A lot of modern art is sold as a story, and for whatever reason the kind of folks who matter think that "did something by hand a thousand times" is a much better story than "wrote a Perl script."
Art isn't the only thing that has stories, incidentally. Tomatoes have stories these days. (OK, the kind of tomatoes rich people eat have stories. Only poor people eat tomatoes that have no stories.)
That's one of the common criticisms of modern art, that it is largely about justification of the work.
After I went to Art Basel last year and happened on a display which was, quite literally, a few kilograms of nutella dumped on the floor, I was hard pressed to disagree...
i think products targeted at low income demographics are very much sold with a story. a kind of utilitarian "sensibleness" which facilitates contempt for more expensive products.
why would advertisers neglect to exploit human psychology at all socioeconomic levels?
Not "just sold as tomatoes", but "sold as just tomatoes". See the Sainsbury's Basics http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=sainsburys+basics brand - the story is that this is as basic as it can be, no cruft, implying better value, lower price.
I believe you're right... a hugely successful ad for the Tang powdered drink in South America showed a spoilt rich kid asking his butler for Tang after they were stranded with no oranges in sight. (One of the messages I take from the ad was that the rich kid was missing on what the butler knew all along)
