ON THE USE OF HYPERBOLE IN ADVERTISING
From a Lady who Suffers from Skepticism to a Friend who is Healthily Credulous
BY AGNES REPPLIER
Hyperbole
My dear Eleanor:
No, Eleanor, I have not read “The Three Golden Apples.” I have not even read the reviews. But Ihaveread the publishers’ notice, because they were good enough to send it to me. They say the book is the literary masterpiece of our day, that it stands unrivaled in tensity of situation, that it is an epoch-making narrative, and a masterly contribution to the problems that confront the thinking world. Upon which I find myself murmuring withSancho Panza, “Nothing else, mine honest friend?” Why not say simply and plainly that it is the greatest novel ever written, and that Clarence Coventry (have you ever met him, Eleanor? He is a charming man) is the greatest novelist ever born? Why, when people are soaring in the pure and limitless realms of fancy, should they stop short, as if they were impeded by facts?
Now even if I did not know Clarence—who writes quite as well as his neighbors—I should be chilled into apathy by the publishers’ red-hot enthusiasm. The phrase “epoch-making” is calculated to chill any reader who has encountered it before and who remembers what it usually means. And though I am well aware that epochs are not made or marred by even a readable novel, I don’t like being told pure nonsense, and I don’t like being hounded by advertisements. Why, Eleanor, since I have been running over to New York every few weeks to see Amy and the children, and staring out of the car-windows at ninety weary miles of continuous advertising, I am cured forever of touching pills or pickles.
Yet they tell me (though I don’t believe it) that the success of any business venture depends wholly and entirely on its advertisements; that if people are told often enough to buy a thing they end by buying it; that if they are told imperatively or persuasively they buy it a little sooner; and that they can be startled into buying it at once. I have been given to understand that the artless expedient of printing an advertisement upside-down impels hundreds of men and women to purchase the object or visit the attraction so derided.
But we are not, in other respects, a child-like nation; I find a great deal of incredulity in this world when it comes to things worth believing. Why, then, this touching simplicity in the face of a transparent artifice? Does a young man really believe that if he eats one kind of cereal rather than another he will become a great financier? That is virtually what he is told. But if he will add up the financiers on the one hand, and the cereal-eaters on the other, he will find his figures disheartening.
The other day I received a long and exceedingly intimate communication, which began “Why not be Beautiful?”, and which (assuming ungraciously that I was ugly) gave me so many good reasons for altering my estate, that I began to fear I was “resisting grace” by retaining a single feature. A beautiful woman, I was reminded, “has the world at her feet, and can nobly mold the characters of men.” All this for thirty dollars, Eleanor! And I have so many friends whose characters—or at least whose habits—would “thole a mend.” Do you think, if I paid thirty dollars to be beautiful—in an elderly fashion—I could break Archie Hamilton of contradicting every innocent statement made in his presence (he’d say the sea wasn’t salt if he had a chance), and induce Dr. Nett not to tell us any more about the Panama Canal? It would be money well invested; but I fear—I fear—
The amazing thing about the whole business is that it should be worth while. Last winter in a magazine I read a very serious and sanguine paper called “A Revolution in Advertising.” The writer—it is always a woman who believes in the perfectibility of our fallen race—wanted advertisers, one and all, to abandon romance and become educational mediums. She begged them to give us their aid in apportioning our incomes, to tell us “facts about economy and expenditure,” to impart to us the secrets of skill and the principles of science. She sought to make our department stores “museums of vital importance.” As the stores are already concert-halls and picture-galleries, cooking-schools, day nurseries, and vaudeville shows, it seems grasping to ask them to be museums as well; but to expect them to teach us the value of economy is like expecting the steamship companies to teach us the advantages of staying at home. It is not, after all, the money we save, but the money we spend, which benefits the shopkeeper. He may tell us that we economize when we buy a seventy-five-dollar costume for thirty-nine dollars and a half. According to his computation we shall save thirty-five dollars and fifty cents—quite a comfortable sum—by so doing. Who was it that said that figures lie more than anything in the world except facts; and by what system, I often wonder, does the advertiser regulate his choice of numerals? Human greed and human credulity are his only guides. If he said the costume was reduced from seventy-five dollars to sixty dollars, we’d say it wasn’t worth while; and if he said it was reduced from seventy-five to fifteen, we’d say we didn’t believe it; so he has to choose some happy medium which will sound both tempting and trustworthy. He depends on our gullibility, and he does not depend in vain.
What I like best, however, are the ingenious appeals that cast all cramping veracities to the winds. I like being invited (don’t laugh, I can show you the advertisement) to grow potatoes in a closet, or in my spare room. “Method cheap, simple, and sure.” “No digging, no hoeing” (I should think not, in my spare room!). All the potatoes I want to eat, and “immense profits” if I send them to market. No labor involved, and no annoyance, save possibly the loss of an occasional guest, as I could not well have friends sleeping in my potato-patch. I have heard of people raising mushrooms and angleworms in their cellars (I’d as soon eat one as the other); but a truck-garden in the next room would be living in the heart of nature.
And now Massachusetts, in a spasm of integrity, is trying to restrain the exuberance of the advertiser, to clip his wings, andteach him the worth of sobriety. The State proposes to abolish fraudulent advertisements, and to construe the word “fraudulent” so that it will cover any statement that can be proved to be false. A thing must really and truly be just what the advertiser says it is. But oh, Eleanor, what a tangle for the law to smooth out! If, like the three rogues in the Hindoo legend, you sell a dog for a sheep, that, of course, is a transparent lie. But if you say that Clarence Coventry’s book is an “epoch-making narrative,” who shall prove the contrary? We’d have to wait so long to find out the truth that our graves would yawn for us in the interval. And if in 1950 the student of social science were asked, “Who wrote ‘The Three Golden Apples,’ and what influence did it have upon its day?” and he should answer—very naturally—that he never had heard of it, the time for investigation would be over. Clarence, and the publishers, and “The Three Golden Apples” would all be dead together.
Your affectionate friend,
Agatha Reynolds.
P.S. Don’t send me the book for a birthday present.