I always liked: "Advertising robs you of your dignity, and sells it back to you at the price of the product."

With the arguable exception of therapy/counselling, you can never retrieve your dignity and self-worth by buying a product.

So all it really does is sell the promise.

True. As a side point, IMHO, therapy and counseling are not products.

They’re services, and, even more so, should be a service bound by a medical code of ethics, which, since the healing professions go way back, imho makes therapy and counseling distinct from many other services.

:)

So advertisements deplete dignity, with no recompense or amelioration? No wonder our society's replete with indignity.