I’d like to think that I am an individual who makes my own choices based on preference and price and availability, not by advertising. But I know better.
The other day, we were playing games with friends, and out of the blue, I thought “Man, Taco Bell sounds really good right now.” Then I realized that I had just glanced at the shelf of board games, and right at my eye-line was the Logo game, and what was facing me? Yep. A Taco Bell logo. I glanced at it and my subconscious reacted without me being aware of having seen the logo.
Advertisers pay tens of billions of dollars a year because it works. Maybe on the conscious level you are repulsed by the creepy giant head Burger King guy, and maybe you do in fact make a conscious decision to avoid eating there. But now think about all the other buying decisions you make each day, ones where you aren’t making a concerted effort to boycott. I guarantee that a lot of them are being influenced by advertising in ways you aren’t aware of. It doesn’t make you sheep, it makes you human.
That’s the trick. If I can figure out what you are interested in and what drives your decision making (price, status, comfort, quality, whatever), then I can show up just in time with a message that says “here’s what you are looking for!”
Do you have any products whatsoever around your house? Why did you buy those particular products?
Mareting and advertising is about more than just flashing cool images on a screen. The goal of advertising is to make you associate your “hankerings” for a particuar product. That’s why beer comercials always show goofy guys in their 20s and 30s doing fun shit with hot girls. Through repetition, Anheiser Busch or Heinekin or whoever is building that association in your mind between drinking beer and good times hanging out with your buddies. They don’t show a bunch of fat, sad drunks in a half-empty bar or some sorority girl taking a shit on the deans car.
It’s done its job well, then. The best advertising makes you think it hasn’t affected you.
See? You know these products exist because of years of advertising, and yet you’ve convinced yourself that’s not the case.
The way it often works is that you ignore it at the time. You see dozens of ads for it over a long period. None really register. Then you need some dishwasher tablets, go to the shop, and you recognise one of them.
Some ad’s have a counter effect it seems… you might know of Burger King, but if they have commercials that annoy you, you tend not to shop their. Is there a strategy with annoying commercials?
It seems a lot of people here, myself included, boycott these places simply because they don’t like the ad.
The New York Times Magazine has a really interesting article this week on people’s buying habits and how retailers attempt to influence this. The article describes how most people habitually buy certain products at the same stores (e.g., milk and bread from regular visits to the supermarket, paper towels from a less frequent visit to Target or Walmart). Target of course wants people to buy more stuff at their stores, but these habits are hard to overcome. But they realize that when a woman is having a baby, her habits tend to change. But marketing to a new mother is too late, as she is bombarded by many companies, so they set about trying to determine which of their customers are early in their pregnancies. Surprisingly, they can tell with a good deal of certainty that a woman is pregnant based on innocuous sounding things she is purchasing (vitamin supplements, unscented soap and lotion, etc.). The article includes this story:
Scary, but kind of awesome. And BTW, the article and the book on which it’s based goes more into detail on how one can influence one’s own habits.
Advertisements are useful for creating an identity for a product. Think of cigarettes. There’s not a whole lot of difference between brands. Most smokers in blind trials cannot tell the difference. But each one is targeted to a certain segment of the population. Customers pick the brand to which they identify. Even if Virginia Slims had the best quality tobacco at the lowest price, most men would not smoke them because it’s a woman’s cigarette. Marlboro was once a woman’s cigarette, but through advertising we now think of it as a cigarette for macho people.
There are certain brands of clothes I won’t wear because they are targeted to kids (like American Eagle and Holister). Even if they had the best clothes for what I needed, I wouldn’t wear them because the image surrounding those clothes is not the image I relate to. There are plenty of other quality choices out there which fit with the image I want to present.
I don’t run out and impulsively buy something based on a commercial. But my opinion of whether a product is appropriate for me is shaped by advertising. Advertising does make me prefer certain products over others.
Yeah, that’s what I count on as an Ad Guy… but when the wife and I bought a car recently, we looked up makes/models (online but mostly Consumer Reports): all we cared about was “Which is the most reliable, and will cost us the least over the next ten years”?
Bought a Toyota. Great gas mileage, best repair history. Not influenced by ads at all. If there were any national Toyota ads at the time… I do remember one annoying local ad, but we ignored it.
That may be one of its goals, but for me it doesn’t work very well. I think the closest it comes is when it’s a hot day, and the advertising image shows an enticingly cold drink, matching my craving right at that particular moment. But even then I rarely go for the specific brand shown in the ad.
They have very little effect on me because I make a point of avoiding looking at them or listening to them, and have since I was a kid. I even used to make a point of cutting the brand names off of my clothing; it still offends me that they expect people to act as free advertisements.
Wow. Could you maybe list a few of them and where and why you purchased them? I’m just curious about how you form your buying decisions without advertising – and how you were able to find so many products that don’t advertise.
I was thinking about my Peanut Butter Cheerios. I was not planning to purchase cereal, and would not have looked in the cereal aisle. However the store had set up an [advertising] display of PB Cheerios in front to introduce them as a new item and offer them at a special price. If they had just put them on the cereal shelf next to the 27 other varieties of Cheerios, I would never have purchased them.
