Manufactured Demand

I went to shave yesterday, only to discover I was out of shaving cream. Well, I figured, I can either find something else that will work or wait till I buy more shaving cream. Being a lazy bum I hadn't shaved in some time, and it was getting itchy, so I figured, shaving now would be best. I remembered hearing someone say that ordinary soap worked better than shaving cream, so I took the bar of soap, worked up a lather and used that. I wouldn't say it was a better shave than with shaving cream, but it was certainly no worse. About the same, overall. But even this was surprising. If soap works as well, why do I waste money buying shaving cream? What is the point of it? More importantly how many other useless toiletries do I waste money on? What else can be replaced by a simple bar of soap? What about toothpaste? Only one way to find out.

Blearh. OK not toothpaste.
All joking aside though, toothpaste really is just soap, abrasives and mint flavouring. It's probably all the same. I had an uncle who brushed his teeth with baking soda. I'm not saying he used Arm & Hammer brand toothpaste. No, he just took a clump of baking soda, placed it on his toothbrush and brushed his teeth with it. He was a highly eccentric man, so perhaps this might not be the best idea. Then again there didn't seem to be anything horribly wrong with his teeth either, so perhaps he was on to something after all.

I suppose the best example of this phenomenon I'm talking about is with Listerine. They developed this antiseptic product and then started looking for uses for it. Eventually someone came up with the idea that people could rinse their mouths with it, and mouthwash was born. Listerine began a marketing blitz which told people about the evils of halitosis, bad breath, which before that, wasn't really something people thought about. This fact is something I learned from this blog's namesake, the show QI, so I won't go on for too long about this. But what's remarkable about this is that the Listerine ad campaign didn't just make people self conscious about their own breath, it led people to begin worrying about each others breath as well. People began expecting others to have nice smelling breath, in short Listerine was able to create a new social norm, in order to sell a product which no one even knew they needed before. I'm not trying to pick specificially on personal care items, it's just the most obvious example of this phenomenon. I'm not even trying to bash corporations with this post either. I'm more just fascinated with the idea that advertising campaigns can completely invent social norms that otherwise wouldn't exist. So think about it. Next time you see a commercial, ask yourself, are they selling a product to solve a problem, or are they selling a problem I didn't know I needed a solution to?