3TELL THE TRUTH AND RUN: SAYING THE RIGHT THING THE RIGHT WAY.
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN simply running an ad in a magazine made you an authority. A cigarette ad could actually claim there wasn't “a cough in a car-load.” (“See, honey? It's printed right here. In a magazine.”) Facts didn't count. Authority did. Pick up any vintage magazine and see if you don't agree; almost every ad feels like a pronouncement from an authority, often a dishonest one.
The presumptuous tone of the 1950s Plymouth ad shown in Figure 3.2, would make any reader today snicker at its authoritarian cluelessness. (“Big is glamorous, dammit!”) Plymouth wouldn't get away with this today.
But back in the ’40s and ’50s, this Voice of Authority never credentialed itself, never explained, never verified. (“More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!”) And if you were to question these authorities, which no one ever did—the answer was some version of “Because we said so.”
The Voice of Authority said you should never have sex before marriage. Why? Because we said so. It said, eat all “five food groups.” Why? Because we said so, dammit. Amazingly this approach worked for decades. Author and sociologist David Gerlernter explained this was the result of America's “ought culture,” a culture in which everybody did “as they ought to”—as authorities told them to. And authority was everything from the church and the government to the prevailing social morals.
Figure 3.2This car is glamorous because Plymouth ...
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