Comments (47) Jump to Comments Form

1. 

   madKanga said, 2 months ago

   Good one, Wiley. My pet hate is the ones that suggest that “your baby/family is in danger if you do not use our product”

   Ones that just target my own insecurities (which are many) I can handle.

2. 

   jimmywfl said, 2 months ago

   The original book on marketing said, ~”our purpose is to make people unhappy and think that our product will make them happy again.”

3. 

   Destiny23 said, 2 months ago

   The stages of product development:
   Step 1 - Invent a new product.
   Step 2 - Invent a need for the product.

4. 

   cdward said, 2 months ago

   I preach a sermon now and then where I say the first ad was in Genesis - then I compare the story of the serpent and Eve with pretty much any commercial. Works like this:

   
   
   1. Chat them up to seem friendly (serpent: “Nice trees, huh? Can you eat it all?” Eve: “All but the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good & evil. We’ll die if we eat that.”)
   
   
   2. Create doubt about one’s worth (serpent: “You won’t die if you eat it. You’ll just be like God. As it is, you are NOT very godlike.”)
   
   
   3. Supply a “cure” for that doubt (serpent: “But if you eat the fruit, you’ll be just fine.” Eve: “Oh, okay.”)
   
   

5. 

   nonsequitous said, 2 months ago

   Step 1 - Invent a new product.
   Step 2 - Invent a need for the product.

   Heh. Saw a documentary about an ad campaign once. They started with the look and feel of the ad campaign, then worked backwards from there. The last step was the product.

   I’m not kidding.

   the first ad was in Genesis

   I’d say God was the first real estate agent - “You’ll love it here - trust me! Just stay out of the orchard. Too many snakes.”

   And the first yenta. “She’s a really nice girl, Adam. And an arm and a leg, my services shouldn’t be costing you.”

   One of CarTalk’s puzzler’s once was about an ad man who promised to double sales of a certain retail home product for his client by adding one word to the label.

   Any guesses? Name the product
   and the one word.

   No fair posting the answer if you already know.

6. 

   Tanya said, 2 months ago

   Too early in the morning to rack my brain to find answers to anything right now… lol

7. 

   60david said, 2 months ago

   The reason I read comics is that I DON’T have to think!

8. 

   curlydog48 said, 2 months ago

   This could also work for Extenz adds. To which women might say “Welcome to our world”.

9. 

   ds133 said, 2 months ago

   I don’t know the product, but was the word ‘new’ or ‘improved’?

   I never actually got why those words are always paired on products. “It’s new and improved!” And then I try to figure out how they could possible have improved something when its new.

10. 

    rac0308 said, 2 months ago

    scare tactics have been around for years….I had a life insurance salesman ask me if I wanted my family to remember me fondly.

    I told him I wanted them to remember me as I am …

    A Pr!^&…

    He left.

    Sorry, I don’t remember who I stole the line from, Carlin maybe? but it worked.

11. 

    Richard said, 2 months ago

    Destiny 23 said
    The stages of product development:
    Step 1 - Invent a new product.
    Step 2 - Invent a need for the product

    one more step
    Step 3 - Invent “new and improved”.

12. 

    Craig Linder said, 2 months ago

    Back in the day, Cincinnati had a great independent rock station, WEBN, which did some great satire. One of their best was a series of fake commercials for Brute Force Cybernetics, “The company that creates a need and then fills it.”

    Wiley would have fit right in as a writer for them.

13. 

    BC13 said, 2 months ago

    Well at least they don’t have to invent gullible people. There are plenty of them already out there.

14. 

    puddleglum1066 said, 2 months ago

    Wiley, you’re slipping behind the times. Modern marketing has figured out how to get the sucker–I mean, consumer–to not only pay for the product, but to pay up front for the ad as well. Consider, for instance, those extra-cost “services” that let you watch movie trailers and other ads on your cell phone. Yep, pay an extra monthly fee for the privilege of seeing ads. Wow, sign me up… and while you’re at it, shove the old Crayola Oblongata all the way up into my frontal lobes, Dr. Moe…

15. 

    johndh123 said, 2 months ago

    Great stuff!
    How about this one from a past quipster…

    “Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need. ”

    Will Rogers

16. 

