A few years ago the company MasterCard came out with a commercial which claimed that even though you might spend a lot of money somewhere like a football game, the experience you get is priceless. This campaign was an act of single deception in that it deceived the viewer into believing that experiences are the most valuable reason to do anything, no matter what the cost. However, as more of these commercials have come out the viewer has caught on to the deception. This is seen best through parodies of the commercial shown on programs such as Saturday Night Live. Even though people have caught on to the single deception, MasterCard is still running the campaign and coming up with different commercials. These new commercials are now using double deception.

Their latest commercial features NFL quarterback Eli Manning who is shown cheering on everyday people at their normal jobs. The commercial shows what he is spending at each place, such as the grocery store, a restaurant, and an auto shop. The previous commercials show normal people charging large amounts of money to be able to go to the Superbowl and spending time with their son at the Superbowl is priceless. The viewer has caught on to the fact that spending a priceless moment with your son doesn’t have to cost any money. With this in mind, MasterCard has reversed the roles and put a celebrity in the role of a normal person. Instead of going on extravagant trips, which the viewer would expect, he goes to the grocery store and acts like his fans. By doing this, MasterCard has double-deceived the viewer by being honest and showing what normal people use their MasterCard for, and that any moment can be priceless. Double deception continues throughout the commercial because we see the celebrity athlete Eli Manning doing things we know he wouldn’t do in real life. For example, when he celebrates the waiter’s apron as if it is a player’s jersey it is clear that we know this would never happen, but since we know it would never happen the idea becomes more appealing, causing us to enjoy the slogan “priceless.” Part of the reason for the enjoyment is that something like this would never happen and part of it is because MasterCard is now parodying itself, which is therefore double deception.

One recent trend in advertising is that of the double deception. In this method, the advertiser seems to simply have given up trying to trick the viewer and has more or less come clean with the truth, or at the very least their version of the truth.

One variation of this theme appears in a current television commercial for Wendy’s new bacon mushroom melt sandwich. This commercial seems to be both pointing out and at the same time making fun of the way television advertisements can control their viewers. In this commercial, the sandwich itself is given mystical powers of control over people who are exposed to it. The protagonist of the commercial uses the powers of the sandwich to control the people around him. When faced with the possibility of getting in trouble with his parents, he simply waves a bacon mushroom melt sandwich in front of their faces and the trouble disappears. Our hero then confronts an attractive girl who will not date him. When this sandwich is waved in front of her face, her resistance to the date is defeated.

A moment indicating direct control over the viewer is also present in this commercial. The scene cuts away to a backdrop of a spinning black and white pinwheel that is commonly associated with hypnotism. In front of the hypnotic wheel are floating several pictures of the new sandwich that is being advertised. Clearly such an image is intended to ridicule the effort to lure and control consumers while the company is in the process of making just such an effort. Such an obvious and silly effort at control over the viewer is intended to give the impression that no effort at control is being made, when in fact that is exactly what is occurring.

A casual observer of such a report may wish to question its necessity. Is it really necessary to investigate the media that we are all surrounded by each and every day? I would say that quite clearly it is both needed and beneficial to society in general. People’s opinions and tastes are shaped and molded by the environment in which they live. This includes the movies, television and yes, even the commercials that we see. An investigation into the various forms of popular media is not only very revealing about the present state of our society, it can also indicate in which ways our society is changing and growing.

Double deception, the art perfected by humans of telling someone the truth and expecting them to take it as a lie, has been used in advertising more profoundly over the past several years as times progress from the modern to what some call the postmodern. European advertising, however, has been utilizing double deception in advertising for over twenty years. In a typical single deception advertisement, a product is sold using sex at a subconscious level. For example, a woman lying in her bathtub at home telling her husband over the phone that she is “head over heels in DOVE” (1), subconsciously connotes to the viewer that if they buy Dove, they will somehow be able to achieve a relationship like the one that she is in and be able to look like her.

A commercial that utilizes double deception, however, sells sex on a conscious level to the viewer because it understands that the viewer understands what it is trying to achieve. In this case, advertisements skip the subtle sexual messages and go right to selling sex to promote their product. Though American culture has recently tapped into this method of advertisement with product ads like “Arbor Mist” and “Axe Body Spray,” European culture has been using advertisements like these since at least 1981. One poster in Paris that was posted in 1981 showed a young girl in a bikini on the beach that promised “On September 2, I take off the top.” As promised, on the 2nd, her top was removed and the promise replaced with the promise to remove her bottoms on September 4th. On September 4th, she stood naked on the poster as a statement to prove that posters are a good medium for advertising (1). This was double deception used by advertisers to sell their own method of advertisement. Instead of using sexual connotations to prove their product worked, the advertisers just used sex.

Many advertisers in Europe recognized the fact that their audiences knew that the advertisers knew that the audiences knew that sex is what sells the product, not the product producing sex. Many advertisements for cologne, body lotions, and deodorants used direct sexual material as a way to advertise their products. Advertisers discovered that double deception was a great way to sell their products and bank off of the fact that sex sells. Instead of having to find a clever way to connote sex in their ads, they just started using sex. American culture is coming slowly but surely into the new wave of double deception; and though it is unsure as to whether American culture could ever see a naked woman on a billboard as appropriate, it is surely the case that the presence of double deception will continue to rise as American culture grows.

