"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
So said Ralph Waldo Emerson in toast of the Innovative Spirit and the rewards that (should) follow. I guess “Build it and they will come” is an abridged riff on the same. That is, assuming “It” is any good. And that’s always the trick.
I take “The Better Mousetrap” to be a compact little metaphor for consumerism and the “Creation of Want”, that bad-wrap discipline called “Advertising”.
Unlike Emerson who comes over rather chipper, E.S. Turner was clearly having an off day when he uncharitably penned...
“Advertising is the whip which hustles humanity up the road to the Better Mousetrap. It is the vision which reproaches man for the paucity of his desires.”
The Shocking History of Advertising, 1952
E.S. wasn’t an ad fan. Well ok, you can’t please all the people...
I’ve worked in advertising for a decade and half. What I know of advertising is this. It keeps the Capitalist world turning; it pays my bills and allows me to buy stuff. I know, it kinda sounds like I’m responsible for my own hamster wheel, so let me also add this.
Advertising is the inevitable output of a world we choose to live in. Maybe we don’t even have a choice. Our world is a reflection and statement on our nature, our need to be individuals, our need to belong, our need for comfort, our need for things, our need to want. I don’t see this as ugly or small. Paucity doesn’t apply. It is as it is, but it’s also bundled up in our very Big & Ambitious need to progress, to hunger and drive for More & Better.
Advertising is a lot about Emerson’s mousetrap, and only “bad advertising” applies to Turners proposal of punishment. But the punishment isn’t born of small desires, it’s deserving of limited imagination and invention.
I think advertising can be great. Great advertising, that is. That’s my goal. I love brands, and I delight in some of the work I’ve played a part in and some of the very smart people I’ve worked with. My role? I try and build better mousetraps.
SP.
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