That no one ever bothers to remember.
You’ve seen “The Devil Wears Prada”, right? Remember when she said she had to get her perfectly healthy size 8 body down to a size 6? That, my friend, is a perfect example of where ideal meets reality and things go horribly, horribly wrong.
The Ideal is Good. Reality is Better.
Have you ever seen someone who actually needed to lose weight in a weight loss commercial? Of course you don’t, and there’s a reason for that. People struggling to lose weight want to believe that they’re going to look like the man/woman on TV. More importantly, they want to believe that person is telling the truth when they said they used to be just like them, then they discovered Product X and it turned their life around.
Guess what? Most of those people are lying through their teeth. They’re paid actors who spend half their lives in the gym. There’s a good chance that any extra pounds they carried were hanging around before puberty. They certainly don’t know what it feels like to be you.
I’m not saying all of them are like that. I’m just saying that if they ever actually were in your shoes, Product X didn’t make a lick of difference. Diet, exercise and a great personal trainer, on the other hand…
This method of pulling the wool over your public’s eyes worked for a while, but said public isn’t nearly as dumb as advertisers want to think they are. They’re catching on, and it’s time to turn from the ideal and dip your toe into the reality pool.
Why I Cheered When I Saw the Latest Weight Watchers Commercials
I use weight loss commercials as my example here because with obesity on the rise in the United States the gosh darned things are everywhere. I see more of these on the air than reality TV shows, and if you’ve looked at the latest television network lineup you’ll understand what a miracle that actually is!
I also use weight loss because the latest round of Weight Watchers ads actually get it. They get it. One of their last commercials featured a model who (gasp!) had lost weight but still had another 10 or 15 lbs to lose. You know what? I actually believed her. Why? Because this was reality, not the ideal.
Shock Factor
In an earlier post we talked about shock factor. You can check out the post here. Since we’ve already given it a good rundown, I’m just going to say this. Sometimes the reality is more effective than the ideal at getting your point across.
Is a healthy, happy housecat going to convince you that there are abused pets in the world? Of course not. A picture of the mangy stray that turned up on my doorstep last week is a totally different story. Wives with black eyes and bloodied lips speak to the truth of domestic abuse more than a so-called survivor, because while a poster can say Woman X has “been there”, you never actually know.
War torn villages. Refugee camps. This is a reality that many people don’t want to accept, but it makes your point much more effectively than a reality they can and will take for granted.
That is, the one they see every single day.