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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 2 (June 1, 1932)

Modern Advertising

Modern Advertising

Writing on modern advertising, Aldous Huxley recently stated that the sort he found amusing was the Machiavellian kind that plays on human weaknesses. “I like it,” he said. “because it is in this kind of advertising that the masters of the art have the best opportunity to exhibit their virtuosity.

“It is a prodigious virtuosity. How masterly, for example, is the way in which American advertisers have recently exploited the sense of shame among potential buyers! They have brought to perfection a technique form making men and women agonisingly aware that they smell nasty. that they are wearing the wrong sort of clothes, that they don't know how to behave at table, that they haven't read the book of the month, that their luggage looks cheap and ridiculous, that owing to the neglect of some tell-tale detail, they are being everywhere mistaken for the deserving poor. These shame-producing advertisements give me, I must confess, an extraordinary pleasure.”