Essay: ‘Advertising doesn’t sell things;
all advertising does is change the way people think or feel’
Advertising
is the most persuasive form of communication that manipulates not only our
needs and behaviour but also our thoughts. For centuries we have been influenced
by advertisements without us even realizing it. Did it never occur to us, that
behind the promising adverts lies a competitive mind controlling industry, the
main of which goal is to sell? They have developed many schemes to challenge
our understanding of the world and manage our thoughts by making us desire the
never ending traits that they offer us.
Jeremy
Bullmore has worked in the advertising for over 30 years. He is the man who
claims that advertising does not sell things, that the only thing it does is
change the way people think or feel. While the advertising agencies make billions
of US dollars per year, it should not be forgotten that the words spoken by
Bullmore might not be trustworthy. Bullmore was Chairman of the Advertising
Association for six years from 1981. Still there is truth in his words,
advertising does change the way we think or feel, in fact that is one of the
main focuses in the advertising industry. Dichter who arrived in the United
States in1938 and started his carrier in the advertising industry by lying
about his educational degree and sometimes his nationality, established the
Institute for Research in Mass Motivation, later called The Institute for
Motivational Research (Jeffrey Robinson. 1998). The main focus was to figure
out the feelings deep inside the psychological recesses of the human mind,
which would help manufacturers to sell both the function and the ‘emotional
security’ of a product. In other words they were researching why some adverts
affect sales more than others and why this is so. Dichter’s research shows that
there were four basic motivations that affected consumer decisions: sustenance,
security, status and sex. Some of the methods that Dicher used while pitching were
questionable but the conclusions that he made helped companies such as ‘General
Foods’ to increase their sales. Whether it was because his research methods
worked or whether he was a good liar, remains unclear. However it shows that
advertising was always interested in revealing the psychological logics behind
the consumers decisions made by choosing one product over the other.
Anthony
R. Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson (2002) suggest that the mass media may not tell
you what to think, but they do tell you what to think about and how to do it. For
example Coca-Cola the most successful company in the world, partly because of
strong advertising. Everyone loves coke and knows most of the advertisements
shown on TV, that might be one of the reasons why Coke became mainstream. The
advertising company applied human traits to a product and created a ‘lifestyle’,
that everyone desires, by persuading that buying the product will enable the
consumer to have the life they always wanted. The Coca-Cola advertisers use
slogans such as “Live on the Coke Side of Life” (2007), “Can't Beat the Real
Thing.” (1991) that manipulate human feelings and even make consumer question
the reality. The Coca-Cola company sells the product but the consumers buy happiness,
sharing and magic, at least that is what advertisers persuaded them to believe
in. The image of the product has developed throughout the years by the help of
great product design, catchy slogans and of course advertising. The company
spends more than 2.6 billion dollars per year for advertising (2006) The
Coca-Cola Company knows the value of advertising, they would not waste so much
money on it if advertising would not sell products. The company believes in
advertising, that is why they are the top of the ‘game’. As a result,
advertising as a tool of manipulation by changing the way we see ourselves and
the world around us is really powerful and never ending. While the advertisers
use human traits on products, leaving the consumers to become objects, that
need a pair of ‘Nike’ shoes, ‘Dior’ perfume and a can of ‘Coke’ to make them
have all the desirable human characteristics and live their life as they dream
of. This is a new way to ‘create’ their personality. Sadly, it is a never-ending
circle because soon enough the consumer realizes that none of the trades they
were looking for seek in the purchased products and still, they go ‘hunting’
again.
H.Somervile
is an Art director with a degree in psychology, a post-graduate diploma in
Comedy Writing/Performance and a post-graduate diploma in Media Copywriting. Somervile
is well known for his "diamond Shreddie"
advertisement made in September 2006. It is the same flavored serial as his
primary “Shreddie” serial; the only change is that it’s rotated in a 45-degree
angle to look like a diamond. It was introduced as a new product to all of the
consumers. Surprisingly enough the “Diamond Shreddie” serial sold out well
after the commercial was released. That only proves that advertising does
change the way we think by manipulating the way we think about it. Something
that seems usual might be affected only by changing the perspective of how we
see it. Advertising might not tell the consumer what to think but it obviously
tells us what to think about and ho to do it. The example above only proves
that advertising sells things by manipulating the way people think.
Advertisers
developed another mind-controlling hypothesis using fear as a tool to change
our will. In some cases the fear might be legitimate concerns such as smoking
does cause censer, while in other cases fear appeals are based on irrational
fears often used by life insurance agencies to induce purchase of their
politics (A.Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson. 2001). The fear factor is really
influential, a lot of cultural revolutions were based upon terrorizing citizens
with irrational statements such as Nazi movement against Jews. Hitler convinced
that ‘The Jew are harmful to us’ and in any case this would not make sense,
nonetheless fear channel our thoughts from careful considerations forcing us to
get rid of the threat, that in some cases might lead to fretful actions.
Advertising acts upon fear as well but they developed a way of stating the fear
strongly that we would just ignore them in that way increasing the sales for
life-threatening products such as cigarettes. Scientists have proven that too
much fear might be debilitating and good scare will motivate people to
act. Basically this might explain why
‘Smoking kills’ adverts do not affect us as much as they should. A.Pratkans and
E. Aronson suggest that the possible negative consequences of these actions are
so great that we choose to ignore them. There for, extremely threatening messages on
cigarette packs do not affect us. The advertisers need to put a message that
would not repel the smokers by choosing the product. The extreme message their
obligated to attach does not repel the smokers from buying the product because
most of them tend to ignore it.
To summarize there
are many ways in which advertisers persuade the audiences but the most
efficient one is deep inside the human psychology. Persuasion and manipulation
are the most powerful tools in the world and this “weapon” is used against us
every single day in every advert we pass or commercial we see on
television. No matter how trustworthy
any commercial advertising agency appears, it should not be forgotten that
these agencies work for corporations, which expect to get the double or triple
the amount they invest into advertising. There is no lie that advertising
changes the way we think or feel, actually that is the only truth that
consumers may expect to hear from the advertising agencies. Advertising is
meant to sell and trick us into buying, without us even knowing that. It should
no longer be a surprise that part of the Art directors have qualifications for
phycology or have a group of researchers that investigate consumer motivations
of buying a product, that only helps them analyse the ways in which they can
manipulate our decisions within choosing a product.
Words: 1,352
Student: G.
Medelyte (BA Graphic Design, year 1)
Bibliography:
Books:
Bullmore J.
(2003) 'More Bull More', Oxfordshire, World Advertising Research Centre.
Dyer G. (1986)
'Advertising as communication', London, Routledge.
Pratkanis A.
& Aronson E. (2002) 'Age of propaganda. The everyday use and abuse of
persuasion', revised edition, New York, Owl Books.
Robinson J.
(1999) 'The manipulators. Unmasking the hidden persuaders', London, Pocket
Books.
Stoklossa U.
(2007) 'Advertising: new techniques for visual seduction', New York, Thames
& Hudson.
Pardun J. C. (2007)
‘Advertising and society. Controversies and Consequences’, Sussex, Blackwell
Publishing Ltd.
Internet:
Rachel Arandilla
(2011)’ Coca-Cola Advertising Through the Years’, America, Webdesigner,
available from http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/inspiration/coca-cola-advertising-history/
[24-01-2012]
Wikipedia (2012)
‘Coca-Cola slogans’, San Francisco, Wikimedia Foundation available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_slogans
[24-01-2012]
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