Why limit it to ads?: Appeal To Vanity

Appealing to vanity is a common narrative device, often as ways to outwit some villains, or tricking characters into doing things. It can even be a way to successfully implore a leader to Please Spare Him, My Liege!. Limiting it to ads just seems wrong.

Well, because the trope is used very differently in advertising. Advertising is, by nature, targeted at the viewer, and appealing to the viewer's vanity is pretty different from appealing to another character's vanity.

The form isn't that different, and definitely not different enough to make it medium specific. It's still trying to get people to do something (whether it's buying a product or tricking a monster into letting you go) based on the person's vanity.

Whether or not the trope plays out in a characteristic way in advertising, the name is general and so it the trope. I think the name belongs with appeals to vanity in all works, not just advertising. I'd suggest expanding the article while retaining the existing material.

edited 9th Mar '11 7:14:20 PM by Camacan

Three day clock set as requested.

Any other thoughts on the matter?

If it's going to be just about advertising, it badly needs a rename. But I'm not at all convinced that the advertising version is particularly different from the standard in-universe version.

Part of the description of Please Spare Him, My Liege! includes appealing to the leader's vanity.

Anything happening here? I see a clock thingy dating from August.

I've rewritten the intro to make it no longer limited to advertising, since as a trope it's been in use since at least the first century AD, and probably longer than that.

Now it needs examples from media categories other than Advertising.

edited 6th Oct '11 10:22:15 PM by Madrugada

Fine, let "Appeal to Vanity" apply to the larger idea, but advertising is definitely its own trope.

If one person in an ad appeals to another's vanity, that's like a character in a show doing the same. But appealing to the VIEWER's vanity is very different. It's a persuasive technique rather than the narrative technique. It's the difference between Show Some Leg and Sexy Packaging. Or Mind Screw and Dada Ad, or Stepford Smiler and Stepford Consumer.

Changing the focus of a trope doesn't make a different trope. Shes Got Legs (that trope you mentioned is a distraction trope) on a Sexy Packaging would still count as the tropes they are.

Shes Got Legs (the trope you mentioned) and Show Some Leg (the sexy distraction trope) are different tropes though and used for different reasons. You seem to be confusing them though or not reading right.

edited 7th Oct '11 8:10:29 AM by shimaspawn

The device: getting someone to do something by telling them how wonderful they are and that they deserve to have something good because of that wonderfulness. The device is no different in advertising than in storytelling. The end result is generally no different, either: they do something that may well be against their best interest, because they didn't think.

That should be incorporated into the description, by the way.

edited 7th Oct '11 9:58:17 AM by DragonQuestZ

They are not one device. One is a narrative device. One is not.

A fictional appeal to vanity is not actually an attempt to make anyone do anything. The author who chose it has ultimate power over the characters and could make them act without an appeal. The fictional appeal is a narrative device wherein a character appeals to another's vanity. The ultimate goal is our entertainment. The point is: "look at this vain character! Look at how well he falls into our heroine's trap! Laugh! Applaud! Note his vanity and her cunning! Marvel at the turn of events!"

An actual appeal to vanity really is an attempt to persuade someone. There is no narrative.

If you notice the trope in fiction, the trope succeeded. If you notice the trope in advertising, the trope failed.

"A fictional appeal to vanity is not actually an attempt to make anyone do anything. The author who chose it has ultimate power over the characters and could make them act without an appeal."

What? You're confusing the In-Universe reasons for meta reasons (writers can't just make people do things without looking like contrivances). And you clearly don't know the context. Appealing to vanity has HISTORICAL grounds. Things like sweet talking a vain king into doing something. The tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is based partly on taking advantage of vanity. Using this in commercials and fiction are therefore just extensions of this Real Life thing.

Sure, add all the context you want to the trope description. But that still leaves us with a story where someone appeals to a character's vanity, and the trope works because the audience understands what's happening. That's different from the persuasive technique alone.

You could even offer a real life example that goes like: "Lexus advertised its car using an appeal to vanity; people bought it" - there, real life has a narrative that we're observing. But the ad itself did not offer that narrative trope. The ad itself actually tried appealing to vanity.

Try this with other tropes. Can an ad offer a Comically Small Bribe? If, say, they offer a free pen for every new car you buy? Assuming for this argument a broad definition of "bribe"... yeah, sort of. Only - no. No, even if they try the same trick as a character who offers a Comically Small Bribe, it's not a Comically Small Bribe outside the narrative of someone offering it to an unimpressed character. (But if a character in an ad offers a Comially Small Bribe to another character, then yes, that's an example.)

Or what about Honest John's Dealership, a trope about a shady dealer who tries sells just about anything? The trope exists in fiction. It exists in real-life too. It can exist in advertising, if an ad shows an untrustworthy character, humorously. But if the ad itself seems sketchy and tries to sell you lots of stuff? Is that an ad using the Honest John's Dealership trope? No. A real-life example of a dealership maybe, but not an advertisement using the trope.

"But that still leaves us with a story where someone appeals to a character's vanity, and the trope works because the audience understands what's happening. That's different from the persuasive technique alone."

No, we're not basing this trope on it just working in fiction, but it being BELIEVABLE in fiction, because it DOES work in REAL LIFE.

You're assuming that writing is about what the author chooses alone, when that stance leads to Bad Writing. Good writing involves verisimilitude, and behavior based on real life is a good way to lead to that.

One character appealing to another character's vanity is not the same as appealing to the viewer's vanity across the fourth wall.

There is no point in having three pages for the exact same thing, which is where your reasoning leads. We'd need a page for the logical fallacy, a page for the advertising technique, and a page for the storytelling use.

WHY?

In this case, I say lump. They still are appealing to a person's vanity, just through different methods.

Because they're different things. One's a fallacy. One's a persuasive technique. Those two could probably share a page, since they so often go together, and yet they don't always - you can appeal to someone's vanity without committing a fallacy. ("I admire your company. You achieved 5 percent monthly growth during the recession, which means you have an incredible product. It's better than company X's product because of Y and Z. With expanded marketing, you can do even better than you have been. Hire me. I understand you and your potential.")

The third is a storytelling trope. If you want the fictional examples to just go along the lines of "In Show X, John appeals to Jennifer's vanity by saying 'Lala,' hoping to make her blah blah," and "in show Y Trina frequently appeals to her father's vanity, saying things like 'yada yada yada'," then it's exactly the same as the advertising appeal to vanity. But that's not what we want, right?