A new level of negative advertising

I have always taken an interest in advertising methods.  Sometimes I intentionally do not make purchases just because I feel that I have been manipulated into desiring a product or service.  To this point I have summed most advertising up into a few factors: direction, degree, audience.

The direction factor is the act of advertising by praising or advertising by pointing out other products flaws.  On the positive side of the scale the degree can range from "Improved" to "Best product of the year" types of statements. The negative is more varied and sees degrees like "More coverage than competitor X" and "I would hate to be dying on the side of the road without a GM vehicle equipped with OnStar".  Neutral is usually used in cases of updated packaging  with statements like "New Look, Same Great Taste.  Neutral is typically only employed by very established brands where any change is bad.

The audience of advertising is best observed by the intentional placement of ads.  Razor commercials during football games, cleaning products on HGTV, toys on kids channels, watch ads in mens magazines, makeup ads in womens magazines, and so on.

The bottom line is that companies find you by your habits and address you by your weaknesses.  This bothers me from the perspective that if I fall for it then I must be weak!

The point of all this is to setup what I believe is a whole new level of marketing that I think is obscene but seems to be taking off.  I was driving down a road with a large span of strip malls when the sign at a nail place caught my eye.  "No drills" was their big selling point.  I thought to myself about how little I know of pedicure and manicure practices but surely I would have heard of procedures involving drills?  My mind immediately switched to "that is pretty crafty".  What if simply saying "No Drills" placed the idea in the mind of other novices that most places use drills but this one is special and will not hurt me?  Brilliant because now I want to get my nails done!

We see this in humorous applications like the Snickers candy "Don't let hunger happen to you" where people have humorous incidences due to having not eaten a Snickers bar.  The alcoholic beverage industry has built a humor campaign that subliminally practices this consistently.  Is this now going mainstream without the humor?  Will I soon see a soda add that advertises "No arsenic" or a contact lens add with "No sand"?

I can only wonder.