The iconic "1984" Apple ad was about as abstract as anything on today's screens. It did tell users about the product, indirectly, by telling them about the values of the Apple brand and company.

And I'd much prefer to watch that than the harrowing "Head-On: Apply directly to the forehead" commercial.

  telling them about the values of the Apple brand and company

It was ad genius but said nothing about any Apple "values". It instead attacked the IBM/DOS world as an Orwellian nightmare disrupted by a hot, busty female. It was about destruction, not "values".

> And I'd much prefer to watch that than the harrowing "Head-On: Apply directly to the forehead" commercial.

Haha that commercial is so entertaining in its absurdism

I wouldn't say deception. It's more a manipulation. I'm sure there are hundreds studies in neuroscience and behavioral economics that tell advertisers exactly which buttons to push. Most ads, especially brand advertisement aren't supposed to effect an immediate reaction. Way down the line they may influence you subconsciously though.

> The usual excuse for advertising being morally acceptable is that it informs potential customers about the product.

And it's a bullshit excuse at that.

Advertising uses concepts developed in propaganda and psychological warfare to play on human insecurities in order to make them feel inadequate without your product.

If an advert doesn’t mention the product it seems very hard to say that it’s deveiving you about what the product will do, doesn’t it?

It's deceiving you in a far less obvious and ham-fisted way: it's associating a brand with your lifestyle and your identity. It's using insights gained from psychology research to try to hack your brain into thinking that this brand is part of your tribe.

And it works. To an obscene degree, really.