Selling Superior Status (15)

We will pay attention to people/products/ideas that use 6 “magic” words with the promise to improve our lives. The magic words are:  Easier, Better, Faster, Healthier, Safer. Happier.

Because if we improve our life, we improve our status – if our life is better (at least on the surface), we feel more confident, more significant.

When people sell products or ideas, they try to appeal to buyers by promising a product or idea will make life better – most of the time, they are selling things that will make us feel we either belong to the group we wish to identify with, or we are better than others, or that life has no meaning, so live it up because what does it matter? You'll understand the 'no meaning so live it up' by the time you reach the end of the book.
 Often, if something is sold as ‘easier’ or ‘faster’  we are tempted because it saves us time. It’s human nature for us to try and save energy so we can use that energy to pursue other interests that are important to us– so we have a tendency to try things that promises us a short cut . Basically, what I’m saying is, that most of us are lazy! And we’ve gotten lazy because we’ve been led to believe that success can be instant. Just upload a video, have it go viral, and you’ll be instantly famous! This diet plan will give you instant success – in just 5 days you can lose 10 pounds!
Marketers/Exploiters also know that health (the loss of it) is one of our basic fears along with security (you and your family will be safe!), and happier, well, that’s what were all searching for, right?
Bottom line, all of these selling (marketing) points (Easier!Better! Faster!Safer!Healthier! Happier!) work on our desire to be successful, to be valued, so we have more chance of survival and  our life will have meaning.

It’s amazing, when you stop to consider how we are constantly searching and striving for improvement. Next time you go shopping or watch a commercial – try to catch yourself falling for the “IMPROVED” promise…or reading an article online or in a magazine  that promises to tell you what the secret to getting a good night sleep is, the secret to good sex, the secret to the best chocolate chip cookie, the secret to...
“What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.”


While our desire for improving our life is commendable, we’re also easily distracted. We’ll give up tried and true methods (eat in moderation) for a new "scientifically proven diet program" if it promises us faster results and less sacrifice – but much of that attraction to the new plan is because it’s popular (it’s the new IT thing!), and you want to appear as if you’re just as clued in as the rest of the popular crowd. Or, it may not even be the ‘popular’ crowd – but it’s the crowd or group you identify with.
We become so preoccupied and lulled into a false sense of security that our attention is easily sidetracked by people who want to sell us something or want to control us for the sake of making them feel more powerful, more valuable.

Chapter one of Something That Will Change Your Life covered the 6 Basic Fears: Death, Disease, Dependency, Poverty, Insignificance and Isolation.
With the arrival of behavioral sciences and professional marketing in the late 1800’s came a combined assault on our ability to reason by using the 9 Tools Of Destruction, stoking our basic fears and “Selling” everything from politics to ideas to inventions to products to fund raisers…selling all these things was very  easy to do if it was sold using the false illusion of “experts” “science” “statistics” “studies.”
And so selling, marketing and advertising wasn’t just about liquid detergent and cars – it opened up a whole world of manipulation based on our desire for status and our instinctual fears.