It all started with tomatoes. The tomatoes from my friend’s home garden and from the CSA tasted so much better than the tomatoes I got from the grocery store. I was dismayed to realize what I had been missing out on this whole time.

It’s no surprise. I’d never really even tasted a tomato. Commercial tomatoes are bred for size, appearance, and resistance to damage during shipping, not flavor. They are usually picked green and then ripened by exposing them to ethylene.

This got me thinking about the dilution and substitution of experience. My definition of a tomato had been watered down so thoroughly that I hardly knew what I was missing. Of course, the lack of substance isn’t really relevant to marketers, who are happy to supply us with other forms of stimulation to keep us from noticing what we’ve lost.

Which brings me to this commercial, from NBC:

It’s a cute commercial, no doubt, but I found myself thinking, “I really like The Office, but I hardly ever find myself actually laughing out loud at it, never mind laughing my ass off. In fact, I almost never laugh at network TV, even shows I like.”

And then I started to see it everywhere: the unbelievably hyperbolic adjectives used in advertising to describe the experience you are supposed to associate with the product. Advertising has always exaggerated the virtues of the product; that’s nothing new. The interesting thing to me about these ads is the way in which they exaggerate not qualities of the product itself, but the experience that you will presumably have when you use or consume the product. The difference between the promise and reality is profound.

An ad for Petit Ecolier, a chocolate-covered cookie, suggests that you, “Lose and find yourself in one bite.” If that’s the experience that you will have when you eat the cookie, then I want some of whatever chemicals you’re taking. Can a cookie even do that? The ad below describes one woman’s experience of eating a Hardee’s hamburger. As you watch it, think back to the last fast food hamburger you ate, and ask yourself if it “reminded you of being in high school, sneaking out before dinner to savor that sweet, spicy sauce.”

What the fuck? I mean, I’ve had some decent fast food hamburgers, but at best, they were a mouth full of beef, lettuce, tomato, mayo, ketchup, and pickle. It’s the experience of eating a hamburger, but nothing transcendent.

This ad for Wisconsin blue cheese reads, “Wisconsin blue never holds his tongue. Not one for idle chitchat. Blue doesn’t waste time with social pleasantries. When ordering a bottle of red, he neither asks the sommelier for advice nor requests to see the wine list. Pinot noir it is. That’s Blue. He’s bold, determined, and opinionated.”

This is really the height of projecting an experience onto a product. I mean, it’s cheese, but it’s being sold as if it’s introducing itself to you on the Dating Game. News flash: cheese is never opinionated.

Is this just an extension of the normal exaggeration that goes on in advertising, or is this something new? What do you think is going on here?