Psychology
Authority
We trust experts, officials and anyone who looks the part, so a doctor, a scientist or an official voice makes a claim feel true.
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2025Vaseline Verified
Puts popular hacks through Unilever's lab and awards a seal to the ones that pass, so the brand's scientists, not the feed, judge what works and what is unsafe.
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2024Michael CeraVe
Lands the joke on a boardroom of unconvinced dermatologists, reminding viewers that the products are developed with skin experts rather than a film star.
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2016Meet Graham
Shapes Graham's body on briefings from a trauma surgeon and a crash investigator, so his odd anatomy reads as fact rather than an artist's fancy.
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Small but tough. Polo.Volkswagen2003
Cops
Shows police under fire, people who should know what stops a bullet, all sheltering behind the Polo, and their judgement is proof enough.
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2002Do Boond Zindagi Ki ("Two Drops of Life")
Casts Amitabh Bachchan as a stern family elder who scolds parents in their own homes, and families raised to heed the patriarch listened.
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1980Take a Bite Out of Crime ("McGruff the Crime Dog")
Dresses its spokesdog as a trench-coated detective in the mould of Columbo, so crime advice comes from a figure who looks like he knows the beat.
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1964Snow Plow
Picks the one driver whose job depends on getting through snow as the Beetle's witness, and his choice says more than any claim about traction.
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1958"At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock"
Borrows its headline from a technical editor's review and backs it with 600-plus words of engineering fact, so the claim reads as expert evidence, not a boast.
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1956Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking (torture tests)
Has a former NBC anchorman deliver each verdict, and viewers who trusted him with the news trusted him when he said a cheap watch had survived.
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1955The Guinness Book of Records
Hired Fleet Street fact-finders Norris and Ross McWhirter, so the book carried the weight of an expert verdict that could end any pub dispute.
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1942Is Your Journey Really Necessary?
Puts the request to a fully equipped soldier in uniform, rifle in hand, a figure whose claim on the trains few civilians would dare to dispute.
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1919The Instrument of the Immortals
Points to nearly every great pianist and composer since Wagner as Steinway players, and the choice of such masters makes its quality feel beyond question.
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1917I Want You for U.S. Army
Makes the summons come from the stern figure of the nation itself, and a direct order from that figure is hard to shrug off.
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1914Lord Kitchener Wants You ("Your Country Needs You")
Delivers the summons from the new Secretary of State for War in person, and an order from the man running the war carries a weight few readers would question.
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1900The Michelin Guide
Uses anonymous inspectors and stars to judge restaurants, and people trust expert verdicts so readily that a tyre company became the last word on where to eat.
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188299 44/100% Pure (“It Floats”)
Built its slogan from chemists' analyses, and the oddly exact fraction carried the ring of a laboratory measurement rather than a salesman's boast.
Authority: where it comes from
In Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, most volunteers kept following orders from an experimenter in a grey lab coat, even when they believed they were giving another person painful electric shocks (Milgram, 1963). Authority is one of Robert Cialdini's principles of influence.
In ads it shows up as doctors, scientists, officials, uniforms, institutions and anyone who sounds like they know best.