Opinion Pictures do lie
Consumers know the ad industry makes extravagant claims, advertising doesn’t need a truth serum.
Consumers know the ad industry makes extravagant claims, advertising doesn’t need a truth serum.
A bipartisan bill now in the US Congress, which seeks to bring the law to bear on the use of Photoshop in advertising, is exercising the passions of creative departments worldwide. But actually, it’s only a preliminary legislation which calls upon the Federal Trade Commission to suggest a strategy to reduce the use of surreally perfect human bodies and other visual falsehoods in advertising and develop regulations for their use.
It is uncertain if such norms can be set at all, even if people competent to develop them can be found.
The Truth in Advertising Act follows on from the waves of anxiety about eating disorders, food fads and the cult of the body that have periodically swept America for half a century. It had to happen, but how exactly does one regulate the use of Photoshop? The process may prove to be too subjective to be useful. How thin is too thin? How red can tomatoes in supermarket ads be before they transgress? And anyway, advertising is supposed to be glossy, not matte, a colourful exaggeration, not the unvarnished truth.
Consumers know that the ad industry makes extravagant claims and the few that don’t ought to be urged to know better. It would be quicker and easier than administering a truth serum to every creative executive alive.
What a cheerless world such a serum would create, where everyone looks like the faceless sweaty man in the bus. It is a world that we simply don’t buy. In India, we drool over ads for boxy little flats in real estate projects named after faraway locations in New York and California. We know it’s fake, but that’s half the fun.
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