Advertisements: A Fantasy World
Advertisements: A Fantasy World
Written by: Thaismina Kennedy Mangue
Does buying make you happy? What is the true standard of living we want in our lives? How many things will you have to buy and consume to be happy? Dreams are dreams and the society we live in today proves the never-ending hope for humans to feel fullied. Advertisement companies know this and if they want to sell products to people, they will be able to sell a dream, even if you never dreamt it before. Since industrialisation, the global market has expanded to almost all corners of the Earth, and capitalism, a thriving economical system that runs with the help of consumers, needs advertisements to ignite us to buy, most of the time, products we do not need. Advertisement creates more demand, and if it wasn't true, why would marketers aim towards the subconscious of the buyer? Here is one innovative way advertisers have begun to analyse the stimuli in consumers, to learn how to target the masses and get rid of products that may not be bought depending on the response of the subjects.
The NewYork Times published an article where they explain the compelling existence of Neuromarketing. Neuromarketers are "a nascent group of researchers who use techniques from neuroscience to analyze people’s responses to products and promotions." They follow to explain various experiments where “By measuring brain waves, we are able to measure attention, emotion and memory,” says Dr. Pradeep “We basically compute the deep subconscious response to stimuli. Add all those electrical patterns together, you find it represents the whispers of the brain.” With this study, neuromarketing has been used in real life by different brands?
- Frito-Lay, for instance, discovered matte bags with pictures of potatoes did not trigger a negative response, whereas shiny bags with pictures of chips on them did. Within months, new bags were designed and the shiny ones were scrapped.
- PayPal discovered that commercials focusing on speed and convenience triggered a significantly higher response than those advertising safety and security and developed an entirely new ad campaign based on the results.
This pushes us to question the real intentions behind advertisers and their aim towards the buyers. I keep on updating more research as we go along. Below you will find a video that will help you understand how advertisers make us buy by the use of psychological techniques that have worked for decades.
Just because you see it, doesn't mean you should buy it.
Sources used:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14stream.html
- http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/22/power.of.advertising/index.html
- https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/neuromarketing
- https://martechtoday.com/subtle-ways-advertisers-attempt-target-audiences-shouldnt-206396
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzevRHUEnVI
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