-way between. There are, of course, levels of perception, once above the threshold, but the lower the level, the less likely we are to be influenced by the message.

Repetitiveness is then thrown into the mix with the argument that we are manipulated by a constant repetition of ads that makes us change our desires without being aware of the process. Hmm. There are quite a few influencers in our lives who use repetition to get us to change our minds (or to reinforce a value or view we already hold): parents in relation to their children, teachers in relation to their students, journalists in relation to their audiences, and, oh yes, politicians—who have been known to use many different communication techniques to win votes—in relation to their constituencies. As I say in my book, when it comes to ethics and taste in communication, advertisers can hold their own against any of these four groups of influencers. Advertising just happens to be a convenient fall guy.

Then there is the flap last winter over Kentucky Fried Chicken’s alleged subliminal advertising (1, 2). A code word was inserted in one frame of a thirty-second commercial. When taken to KFC’s web site, the code word would produce a coupon for a Buffalo Snacker sandwich. ABC thought it was subliminal advertising and only ran the commercial minus the frame containing the code word—despite KFC’s wide publicizing of the stunt and their obvious desire for everyone to go looking for the code word. That the commercial had to be recorded and played slowly enough to view each individual frame speaks volumes about the people who still want to believe in subliminal advertising. Their motivation, as I demonstrate in my book, runs deep and is rooted in hostility toward capitalism, egoism, and, ultimately, reason.

Failure to understand the nature and causes of one’s emotions and, more generally, ignorance of the influence of the subconscious on one’s conscious perceptions are the sources of belief in subliminal communication. A commercial showing a sizzling T-bone steak, for example, at 5PM may trigger salivation in some, perhaps many. Why? Because of the viewers’ stored evaluations of steak as deliciously satisfying when hungry. A person who has just eaten, however, will not react that way. And a vegetarian may react with indifference or even indignation. The contents of our subconscious minds can indeed be triggered by conscious (not subliminal) perceptions, but the material in the subconscious is a conclusion that was drawn—an evaluation made—some time earlier. Hmm. All this hostility toward advertising, capitalism, egoism, and reason must be triggered by “subliminal” communication from the parents, teachers, journalists, and politicians who repetitiously harp about those institutions’ alleged flaws and evils!