When we try to sell things to people, we have to be extremely conscientious about the border between convincing and manipulating someone. This becomes easier if a sale is not always the goal in our minds when talking to someone in a sales conversation, but it is helpful to keep in mind several things touted as effective sales tactics that are not ethical.
The primary tactic that falls into that category is trying to influence peoples emotions to affect their decisions. In our consumerist culture, people buy on emotion and justify afterward with logic and reasoning guided by their emotions. To illustrate this, think about the presentations on business ideas we learn to give as Entrepreneurship majors. If you have gone to Startup Weekend, or have taken any of the classes that involve simulating a startup business, then you know the type of pitching and presenting companies give professionally to explain why they/their products are necessary or good. In commercials, almost none of that information is present, and instead customers get bombarded with slapstick shorts, or shorts to make you feel a certain emotion, from which you sometimes cannot even guess what the product is until its shown to you.
One of the tactics those types of advertisement use is called Frame Control, something more known from manipulative speech and conversations. Frame Control is when you put the person you are talking to into a perspective you create for them, putting you in a view of the world from which they can make you think anything is a problem you need to be solved, and that their product will solve it and buying it is a no-brainer that requires no thought or consideration. The goal of frame control when speaking to someone is to effectively do what those advertisements do, which is take your eyes away from your situation and whether or not you have a problem and instead convince you that something that may be small in your life or small in general is much worse and that you should rush to get their supposedly perfect product without researching the product. When people cannot be forced into an artificial frame, such as when car companies try to advertise their expensive products, advertisements are often a list of statistics, numbers, and facts, and many car salesmen were put into a place of desperation while that type of salesmen, in particular, was seen clearly by the public as manipulative.
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