Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for November 24, 2009

Good one, Wiley. My pet hate is the ones that suggest that “your baby/family is in danger if you do not use our product”

Ones that just target my own insecurities (which are many) I can handle.

The original book on marketing said, ~”our purpose is to make people unhappy and think that our product will make them happy again.”

The stages of product development: Step 1 - Invent a new product. Step 2 - Invent a need for the product.

I preach a sermon now and then where I say the first ad was in Genesis - then I compare the story of the serpent and Eve with pretty much any commercial. Works like this:

Step 1 - Invent a new product. Step 2 - Invent a need for the product.

Heh. Saw a documentary about an ad campaign once. They started with the look and feel of the ad campaign, then worked backwards from there. The last step was the product.

I’m not kidding.

the first ad was in Genesis

I’d say God was the first real estate agent - “You’ll love it here - trust me! Just stay out of the orchard. Too many snakes.”

And the first yenta. “She’s a really nice girl, Adam. And an arm and a leg, my services shouldn’t be costing you.”

One of CarTalk’s puzzler’s once was about an ad man who promised to double sales of a certain retail home product for his client by adding one word to the label.

Any guesses? Name the product and the one word.

No fair posting the answer if you already know.

Too early in the morning to rack my brain to find answers to anything right now… lol

The reason I read comics is that I DON’T have to think!

This could also work for Extenz adds. To which women might say “Welcome to our world”.

I don’t know the product, but was the word ‘new’ or ‘improved’?

I never actually got why those words are always paired on products. “It’s new and improved!” And then I try to figure out how they could possible have improved something when its new.

scare tactics have been around for years….I had a life insurance salesman ask me if I wanted my family to remember me fondly.

I told him I wanted them to remember me as I am …

A Pr!^&…

He left.

Sorry, I don’t remember who I stole the line from, Carlin maybe? but it worked.

Destiny 23 said The stages of product development: Step 1 - Invent a new product. Step 2 - Invent a need for the product

one more step Step 3 - Invent “new and improved”.

Back in the day, Cincinnati had a great independent rock station, WEBN, which did some great satire. One of their best was a series of fake commercials for Brute Force Cybernetics, “The company that creates a need and then fills it.”

Wiley would have fit right in as a writer for them.

Well at least they don’t have to invent gullible people. There are plenty of them already out there.

Wiley, you’re slipping behind the times. Modern marketing has figured out how to get the sucker–I mean, consumer–to not only pay for the product, but to pay up front for the ad as well. Consider, for instance, those extra-cost “services” that let you watch movie trailers and other ads on your cell phone. Yep, pay an extra monthly fee for the privilege of seeing ads. Wow, sign me up… and while you’re at it, shove the old Crayola Oblongata all the way up into my frontal lobes, Dr. Moe…

Great stuff! How about this one from a past quipster…

“Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need. ”

Will Rogers

Good ole Will;

As good now, as he was then.

Someone wisely dubbed false advertising as “the permissable lie” years ago. I couldn’t agree more.

I also agree with the idea that false advertising got it’s jumpstart in the Garden of Eden….and now here we are madly trying to purchase our way back.

@madKanga, I think the epitome of that was the recent spate of ads that claim (for your kids, who are threatened by the evil germs), “A cleaner world is a better world,” when there is recent evidence that “a cleaner world,” free of anything for the immune system to cut its teeth on, is in fact a world that promotes allergies, asthma, and other serious problems.

quadruple razor shavers. What a concept. SNL did a skit on triple head shavers back in the day.

Potrzebie said, 10 minutes ago

“quadruple razor shavers. What a concept…”

I know I know, but, sob, I confess, those dang multiple bladed, sniff, shavers DO work better….sob, honk! (crying because they cost so much!)

Wash your head Roger.

“Strawberry Shortcake” anyone?

“If you drink this beer, you’ll lose weight and bang beautiful wmoen on the hood of your porsche”

that one is a staple of the modern world

So - what was the product and the word???????

I want to sue Rogain, The Hair Club, et al, for creating a hostile environment by implying that there’s something wrong with being bald. A family history of baldness has provided me with a keen ability to recognize snake-oil salesmen.

Potrzebie said, about 4 parodies ago

“quadruple razor shavers. What a concept. SNL did a skit on triple head shavers back in the day.”

I remember when double blade razors became popular, there was a spoof with a five-blade razor. Little did they know…

Best shave I ever had was from a cheap BIC single blade with a bar positioned just in front of the blade. Wish I could still get that razor.

Nose Hitt!

That’s why I got rid of the TV, threw out the magazines and catalogs, and ignore the movie industry –all very easy to do.

Joe Allen Doty:

The word translated helper is ezer, which is a masculine form. However that is a statement of the problem. In the statement of Eve’s creation in verse 22 it says He made a WOMAN and brought HER. Woman is the translation of ishah which definitely means woman and a feminine form. Her is a translation of a feminine pronoun. Ish could be person or man depending on the context. Just like the English we learned in the olden days, a masculine “he” is definitely used of a man and can be used of a person who could be male or female. Yes, Adam means human.

friend of mine told me this (he was bald): god created all heads, with some he was pleased, the others he covered with hair

what is this “sign-off contest” thingy? is wiley calling it quits?

Mix some substance with high promise, bottle it, and you have a snake oil the gullible will always buy.

Joe Allen Doty…as Wiley has written maybe a hundred times, this particular strip is not even about religion or politics, so why all the spewage? And I say spewage not out of a blasphemous tone, but out of the fact that you are a long-winded apostate. The Christ left Jesus so he could die on the cross? Pure nonsense…

Anyway, I don’t even like Non Sequitur, but this is a good one.

Been reading (finally, slow going) John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New Industrial State (1978 ed), where he talks about precisely this problem (and may be part of why he fell out of favor with the corporatocracy!)

Make a swell campaign, get it all ready to launch, then put together some product to put in it. It’s not about the product at all, it’s about controlling the (otherwise scary) pricing and costs of the market. You have to be big enough, to get away with it.

Wiley: I didn’t see anything at all about religion in your cartoon - did I not understand something?

Its the new substitute for politics in the comments. Great toon.

Repeat

I did NOT bring up the subject of Religion. Someone else did!

But I do believe that Wiley has repeatedly asked that people not proselytize about their religious beliefs here. I see several dozen lines from you doing just that. IMHBIO, Someone else merely bringing up the mere subject in general is no excuse.

As a faithful pagan and Satan worshiper, I do not appreciate being subject to long screeds about others’ relligious beliefs when I come here looking for jokes about caniballism, bald heads, megalomanic world-domation-seeking bad-pun-making social retards, talking horses not named Ed, and the right to arm bears with meat cleavers.

So please, do as WIley has repeatedly asked, for Ch- er, for Go- er, for pete’s sake.

Or I might get really cross next time. And nobody wants that.

What? No, I was not talking about St. Peter. It was another Pete. My … Uncle Pete. Believe me, he warn’t no saint. Ask his PO.

I think nickolmike is correct about the word. The product, of course, is shampoo

Oh, I thought it was Electrolux, and the word was “really,” as in: “Electrolux REALLY sucks!”