    Bdaysuit said, 2 months ago

    Good ole Will;

    As good now, as he was then.

17. 

    grazer said, 2 months ago

    Someone wisely dubbed false advertising as “the permissable lie” years ago. I couldn’t agree more.

    I also agree with the idea that false advertising got it’s jumpstart in the Garden of Eden….and now here we are madly trying to purchase our way back.

18. 

    bunnyface (bmonk) said, 2 months ago

    @madKanga, I think the epitome of that was the recent spate of ads that claim (for your kids, who are threatened by the evil germs), “A cleaner world is a better world,” when there is recent evidence that “a cleaner world,” free of anything for the immune system to cut its teeth on, is in fact a world that promotes allergies, asthma, and other serious problems.

19. 

    Potrzebie said, 2 months ago

    quadruple razor shavers. What a concept. SNL did a skit on triple head shavers back in the day.

20. 

    johndh123 said, 2 months ago

    Potrzebie said, 10 minutes ago

    “quadruple razor shavers. What a concept…”

    I know I know, but, sob, I confess, those dang multiple bladed, sniff, shavers DO work better….sob, honk! (crying because they cost so much!)

21. 

    Alex Williamson said, 2 months ago

    Wash your head Roger.

22. 

    treered said, 2 months ago

    “Strawberry Shortcake” anyone?

23. 

    Radish said, 2 months ago

    I knew a guy who sold fire alarms with the line, “you don’t want your family to die in a fire, do you?”

    Is JC on the cross the greatest advertiseing icon?

24. 

    Joe-Allen "Joe" Doty said, 2 months ago

    Wouldn’t a better name for that product be “Chrome Dome Wash?”

    The 2nd human being did NOT have a name when the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was eaten.

    If fact, a literal translation of what is in Genesis 2 in the Hebrew language text proves that LORD God made a MALE companion for the 1st human.

    The Hebrew text uses “ezer” for help, helper, or companion. A female help, helper or companion is an “ezeroth” in Hebrew.

    The 1st person was an “eesh” (or Ish) which means “person.” And “eshah” means “from a person” literally. But, the KJV translates “eshah” as “woman” and “eesh” as “man.”

    LORD God called all humans “adam.”

    “Woman” is from an Old English word which means “man’s wife.”

25. 

    Joe-Allen "Joe" Doty said, 2 months ago

    People assume “Christ” was Jesus’ last name. But, he would have been called in English, Joshua Bar Joseph (Joshua Josephson in modern translation).

    The Christ didn’t die on the cross. The Christ spirit left Jesus’ body so that Jesus could die on the cross. The Christ spirit returned to the body just before the resurrection took place.

26. 

    Chikuku said, 2 months ago

    Jesus was usually called “Yeshua Bar Abba.” Jesus, Son of the Father. The notion that “Barabbas” was another guy is one of history’s Big Lies.

    The Forbidden Fruit was animal flesh. Snakes are all carnivores. No such thing as a vegetarian serpent. Snakes do not talk with words, they teach by example.

27. 

    thepeoplesmushroom said, 2 months ago

    “If you drink this beer, you’ll lose weight and bang beautiful wmoen on the hood of your porsche”

    that one is a staple of the modern world

28. 

    hendelca said, 2 months ago

    So - what was the product and the word???????

29. 

    ChukLitl said, 2 months ago

    I want to sue Rogain, The Hair Club, et al, for creating a hostile environment by implying that there’s something wrong with being bald. A family history of baldness has provided me with a keen ability to recognize snake-oil salesmen.

30. 

    bunnyface (bmonk) said, 2 months ago

    Potrzebie said, about 4 parodies ago

    “quadruple razor shavers. What a concept. SNL did a skit on triple head shavers back in the day.”

    I remember when double blade razors became popular, there was a spoof with a five-blade razor. Little did they know…

31. 

    FLChiefFan said, 2 months ago

    Best shave I ever had was from a cheap BIC single blade with a bar positioned just in front of the blade. Wish I could still get that razor.

32. 

    kat827618 said, 2 months ago

    Nose Hitt!

    That’s why I got rid of the TV, threw out the magazines and catalogs, and ignore the movie industry –all very easy to do.

