ABSTRACT
It was after Umberto Eco, the distinguished Italian writer, had explained to his very small daughter that the advertisement she had been credulously watching was not strictly true that he discovered ‘If you want to use television for teaching somebody something, you first have to teach somebody how to use television’;2 for now
this child’s newly acquired suspicion of commercial messages was generalised to the weather forecast and, presumably, to the rest of the television’s output. We can hardly blame her because television commercials are often similar to the actual programmes and, out of all media products, the advertisement has perhaps the most beguiling quality by virtue of its economic necessity to succeed. Its aim is to change our behaviour, but before it can achieve this it has, initially, to buttonhole our attention and then in about 30 seconds-if it is a television commercial, perhaps less if it is a poster-convince us that our future will be transformed by the purchase of this one product rather than any other.
