Leo Burnett, a well-known American publicist and founder of the agency that bears his name, believed that one of the great dangers of advertising was not so much to deceive people, but to bore them to death. This highly effective idea with a premise that is at least questionable can work for a cologne advertisement, but it could be catastrophic, for example, in the promotion of health services and products, a context in which the verb kill can have a more literal meaning. Selling pants is not the same as an intorthognathic operation, which rectifies the position of the maxillary bones, or refractive surgery to correct myopia. Continue reading