33. 

    leebradley said, 2 months ago

    Joe Allen Doty:

    The word translated helper is ezer, which is a masculine form. However that is a statement of the problem. In the statement of Eve’s creation in verse 22 it says He made a WOMAN and brought HER. Woman is the translation of ishah which definitely means woman and a feminine form. Her is a translation of a feminine pronoun. Ish could be person or man depending on the context. Just like the English we learned in the olden days, a masculine “he” is definitely used of a man and can be used of a person who could be male or female. Yes, Adam means human.

34. 

    treered said, 2 months ago

    friend of mine told me this (he was bald):
    
    god created all heads, with some he was pleased, the others he covered with hair

35. 

    madbard said, 2 months ago

    what is this “sign-off contest” thingy? is wiley calling it quits?

36. 

    Trebor39 said, 2 months ago

    Mix some substance with high promise, bottle it, and you have a snake oil the gullible will always buy.

37. 

    Joe-Allen "Joe" Doty said, 2 months ago

    Since when does animal flesh grow on trees, Chikuku?

    The forbidden fruit grew on the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

    In Hebrew, when something is created from something the Hebrew letter transliterated as “H” is added to it.

    The Hebrew Bible “word” sometimes translated as “him” and “her” also can be translated as “it.”

    I put “word” in quotation marks because letters are attached to the verb to imply “him,” “her” or “it” and also “to him,” “to her” or “to it.”

    When “him” and “her” are mentioned in the English translation a number of times in Genesis 2, no actual Hebrew pronoun exists in the original text, it is just implied in the verb.

38. 

    HabaneroBuck said, 2 months ago

    Joe Allen Doty…as Wiley has written maybe a hundred times, this particular strip is not even about religion or politics, so why all the spewage? And I say spewage not out of a blasphemous tone, but out of the fact that you are a long-winded apostate. The Christ left Jesus so he could die on the cross? Pure nonsense…

    Anyway, I don’t even like Non Sequitur, but this is a good one.

39. 

    pbarnrob said, 2 months ago

    Been reading (finally, slow going) John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New Industrial State (1978 ed), where he talks about precisely this problem (and may be part of why he fell out of favor with the corporatocracy!)

    Make a swell campaign, get it all ready to launch, then put together some product to put in it. It’s not about the product at all, it’s about controlling the (otherwise scary) pricing and costs of the market. You have to be big enough, to get away with it.

40. 

    Atma said, 2 months ago

    We still live in an age where lies are made into truth and truth is derided as lies, so very few can tell the difference, and everybody else is arguing about it.

41. 

    Ushindi said, 2 months ago

    Wiley: I didn’t see anything at all about religion in your cartoon - did I not understand something?

42. 

    locoboilerguy said, 2 months ago

    Its the new substitute for politics in the comments.
    Great toon.

43. 

    nicholmike said, 2 months ago

    Repeat

44. 

    Joe-Allen "Joe" Doty said, 2 months ago

    I did NOT bring up the subject of Religion. Someone else did!

45. 

    nonsequitous said, 2 months ago

    I did NOT bring up the subject of Religion. Someone else did!

    But I do believe that Wiley has repeatedly asked that people not proselytize about their religious beliefs here. I see several dozen lines from you doing just that. IMHBIO, Someone else merely bringing up the mere subject in general is no excuse.

    As a faithful pagan and Satan worshiper, I do not appreciate being subject to long screeds about others’ relligious beliefs when I come here looking for jokes about caniballism, bald heads, megalomanic world-domation-seeking bad-pun-making social retards, talking horses not named Ed, and the right to arm bears with meat cleavers.

    So please, do as WIley has repeatedly asked, for Ch- er, for Go- er, for pete’s sake.

    Or I might get really cross next time. And nobody wants that.

    What? No, I was not talking about St. Peter. It was another Pete. My … Uncle Pete. Believe me, he warn’t no saint. Ask his PO.

46. 

    slowflyer said, 2 months ago

    I think nickolmike is correct about the word. The product, of course, is shampoo

47. 

    Jocko84 said, 2 months ago

    Oh, I thought it was Electrolux, and the word was “really,” as in: “Electrolux REALLY sucks!”