Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 14:08:46 :
In Reply to: Who Knew This; Or how Bad is Chrysler Advertising? posted by MoparNorm on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 10:48:32 :
Years ago, when I worked as an engineer for a electronic test equipment company that had a reputation for making good products but had what you might call an "old-school" sales department, a friend of mine, also an engineer, said that a marketeer is a man who, given the choice between selling the product by telling the truth about it and selling the product by lying about it, will lie about it because he considers that to be the greater intellectual challenge. In other words, the products could easily be sold on their specifications alone, but the marketeers and salesmen would ignore the specs and instead promise the customers that it would do things that it wouldn't do.
It seems like something similar is true in car and truck advertising. The Japanese will sell it based on its specs (fuel economy, price, reliability, etc.), whereas the American marketeers have a better vehicle to sell, spec-wise, but instead they try to sell it based on the implied claim that it will make you hang out with sports stars, make you look cool, get you laid, etc.