Relevant, Differentiated, Believable

To be interested in a product or service (or even other activites, like voting etc etc), you need to think and feel that it's:
- Relevant
- Differentiated
- Believable

Perfume ads etc get round the last one of these by showing you some imagery that's relevant to your needs and reasonably different. Then they short-circuit the believability by just making an association. They never say the product will make you beautiful/rich/attractive, they just show the imagery and then flash up the product and create a unconscious association between the two.

So why doesn't everyone do this? Why aren't all ads just full of writhing beauties, beaches and puppies? Because in order to create the sub-conscious link, the viewer has to be in a light trance. That's quite hard to do, and takes a while.