You can’t really generalize advertising as working or not. When I look at stats from our retail division our effective ads, will generate 90% or more increase in sales. You are being influenced whether or not you admit it.
That said, there are awful ads that don’t influence anyone. It’s not the advertising it’s the particular ad.
Three great examples are: James Garner and Mariette Hartley for Polaroid, Candice Bergen, who after she did Sprint ads, saw sales soar. and Ben “The Dell Dude” Curtis, who made Dell’s sales skyrocket and after his contract was not renewed, the sales did a nosedive.
The thing is when an ad works it can work extremely well. When it doesn’t you have wasted all your money at best and at worst you can get a backlash.
In some cases ads work very well on me, in a positive way. I’ll see something and I’ll think “I MUST have that”, though this is usually something like a video game. Hell, I got exposed to the ending credits and song of Portal recently, and I nearly went nuts until I was able to get Portal.
However, a lot of ads will work negatively on me. An ad that is repeated too many times in too short a period of time will quickly cause burnout in me. I don’t know about other people, but if an ad is shown twice on TV, back to back, I find that incredibly annoying. Maybe I just don’t watch TV enough to get used to this…but I also play casual online games, and the game sites play ads between levels of the games. For a while, it seemed that Fios was their only customer. I am not sure what Fios is, nor am I motivated to find out what it is. I just know that I really, really don’t want it. I’m tired of hearing about it.
Also, the owners who think that they are saving money by producing and/or appearing in their ads are just fooling themselves. There’s a local mattress company whose president has one of THE most annoying voices I’ve ever heard, but she apparently thinks that she’s a great spokesperson for her company. Nope. She really needs voice lessons.
You mean like this? (Most recent, random cut-and-paste from the spreadsheet.)
bak choi (Sanamnalung Market – purchased because we eat it)
mushrooms (Sanamnalung Market-- purchased because we eat it)
carrots (ditto)
chow fun noodles (ditto)
pancit noodles (ditto)
Thai basil (ditto)
galanga (ditto)
coconut milk (ditto)
cantaloupe/melon (99 Cents Only Store – purchased because we eat it)
watermelon (ditto)
onions (red)(ditto)
garlic fresh(ditto)
potatoes russet(ditto)
tape scotch – whatever brand they have (does it really matter?) – 99 Cents only store
VO5 shampoo (99 Cents Only Store – purchased because I’ve tried all the other shampoos there, at it works the best. I suppose they advertise, but I can’t recall any.)
toothpaste (I had to check to see what brand – it’s Ultrabright --same reason as for shampoo)
masala cooking sauce (Trader Joe’s – purchased because it’s the only one they have)
I could go on but it’s boring and repetitive.
I’m sure that I buy products that advertise, but I use a DVR, and don’t listen to commercial radio, so I don’t hear the ads anyway.
Also:
I rarely eat processed/packaged foods. I cook a lot. So most of what I eat is produce that has no label. I get that at Thai and Armenian supermarkets (or Liborio when my girlfriend wants something imported from Colombia) that–as far as I know–don’t even have advertising, except for maybe those fliers they stuff in everyone’s mailbox. How do I choose my produce? By what I like to eat, how it looks on inspection, and sale prices. I get other stuff at Von’s–like bulk “Select” coffee–that’s after comparison with Seattle’s Best. Again, the reason is taste comparison and price.
The only beverage I drink other than coffee is Trader Joe’s sparkling mineral water. (She drinks Coke, but I don’t buy it.) I buy that water because of the price and the various flavors, and I have occasion to shop there for cooking sauces. I think Trader Joe’s used to advertise on the radio, but I don’t listen to commercial radio anymore.
Costco: I usually don’t even know what the brands are for what I buy at Costco. Those are just the best quality buys they have. (After looking, I see that the frozen chicken I buy is Tyson, but it’s the only one in that size, so if they were to change brands to an equivalent product, I’d have to go with that.) I also get a lot of clothing at Costco. Does Costco advertise? I don’t know.
99 Cents Only Stores: For things like shampoo, ect., office products, snacks, cleaning products, it’s kind of the same. I’ve come to know the best quality products by trial and error–most of the products don’t even have ads that I know of; some do (VO5, for example, I think), but I don’t recall seeing them. I mean, what the hell is a shampoo ad going to say, anyway? The same BS as all the others.
Ebay. For things like electronics, etc. I start off with the features I want, and then find any brands with a Google search. Then I check Ebay for the best buy.
Cars: from private parties, based on milage, condition, price, and reputation via Consumer Reports. All car ads say the same BS, but I use a DVR, so I don’t watch them anyway.
Really, life’s too short to watch commercials.
I don’t eat cereal–ever. In fact, there are a few dozen products (e.g., cereal, soda & other sugar drinks, liquor, candy, frozen meals, etc.) that–if you don’t consume them–75% of the floor space of a typical supermarket could be eliminated.
I can’t believe there are so many people here who think an ad works only if it makes you jump up, rush to your car, and purchase their product immediately.
That’s not the point of advertising. You’re an advertiser’s wet dream. Someone completely unaware of how it works!
