Implied progress through advertising: aka the barbed wire nappy

Disclosure: I am an old cynic and I’ve long been bemused be how mainstream advertising makes iterative produce developments feel like genuine progress. I asked ChatGPT (don’t judge) to write this short essay based on this idea …

Advertising often presents progress as a steady accumulation of improvements—thinner, faster, gentler, smarter. Each new feature is framed as a response to a previously intolerable flaw.

Yet if we follow this logic backwards and strip away every advertised “improvement,” we arrive at a strange conclusion: the original product would have been so uncomfortable, inefficient, or dangerous that it could scarcely have functioned at all. This imagined ancestor is not just inferior, but absurd—the conceptual equivalent of a barbed wire nappy.

Modern adverts rarely say a product is good; they imply that earlier versions were bad.

Toothpaste is no longer simply effective, but “now with enamel repair,” “advanced whitening,” or “48-hour protection.” Taken literally, this suggests that earlier toothpaste actively damaged teeth, encouraged decay, or abandoned users halfway through the day. Shampoos promise “no more tears,” “gentle on sensitive scalps,” or “repair from within,” quietly implying that previous shampoos were harsh chemical assaults endured out of necessity rather than choice.

This logic becomes more pronounced in products associated with care and vulnerability. Nappies are “softer,” “leak-proof,” and “clinically tested for comfort,” leading to the unspoken implication that earlier nappies were rigid, unreliable, and borderline cruel. Baby wipes are “alcohol-free” and “dermatologist approved,” as though past generations willingly scrubbed infants with irritants. The barbed wire nappy is never shown, but its ghost lingers behind every promise of improvement.

Technology advertising operates similarly. Smartphones are marketed as “finally lasting all day,” “now intuitive,” or “easier than ever,” suggesting that previous devices were exhausting, confusing, and hostile to human use. Even mundane objects—toilet paper, razors, bin bags—are framed as triumphs over past suffering. The message is not that progress is incremental, but that it is salvational.

This rhetorical strategy works because it flatters the present while disowning the past. Consumers are reassured that they are no longer tolerating what their predecessors somehow endured. Yet the exaggeration is revealing. Earlier products worked well enough for people to live, adapt, and even feel satisfied. The misery implied by advertising is largely fictional, invented to make marginal upgrades feel revolutionary.

In the end, implied progress through advertising says less about history than about persuasion.

By inventing an unbearable past, advertisers make the present feel indispensable. The barbed wire nappy may never have existed—but without it, the promise of constant improvement would lose much of its bite.