(1) Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Vintage Books, 1985.

While watching an episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo, deception and double deception ran wild. Although not as crafty as the professionals, the players consistently represented strength when they were weak and vice versa. Being caught in a bluff (single deception) often helps the player later because they can represent strength when they actually have strength. Such an instance occurred late in the game when Dulé Hill went up against Kelli Williams with a strong hand. Not only did he bet big, but he told her not to call him because he had a great hand. She assumed that he was lying and put her money into the pot only to get beat and ultimately lose the game. The double deception occurs because she assumes in a poker game that he could be lying at any moment. She assumes that playing aggressively could just as easily mean his hand is weak, as it would logically seem his hand is strong. Dulé suspects that his true statement will be perceived as a lie. It is not a lie but a double deception: a truth that acts as a lie.

The nature of the game itself would provide enough context for the truth to be perceived as a lie because everyone knows that bluffing makes up a large portion of the game of poker. Secondly, Dulé himself creates context for truth to be taken as a lie. By playing a marginal hand and being called on it, players see that he will act strong even though he has nothing. Similarly, if he accompanies these bluffs with big talk, he has prepared two normal behaviors that Kelli associates with a lie. When those deceptions coincide later with the truth, he knows she will interpret his actions as a lie. The context sets up the stage for the misinterpretation. Dulé knows she will misinterpret his truth as a lie because of the previous context he has set up.

The best poker players weave single deception and double deception together seamlessly. The single deceptions set the stage for the double deceptions. The bluffs get thrown around so much that truth becomes completely indiscernible from lies. Only the best players can distinguish the single deceptions from the double deceptions. Since Dulé has been on Celebrity Poker Showdown more often than Kelli Williams, he learned to lie in a more sophisticated manner—by telling the truth.

The image of hip-hop gangster music is created on notions that middle class white Americans want some sort of single deception from the artist. Recent artist such as Eminem, P. Diddy, and 50 Cent have been presented as hard core streetwise gangsters who, even after selling millions of records along with other products endorsed by them, are still connected to the gritty street. As consumers, though, we accept their deceptions because their image allows us to temporarily deceive ourselves that we are hard, tough gangsters. Yet this deception is slowly becoming harder to sell as the artists mentioned now have to do more than just sell CDs in order to sell the gangster image: they have moved into having to use motion pictures “loosely” based on their “life” story in order to deceive the audience even further. Yet one hip-hop artist has decided not to try to deceive the consumer at all, but rather has decided instead to write songs that are based on the way his life really is. He goes by the name “The Streets” and his success is based on double deceiving the consumer into believing that he is just a white suburban twenty-something who just wants to make rap music by being just a white suburban twenty something just wanting to make rap music.

This is most notable on his second album on one particular track entitled “Blinded by the Lights.” When the song begins, The Streets does little with the use of a melody or beat. Instead the track has a simple drum and instrumental loop. By doing this, he is acknowledging to the listener that it does not take much to create a catchy melody in hip-hop or even pop music. In doing so, however, the artist has deceived the listener. By acknowledging that it does not take much to create a catchy riff, he has created catchy riff that the listener enjoys listening to.

Once The Streets begins rapping, instead of using cliché subjects about how tough “it” is and how fabulous he is for being able to get away with doing “it,” he decides to blatantly talk about getting too intoxicated at a club while waiting to meet his girlfriend. He mentions “drinking beer and brandy when water would have been better,” and how taking that last pill overly intoxicated him to the point of not being able to realize what was going on when his girlfriend did finally arrive at the club. He blatantly talks even during the chorus, while he lightly sings along, and the few rhymes he has in the lyrics sound overly perfected. By choosing to talk rather than sing or alter his voice in some way to sound melodic (or rhythmic), The Streets is again giving the most basic form of what hip-hop music really is to the listener. This, however, is a double deception for the listener, in that by actually sounding as normal as possible, The Streets has created an original voice that stands out when compared to all the other hip-hop voices. The lyrics are also doubly deceptive in that what he states is what a spoiled suburban kid that thinks he is a tough hip-hop gangster would possibly actually do when he goes to a club pretending to be a gangster—in reality that is what really happens. However the double deception of the lyrics work, in that it is more believable than the image gangster rappers present of what happens when they go to a club and everything is perfect, no matter what they do.

Finally the double deception is truly perfected by The Streets with a music video. The setting of the music video is a country club dining room with a bunch of old white people with their sons and daughters joining them. By having the setting at a country club rather than a nightclub, The Streets is completely showing the viewer-listener that The Streets knows that the viewer-listener knows that The Streets is not a hard core gangster but instead just a suburban brat. By playing up this country club image up, The Streets has created a new image that is unique enough to grab the viewer-listeners attention enough to buy into the image that being a suburban brat is just as tough as being as being a gangster.

If a white middle class male from England named The Streets can convince the suburban white male fifteen to middle twenty something listener that the suburban life is hard because it is not a gangster life, and by just stating what he, the artist, is really like in real life, then there are no boundaries for what double deception can sell.

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Last update: 1/22/2005