Because outliving mortality, however narcissistic, is something I have been extremely interested in for as long as I can remember. It's a constant lingering thought in the back of my brain.
So imagine my delight when I came across a term I'd never heard before about legends: hagiography.
Hagiography is, in the simplest sense, an uncritical biography of saints. A text that essentially proves their saintliness. Holding them up to the standards of the Supreme Deity, and the lives of everyone else up to the standards of saints.
The intended effect is to provide a scrubbed version of history. Like passing entire lives through a myriad of photoshop filters then denying any retouching.
In turn this creates this archetype that's nearly human, but ultimately unattainable. All of the good, none of the naughty (not that saints are cavorting around causing havoc). A myth out of a man.
Then, years down the line, these stories, these myths, become the truth. They aren't stories. They're standards. They're concrete. These things happened.
And so we see ourselves in a negative light when compared to the legends.
This doesn't just happen with biblical figures. Although that's the progeny of the term, we can see hagiography all around us. Perfectly manicured online personalities, "legends" in every walk of life (the TV series "Men Who Built America" comes to mind), brilliant profiles of subjects in the documentary-of-the-month. It's insidious. And it creates a very negative vision of ourselves, if we buy into it.
However, hagiography is a very powerful tool to understand in advertising. Because what is advertising if it isn't setting the standard for what people are trying to be? It's, ideally, providing the solution to every little problem people didn't know they had. A version of themselves they could be if they had/used product X. That's why the Economist work will resonate as long as people can understand language.
This understanding also takes a little bit of pressure off of advertising. It's not important, potentially, to dwell on the bad parts of the product. The answer could be there, with a negative blown into a beautiful positive. But that's still the best aspect of the product.
The Hagiograpic conception of it.
Sometimes that's the best you can do. And it's the best thing to do for a client.