People feel pinned down in their life, so a common dream sold is to be free. Think of Mac and their proposition of enabling your creativity (a creative person is unconstrained). A lot of car and motorbike companies also show their products as liberating in different ways.
Beer ads often show popularity and unselfconscious social interaction, which is a big deal for young guys.
For course there's dreams of beauty, success, feeling accepted.
Car ads for example are a complete blur in my head. The only thing that I distinctly remember is when everyone had ads with their cars driving in shallow sea water, which I found absurd. Do they still do that?
I certainly do feel pinned down in life, but I also don't remember seeing ads that offer a concrete solution (and I'm not even convinced its solvable). I don't think I need to be sold the dream to be free, because that is already something I desire very much. I just see products. Ones that will not fulfill that dream.
And advertisers greatest trick is making you think that ads don’t work on you.
We like to think we are above it all (I know I do) but why do I drink one brand of vodka as opposed to another. Objectively they are all identical. Clearly at some point some piece of branding breached my defences, you know?
Yes, I might prefer pepsi to coca cola or vice versa and maybe that's a product of marketing, but both are just drinks to me. Just another product. Which I might buy once in a while, but it's really got nothing to do with my dreams.