Then they conflate this world with what they've got to shift, whether it's fried chicken, vacuum cleaners or a funeral plan. There's nothing illegal about it; there's everything immoral about it. The world they depict is a fantasy.
It generates unreasonable expectations. The immorality is in the knowing dishonesty.
It works of course. It works directly to sell stuff, otherwise the industry wouldn't exist.
But it also works indirectly to chip away at one's sense of actuality, one's knowledge of how the real world is. It's a bit like Trump's hair. You know it's fake.
You know the confection on his skull is the product of scalp reduction surgery, and a few residual wisps grown long then curled and coiffed and held in place by industrial fixative. But there it is every day, and eventually you cease to notice its absurdity.
It becomes just Trump's bloody hair. Instead of being a lie, it becomes what it's pretending to be, and that's a little win for falsehood and a little defeat for truth.
So yeah, Phil worked in advertising. I didn't blame him of course. We all have to earn a living, and I suspected he was good at it. But it was still a pity.
And then, yesterday, after three decades of silence he sent me an email.
A young friend of his, he said, a charming English girl with a farmer fiancé called George, was coming on holiday to New Zealand.
Would I be willing to meet them, take them out for a drink perhaps, and tell them what was what about New Zealand and the merry life down under?
Of course, I replied, of course, of course. I shall invite the pair for drinks or dinner or in all probability both and I have no doubt I'll enjoy it because they're young. So yes and triple yes.
At the same time, I thought to myself, the youngsters would be far better off avoiding me. Just as they'd be far better off binning their Lonely Planet guide book, and closing their eyes to the videos about 100% Pure New Zealand that the tourism board will seek to show them.
Because all these things, an old man's viewpoint, a drenched-in-cliché guide book, a tourism board promotion, are all forms of propaganda. They influence opinion. They provide a frame to see the world through. And if you carry a frame with you the world will always tend to fit it.
How much better for the youngsters to travel frameless, to go with no preconceptions, no sights they must see, no experiences they must undergo.
For surely, the point of travelling is to open yourself to reality for better or for worse, to shake off the crust of habit and expectation and to feel on your brow the intoxicating breeze of happenstance.
To see things as they are, not as they ought to be. The world is not an advert.
All of which, of course, I didn't say. I just said I'd be delighted and pressed send.
Phil sent an instant reply of thanks. I looked at my watch. "What on earth are you doing awake," I replied, "at half past four in the morning?"
And here's what he wrote.
"For all my adult life I have suffered from Bi-Polar depression. When I'm high I can work 20 hours a day. No sleep needed. Like now. (Not seeking sympathy just a fact.)
"It has screwed up my life so many times and I hate it. Without it I could have been ………. who knows? It got me in a big dip in 2011 and I have never been employed since.
"Too ill, too old, too much time since last worked! … My mother is 86… I could not imagine doing another 26 years."
So there. Beneath this likeable chirpy character, even all those years ago, was depression and a growing desperation. And I never knew, never guessed. There was a sort of heroism in his reticence.
"Unhappiness," wrote Jeffrey Bernard, "is one of the best-kept secrets in the world." I think he may be right. But you'd never know it from the ads.
