I wrote
this article because I was inspired by a funny YouTube video, it's not about
advertisement from customer's point of view but we can see a process of making
marketing campaign with a British sense of humor.
Every advertisement
is done by a company to sell something, either a product or service. Federal
law says that advertisement must be truthful, but there are a lot of tricks
that can be used to make us buy something.
There are a
lot of details that grab our attention; in advertisement they pay attention to each
detail. They want not only to sell a product but their vision of the product a
and make us behave in a certain way.
Trustworthiness
One of the
tricks is to carefully select people in advertisements. They can be celebrities
that people like or neutral people. The latter
ones are chosen, carefully. Customers rely on visual clues: first impression
counts. Beyond obvious things like creepy looking faces, a mustache or scars,
things like facial width and height ( distance between cheekbones and from
upper lip to eyebrows) can tell how trustworthy a person is. A person with an
oval face is more trustworthy than those ones with wild ones. Also, brown eyes are better in this case than
blue ones.
We have an
example to show the draft:
Limited amount
We all know
that we will make a quicker decision if someone tells us, "only one flight
ticket is left at this price" or "this product is only seasonal or a limited edition."
Social proof [ word-of-mouth]
This is the
most popular and effective trick. It based on recommendation of the people we
know and like (from TV programs or any other public media, people we trust as doctors). It also works for
social networking sites like Facebook (
"like" buttons). If we see that someone we admire and know likes a product we don't know it's possible that we
will be interested in it as well. It's like a snowball
effect. In TV commercials it's more like a
statement we all know: "9 out of 10 people choose X" it also
influences our behavior.
Something we know
We like to
buy products that we already know and use. We don't actually like to change
something working for us well. When we see a product everywhere we start to
trust a brand like that. Think of coca cola-- it's not healthy or even tasty
but everybody knows the brand and sometimes drinks it.
Reverse psychology
It sounds
crazy but "the best way to get you buy something is to make you believe
you don't have to buy it". Advertisers have mastered in reverse
psychology. The reason is simple: nobody
likes to be told what to do so they try to convince you that the choice is
yours. But it's not. It's a way to make you like a brand: it is so good that a
company does not need to convince you to buy it.
These are only a few examples of tricks
used.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC7VLjIw8hY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdLsQcYyAcc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN7NZB4f4qM
http://www.warc.com/Content/ContentViewer.aspx?ID=2c0e9c2c-8966-4eae-80f5-7ab4cf76d352&MasterContentRef=2c0e9c2c-8966-4eae-80f5-7ab4cf76d352&Campaign=admap_jun13&utm_campaign=admap_jun13
Comments
Products endorsement in known for years and it is really bad that people use someone to promote product that is not good at all but they get decent amount of money so they do that. I would love to see more truth in advertisements. Since a while I absolutely ignore all of them and I base only on research and my friends opinion. I am also very annoyed by advertisements in the internet. Cookies and newsletters can really make you crazy.
and in general keeping proportions is important, but nowadays we can
photoshop everything or cover flaws by makeup and hair. Of course
limited amount always work especcialy in technology and fashion
industry. I also read book about selling tips and there was written
that giving something for free is the best solution. Of course in
reality we are paying for a bonus but seeing "FREE" makes people wanna
buy it. Good example is adding samples or giving free shipping. If we
calculate for instace the price of two products where one is giving
somethign for free we easily will see that is cost much more than
normal version. Very often I am checking price for kg or liter, when I
am making decision which size to buy.
Of course other great way of convincing to buy is social spread, when
we give someone free bag with logo, and we see many people on the
street with such bag and we wonder what it is and why those people got
it.
In general I liked you presentation, it gave a nice insight into tricks used in creating advertisments. I was aware of some of them, but it's good to remind yourself about these form time to time. We're surrounded by ads so we should know how they work and what they are really about.
Similarly to Paweł I have a habit of analyzing advertisments and looking for flaws in them and I'm rarely convinced to buy something after seeing an ad. I'm more interested in how they are trying to convince me rather than the products that are in them.
I agree with Cezary - for me, it's ridiculous that all the 'doctors' shown in ads are just actors... It kind of takes the point of showing that person away.
I agree with the other comments, so I won't repeat what they say :) But I think it's worth looking at the situation from the other side, the side of people creating advertisements. They're just trying to do their job so that they can keep it in the first place, in this terrible economy. It seems like in advertising there're equal parts of bumming about and BS-ing your way through and being totally over-worked and burnt out. It's quite scary for them too, because their lives are governed by money just as much as ours are. There are all the films which show the 'ugly' sides of advertising and how much it affects people.
Also, it's KINDA related to the reversed psychology one, I've been to an interesting lecture where I hear that the best way to make people do what you want is manipulating them into thinking that it's their decision - so not really a reversed psychology, kind of a manipulation.