The Persuaders

In terms of the kinds of research I am looking at currently “advertising and it’s effectiveness”. I was given a suggested title to view called “The Persuaders” when my group had discussed our research topics to our lecturers. The video discusses views on persuasion from mass media to the general public. It asks the question “Is our society too overloaded with advertising”? Everywhere we look, in elevators, up in the sky with sky writing, on buses, in golf holes at the golf course, IS THERE NO END to the mass spread of media and advertising? There is virtually no escape.

This problem of mass media and its sheer scale, with the amount of messages out there on every possible advertising medium trying to reach us, its seems now that the media and marketable space is running out, things don’t get our attention as they once did. Sure when the first bill board had been erected, no one would have seen anything of such scale before, hence getting all the attention. Marketers then took advantage of this by competing and putting up there own billboards. Eventually there are hundreds of these things around, are they so interesting now?

“The more messages advertisers create, the more they have to create to reach us”

Its just a vicious circle of clutter, when an advertising firm claims that they can 

“break through the clutter”, if you think about it, all they are doing is just adding to the clutter.

 

Research

For every advertisement and campaign, there is a lot of research involved into who the advertisement is going to be used for. In order to do this, the marketers must know exactly what the target audience will be attracted to.

Focus groups, surveys, field research, anything that will accumulate enough information to be able to describe who the target audience is. Once this research is conducted, the best way to understand exactly who the target audience is, is to actually make a (made up) physical profile of a user, their wants/needs/desires are.

Most of the time though, not enough care actually goes into where these ads are going and who they are targeting. “Ads are made for the people who are making it, not for the people who are the consumers. They are often made and used to build peoples port-folios or to make more money, or to get a better job, NOT for the consumers”.

 

Advertising Techniques

 

An old technique that was used, in almost every advertisement, was to use these BUZZ words that were constantly HAMMERED into our brains. The aim of ads were to try and out do others by using these words. The product always had to be “BRIGHTER, CLEANER, SMOOTHER, CRISPER”, anything to persuade us that it was better then another product, but then you hear it too much, and these words then become meaningless. HOW CAN ANY PRODUCT BE BETTER THEN ANOTHER?

 

Now, its not just about what the product did/does, but what it means to the consumer.

They call this “sudo-spiritual” marketing.

Example of this can be seen in NIKES marketing, depicting transcendence of spirit through sport.

 

http://www.adrants.com/images/TSA%20ESPNMag%2010-22_Running_2.jpg

 

 

Or even the STARBUCKS campaign and idea, that it didn’t need to be just another coffee shop, it became “a third place” as a communal meeting place that wasn’t work or home.

http://thomashawk.com/hello/209/1017/1024/Night%20Starbucks.jpg

ITS ABOUT THE INNER BRAND MEANING