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(If you have joined us recently, you may not know that Weekend Ponderables are our way of throwing our various concerns about open problems in advertising and branding out into the Internet soup, hopefully to engage a bit of thought and discussion.)

Today’s ponderable really bothers me. It concerns a variety of products, but I’m going to pick on Apple.

Apple advertises to you that if you have Apple products you will live in a cool, modern world of bright flat color and expensive furniture. More often than not, this turns out to be true, because so many of the people who buy Apple products go out and paint their world with bright flat colors, and buy expensive furniture on installment plans. This phenomenon literally boggles my mind. When I think about it, I reel.

So, this weekend, let’s all take a moment to think about the self-fulfilling prophecy in advertising. Let’s ask ourselves: If we advertise a world that’s desirable enough, can we actually get consumers to go out and make it? If so, this seems to gesture towards a rather mind-blowing imperative from a design ethics standpoint.