SEX! Read on!
Advertise!, Advertise!, Advertise! The King and His Kingdom!!! [Sex Implication: If you do it the King will not like you, and you will be unfit to Advertise the King and His Kingdom.] Learn to live as clean and holy people to survive into the New World just ahead! [Sex implication: if you do it and/or like it you are in danger! Of not surviving.] Nothing in such WTS headlines say one word about Sex. So how it is that SEX can be interpreted by any implication?
There are many mistaken beliefs about the advertising industry that take on a conspiratorial theory. Many believe that advertisers use subliminal messages to control our minds in an effort to get us to buy a product or service. Many believe that advertisers ‘create’ a false sense of need to get us to buy something that we really do not need. Many also believe that advertisers are really trying to sell SEX! Is any of this true? Does the Watch Tower Society use such devious and manipulative methods to sell its religion?
Since I left engineering, I have worked in sales and advertising. The product I sell is real estate with a house, apartment building, office building or retail shopping center attached. I also manage retail shopping centers and condominiums. What I used to think about advertising often matched that of people who are not truly involved with the industry.
Contrary to popular belief, advertisers do not create ‘need’ or products to serve needs. Products and services are invented and developed by people looking for ways to do things more cost effectively, faster and with better quality. Product development often leads to discovering things that will meet needs not before realized. Before the typewriter, people wrote by hand. They needed good pencils and pens. But, the typewriter advanced their skills, speed and efficiency. Then copies of material became more important, and hence the development of carbon paper, photocopy machines, then the PC. It is an evolutionary process.
What advertisers do - and I use these methods in selling my services - is to first and foremost ‘Get Attention!. If people do not know that you have products and services for sale, they will not call you. It is as simple as that. Second, advertising itself gets attention if it is brief - unlike this post - and meets a basic need. In real estate, loans, price, interest rate, down payment, and affordability of monthly payments are all essential ingredients in meeting people’s needs. If our advertising at least suggests that those needs can be dealt with, then people will call to find out more.
What is the most basic element in advertising? Is it the sexy girl standing next to the new car that makes you buy it? Is it the desire for sex that causes people to succumb to an ad and buy a particular car? Do advertisers really employ SEX with the idea of seducing the buying public? No to all of the above!
Sex is used as an attention getter. That is all. If you don’t notice or listen to my advertising, then my advertising dollar is wasted. So, to obtain the maximum impact, I might employ an effective attention getter. Sex is but one of many means to do this. Bold, italics, underlining, splashy color are good examples of other ways to get attention. Sex is not always useful, such as in legal ads by injury lawyers. Instead, they use an accident scene, disfigured bodies, or huge medical bills to grab attention.
ATTENTION! Get this point!!!: The most basic element used in almost ALL advertising is FEAR. Fear is our most basic animal instinct that is mostly controlled by autonomic functions rather than higher brain functions. When I show a house, and the buyers are struggling to make a decision, I can effectively employ fear of loss if they fail to act now. This is not evil, because I am open about the use of fear. I let the facts stand for themselves. When I show several houses and they are sold before my clients can make an offer, then they see that delay is costing them time and money.
But, like anything, Fear can be used and abused to manipulate people, and if one is not ethical and honest, then one can perpetrate fraud.
The Watch Tower Society does not use sexy girls in two piece bathing suits to capture your attention. I also doubt that they use any subliminal methods to promote their religion and literature. The WTS does, however, employ SEX as an attention getter. Many of their articles deal with teen sex, or adultery, or masturbation, or homosexuality, or rape, or many others aspects of sex. Rarely have I ever seen a WTS article talk about and feature Sex in positive terms, or in training couple to get more out of sex. Rather, the WTS seems obsessed with SEX in the negative. But, no matter how it is employed by the WTS, Sex is merely an attention tool. The real basic tool is what the WTS does use best; and that is they use Fear to its full potential.
Will you be among the ‘few’ who find the ‘narrow’ road to ‘life’ or will you be among the many billions ‘destroyed’ at the Battle of Armageddon, thus meriting Jehovah’s ‘disfavor’?
My use of ‘Life’ above is really a negative connotation or based on fear. It suggests that the alternative is ’death.’ The point is, a religion like the Watch Tower Society is based on ’fear’ and its lesser, but very effective, cousins ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’.
Product advertising by non-Watch Tower sources is mostly good and kept in check by consumers, the media, and government. But religion like the Watch Tower Society operates under the ‘separation of church and state’ legal theory inherent in the United States and other national legal systems. They largely go unchecked because of the deep social respect that non-Jehovah’s Witnesses have for human rights, the rule of law and personal freedom and conscience.
But, make no mistake, the WTS is a religion of FEAR. Just take any random sampling of its literature or listen to their public talks or convention parts to begin to see their underlying theme of fear. If you study TV and magazine ads carefully, even news promotions, you will begin to see fear is a common element in those venues.
It is all, Simply Amazing