Things that won't fulfil your life: your own home

Advertising is the art of selling things to people. By their nature, advertisements are going to embellish the truth to some degree or another, in order to make a product so attractive that the viewer will be willing to part with their money in order to buy that product.

Some ads will suggest that their product will make life easier. Others will emphasise the excitement they can add to life. But there are a few ads which will make a much larger claim: that their product will fulfil your life.

One example of this comes from Aussie Living Homes, as can be seen in this ad:

There are two lines of argument running through the ad - audio and visual - that begin with the same question and end with the same answer. The question is 'what is your dream?', and the answer is that owning your own home will fulfil it.

The following dreams are claimed to be fulfilled by owning your own home in the visual arguments:

Happiness forever; to live well; make our own choices; to be independent; enjoy success; embrace life; to be ourselves; to shine; to play; live in the moment.

These are accompanied by images of young, good looking couples having fun and enjoying each others' company, with the appearance of being well off.

Here are the audio dreams:

To be happy in our own home (without renting); lots of holidays; start our future and live somewhere nice (with everything close); to do what we want (with our first home); to be with family and friends; three or four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a garden; a place to relax and call my own.

Both audio and video end with the statement 'LIVE THE DREAM', with indication that an Aussie Living Home will achieve these things for you.

It is a good thing ads do not need a logical explanation behind them, because if they did, this ad would run into trouble quite quickly.

It's interesting that they should choose to make the more outlandish claims silently. This seems a clever move, in that it puts the message in the viewers head subconsciously while they are listening to the more reasonable suggestions of believable young people.

Take only a moment to consider some of these claims, and it becomes clear how outrageous they are. Happiness forever? It's a house. No matter how much you spruce it up and spend time on it, it is still just a building. It cannot offer you love of any kind, which is generally what we desire most. Also, like all building, houses are prone to decay, which rather puts the dampers on any sense of forever.

To live well? Why can't I do that in a rental?

To make our own choices? This can be done without owning your own home, and specifically buying an Aussie Living Home may well take choices away from you, as you'll be forced to get a job that pays at a certain level to pay for your mortgage, and have a small number of suburbs to choose from. 

Be independent? This is one I will be prepared to give them.

Enjoy success? Pardon? Buying a home on the cheaper end of the new home spectrum is not success of any kind. Even if you only measure success in monetary terms, this is at the opposite end of the spectrum! 

Embrace life? I'm not actually sure what this means, although it seems to be some kind of indication that those who don't own their own home have a less full life which, again, seems unlikely given owning your own home requires a mortgage to pay off.

Be ourselves? Thereby suggesting that not owning your own home forces you to be someone else. I don't think so.

To shine/play/live in the moment? Superficial nonsense.

To be sure, many ads do this kind of thing - but this ad has been especially annoying, because it's just one big lie created by a thousand small ones.