This subject was so fascinating once I read about it that I had to remove it from Post #7 and write a separate entry.

​

​

​

The Library of Babel is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges. The simplified synopsis is that the library itself, with an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of rooms, contains every single book ever written, and also every possible permutation of those books (even a single word or character). What this means is that you have quintillions upon quintillions of books, some legible, some filled entirely with gibberish letters. Many books simply look like this:

​

https://libraryofbabel.info/book.cgi

​

Imagine it. Every single conceivable piece of writing, and most inconceivable; some book will of course contain knowledge no human being could ever know. But then again, you wouldn't know whether the knowledge the book was revealing to you was the truth, would you?

​

It is a fun thought experiment. Let's see how it applies to advertising.

​

This is a famous Coca-Cola advertisement of Santa Claus:

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

The following is a potential variation of that advertisement; a different version that could have been made:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Santa is now purple. Now, of course, no sane person would make an ad like that. But let's look at a more realistic variation of that advertisement:

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you see the difference between this one and the first? Probably not immediately. Santa has lighter skin tone here. If this version of the ad had been used, whose to say that Coca-Cola sales wouldn't have decreased or increased, even by a fraction of a percent?

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

 

 

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

Santa is now yellow. What if Santa was depicted with a yellow coat? Coca-Cola certainly didn't invent Santa, but they could have changed popular imagination about his color scheme. What if, indeed, Cola-Cola original branding for their bottle had been yellow and white?

​

Advertising, like anything else, represents the selection of a particular course of reality when any number of realities can be conceived. This is most evident in the brainstorming process where numerous elements are spluttered out and discarded because they don't fit the campaign. What if one of those discarded elements had been used instead?

​

It also stands to reason that no advertisement is the best possible advertisement that could have been created. Perhaps an African-American Coca-Cola Santa would have lasted longer in popular imagination.

​

My point is this: in Advertising, there are limitless possibilities. The chances of you identifying the correct possibility is slim. But with practice, you'll be able to tell the purple Santas from the Caucasian ones.

​