Our World is Full of Lies

Every year in Geometry class when we learn about conditional statements (sentences in if-then form), I have my students do a project analyzing advertisements. I’ve changed the project to fit the class’s needs every year. This year what they were assigned to do was to find one print advertisement and analyze its message. Once they thought they found the message, they had to write it as two different conditional statements. Some are easy to find. Some are a lot more hidden beneath the surface. But the general message of all advertising is, “If you buy __________ (our product), then you will be _______________ (smarter, healthier, more athletic, sexier, desirable to the opposite sex, etc.).” They then had to tell if each statement was true or false. After that, they had to play the part of a marketing director and come up with an alternative – preferably more truthful – advertisement for the same project. We did those first two parts in class. The last part was to take home their project over the weekend, think about what they had learned, and write a one page paper on it. I gave them specific questions to answer to serve as a guideline for their writing; some about what a marketing director does, some about how logic and geometry relate to marketing and advertising, some about what most challenged or surprised them about their project. I love assigning papers like that, because it’s a great way to see the individual personalities of my students. Maybe I’m just way too used to grading 9th and 10th grade (primarily ESL) writing, but I really feel like these kids are saying some pretty profound things here. Here are some of my favorite quotes from their papers. Some surprised me with their depth. Some surprised me with their brutal honesty!

“I was surprised to see how many messages are noticeable in an advertisement.”

“I think it (marketing director) would be an interesting job because it would involve a lot of research with human behavior. However it also wouldn’t be desirable because often it involves a lot of deception, and as a girl I understand how greatly an advertisement can affect how you think about yourself.”

“This project was fun and difficult because it really forced me to consider how our world is so full of lies.”

“In my point of view, if you lie on your marketing message it is a sin, because lying is a sin.”

“This (logic) could help you a lot when you are buying something very expensive expecting for it to do what the advertisement says, and later on finding out that you have wasted money. The company you bought that thing from isn’t sad that you’re unsatisfied, they are just happy they have your money.”

“I think that it is hard to make ads truthfully while making the readers buy the product.”

“The very smart creative directors try to grab your attention and make you say: I HAVE TO HAVE IT.”

“Advertising is just like what the serpent did in the garden, tweaking little parts of the truth to make things tempting, intentionally making the viewers desire something they originally did not.”

“I can understand why many advertisements do not bother trying to make things honest, because there is a very low chance of making a product as appealing with only truths. What surprised me was that the director of the advertisement I chose was being very smart about how he/she used words. The words together made nothing seem like a lie, yet when you think about it more, it implies lies that seem to slip into your mind so easily.”

“I am very not interested in being a creative director because I am not good at encouraging and motivating. Instead I would probably just tear people down by telling them how bad they are because I am good at doing that and also I enjoy doing that.”

“I actually used my brain logically! I didn’t use my brain for such long time. It was actually pretty fun researching.”

“If you can’t convince them, then fool them.”

“Trust is one of the most important factors of marketing.”

“To make advertisements that are fascinating, they must have creative messages. Creative messages should have some facts but mainly include some lies that make consumers curious about some products. Therefore, we should use our logic to analyze these advertisements since they have some lies.”

“When looking at an advertisement, subliminal messages may not be seen right away, but the more you think about it the more obvious the message becomes. The problem with advertisements with subliminal messages is that they can make people think less of themselves and waste lots of their money on products they don’t actually need.”

“In a lot of ways, this project  will change my perspective in looking at advertisements in the future. Now I will consider advertisements more carefully and think whether or not I actually need it. Thank you, Miss!”

“Consumers have the right to have accurate information on things they buy.”

“The most difficult thing about this project is making an advertisement because it is hard to make it interesting without lying. Also, I’m not a very good drawer.”

“Even though it is the marketer’s job to have accurate information, it is also my responsibility to think about ads.”

“We often get deceived by advertisements that say we would not be happy unless we have their product. In that part a Christian will train himself and learn not to comply to the many traps of the world.”

“I might be interested in being a creative director. It kind of depends whether I don’t have anything else better to do. It also depends whether the pay is good or not.”

“Advertising makes us think that our lives will be better with the product so we forget that our lives are actually good and that we don’t need the product.”

“For me, the most difficult part about this project is to find an honest marketing message that can persuade people to buy it, because it’s hard to persuade people with honest marketing messages, since the easiest way to persuade people is to make them imagine good things that makes them attracted with the products, and the words that can create imagination mostly are lies.”

“Because adults are big and mature, when they look at an advertisement, instantly they know if it’s telling the truth or not. But teens and children tend to believe in everything the message is telling.”

“The devil is good at tricking us into thinking that our lives will be just as good or even better without God, and I’m learning how to reject that false advertising.”

 

That last one… MAN! These are 14 and 15 year olds, and sometimes they school me.

One last thing to leave you with – a picture I took of the alternative advertisement one 10th grader drew. I really like her advertisement because I never knew she could draw before! Also, it’s the first time I’ve seen Pop-Tarts advertised as being 100% halal!