Madison Avenue on the Couch : ARE THEY SELLING HER LIPS?: Advertising and Identity <i> by Carol Moog Ph.D. (William Morrow: $18.95; 236 pp; 0-688-08704-3) </i>

It is not humanly possible to escape from the world of advertising. Advertisements are everywhere. They are plastered on the videotapes we bring home while trying to avoid the commercials on network television. They are projected on the screens at movie theaters before the films start, cleverly planted in scenes during the films and, at some theaters, staring up at us from our armrests after the film.

Because it is not possible to avoid advertisements, perhaps it is wise to at least not let them outsmart us. That is, as informed consumers we should at least try to understand what an ad is trying to sell, and how it is really trying to sell it.

And who better to help consumers understand the often oily ways of Madison Avenue than a woman who is not only a practicing clinical psychologist but also is a paid consultant to a number of advertising agencies? Carol Moog, who holds a Ph.D. in psychology, also operates her own Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm, Creative Focus. The unusual combination of professions certainly gives her an opportunity to view Madison Avenue from a perspective that few can.

It wasn’t some large advertising client--or even one of her patients--that gave her the idea for this book. It was her 5-year-old daughter. While watching TV with her daughter one day, Moog observed the child fascinated by a commercial when it showed a close-up, not of the product being sold but of the actress’ red, evocative mouth. That’s when daughter turned to mother and asked with some confusion, “Are they selling her lips?”

Moog has devoted this book to answering that question. On occasion, she succeeds splendidly, in particular when she combines her skills as a psychologist, consultant and parent. Unfortunately, it isn’t until the middle of her book that the author seems to really hit her stride and offer the reader surprising new insights into some of Madison Avenue’s most recent--and most dismal--failures to psychologically influence us.

In a chapter titled “In Search of the Real,” Moog offers a slew of examples of advertisers who have adopted the word real in their advertising in order to persuade consumers that their products are wholesome or nutritional or honest.

But nowhere did that strategy fail more miserably, she points out, than with a recent print-advertising campaign created by the McCann-Erickson agency for Winston cigarettes. In one particular ad, we see a photo of a beautiful model in the apparent guise of a newspaper photographer. She has a camera in one hand, a cigarette in the other and is wearing a badge that says PRESS. Underneath her picture is the headline, “Real People. Real Taste.”

The problem here is simple: There’s not a darned thing real about the whole scenario. The woman seems about as real as a Smurf. And consumers picked this up immediately. “When the illusion is defined as reality, and when we know it’s far from real--simply because it’s advertising--our first impulse might be to reject the whole package as fake,” Moog explains. “Obviously this is not a real person: It’s a model playing a real person. Is Winston’s ‘Real Taste’ just as fake as the model who’s faking being a real person?”

Why do advertisers want their advertising to look “real”? Moog speculates that the closer advertisers come to creating images that blend with the images consumers already have of reality, the harder it is for viewers to dismiss what they’re seeing as advertising.

This is why Nissan’s Venice agency, Chiat/Day/Mojo, created a campaign several years ago that tried to portray actors as real people. The ads featured actors portraying yuppie engineers sitting around a table talking about “human engineering.” But the campaign was one of the most ridiculed in recent years. Why?

“I believe the spot turned people off because it puffed itself up as real, as a documentary, insider view of the thinking behind Nissan, but came across as staged. It made people angry because it looks as if the advertiser thought the audience was a bunch of dopes.”

But how Moog managed to write this chapter without at least mentioning Coca-Cola’s “It’s the real thing” campaign is beyond me. For that matter, how the Beef Council’s familiar “Real food for real people” campaign was left unmentioned is another glaring omission.

In fact, the basic problem with “Are They Selling Her Lips?” isn’t what’s in the book but what is missing. The book promises to take us beyond where Madison Avenue critics have taken us before. And with her pairing of professions, Moog seems uniquely qualified to do just that. But what does she mostly write about? The same old thing I’ve read about for years--sex in advertising, ads that stereotype, and how Madison Avenue tries to hook kids.

The book begins with an unlikely parallel that Moog draws between one of her patient’s dreams and an ad campaign for Maidenform.

Moog traces the history of Maidenform ad campaigns from provocative ads that showed professional women in their bras to current ads that feature popular male celebrities, such as “L.A. Law’s” Corbin Bensen, talking about lingerie. Moog concludes that the campaign works because “It sidesteps the question faced by all lingerie advertisers: How can you show a woman in her underwear without making her look either like an idiot or a slut?”

In many instances, Moog seems to use her patients more as excuses to write about advertising psychology than as what could be fascinating examples of how Madison Avenue preys on the public’s insecurities.

And her research often is dotted with examples we’ve seen before. How many times do we all have to be reminded that in the film “E.T,” the character E.T. chomped on Reese’s Pieces--and not M&Ms--because; the makers of Reese’s Pieces paid the film company a candy-storeful of money.

What’s more, Moog is mostly unable to prompt many of the ad executives she interviews to reveal any particularly interesting “behind-the-scenes” insights. The best she can get out of Chiat/Day/Mojo’s president, Lee Clow, is his wish that he’d used real engineers--not actors--in his agency’s original Nissan campaign. But that fact has been widely reported before.

Still, Moog’s book may be valuable for several reasons. For one, it features photos of virtually every TV commercial and print advertisement it mentions. For readers who are not familiar with certain campaigns, this is helpful.

The book also presents some very interesting advertising theories from time to time, such as Moog’s contention that elderly people rarely are seen in commercials because most copywriters who write ads are under 30, and older people are the last things on their minds.

While hardly a must-read for advertising aficionados, “Are They Selling Her Lips?” is at the very least a sometimes engaging look at the manipulative way of Madison Avenue.

What the book is missing is Madison Avenue’s smoking gun. Where are the current or former ad executives who specifically detail how some tobacco and beer ads are really aimed at children? And where are the underlying stories of attempts by agencies and their clients to actually spy on consumers for information to be wrapped in advertising and marketing strategies?

The world is still waiting for the definitive kiss-and-tell book on the ad world’s psychological atrocities. This isn’t the real thing. But it may be as real as it gets.