Well, you gotta think not only about the brand of product, but that you’re using that product at all.
Most ladies didn’t shave their legs or under their arms until about the 1920s. It was the masses of ads (by razor companies who wanted to sell more razors) which convinced women that the hair was unsightly and vaguely unsanitary. “Shame advertising” is extremely affective, and now some women will say that they’re embarassed to even have a little stubble.
Why must your shower walls be free of hard-water residue or soap scum when neither impedes the function of the shower? Why do you wash your car? Why are we so uptight about controlling the body’s natural aromas? We’ve been convinced not to do these things means we’re dirty and we should be ashamed.
Now, they’re working on the public to convince them that toilets should be flushed with bleach products to make them as sanitary as an operating table and that your toilet brush is plotting your demise by spewing bacteria from where it lurks in the corners. You know your neighbors are talking about you having that filthy thing nestled next to your toilet, don’t you? You should buy the disposable wands before you become a paraiah. (And, by the way, you’re not a good mom if you buy the off-brand penut butter.)
Women wear makeup because we’ve been convinced that our naked skin is full of “flaws” and Christ forbid you don’t do everything in your power to prevent “signs of aging.” To the detriment of women everywhere, douche manufacturers have striven to convince women that their genitals are “not so fresh” and need to be flushed frequently with chemically-scented compounds.
This is exactly what i do; when i’m buying toothpaste, i find whichever one happens to be on special and get a couple of tubes. I don’t think i’ve bought the same brand twice in a row over the last couple of years.
I’m not convinced by that. As Trunk says, it might just be a matter of taste. If i found a toothpaste that tasted heaps better than all the others, i might be persuaded to stay with it, and that wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with advertising.
And take something like shaving. If you’re a guy, and you don’t use an electric razor, you’re pretty much faced with a duopoly—Schick or Gillette. I’ve had my Gillette razor for years now. I don’t even remember why i chose that particular razor. The reason i buy Gillette blades is that they’re the ones that fit my handle. I’m certainly no more partial to Gillette as a company than to Schick, and i’m completely certain that each does as good a job of shaving as the other.
Now, a couple of things. First, it could be that there are, in fact, other disposable head razors out there, but that i only know about Schick and Gillette because of their massive advertising campaigns. To that extent, sure i’m affected by advertising.
Also, while i like to think that i can resist advertising, i can, on occasion, be susceptible to marketing.
When Schick and Gillette starting getting into the “I’ve got more blades than you” battle, i swore that i wouldn’t buy into their bullshit. I was perfectly happy with my twin-blade razor, and saw no need whatsoever for three, four, or (ferchissakes!) five blades. I continued to buy twin-blade heads, ignoring the hype.
Then, one day i got home from buying my usual twin-blade heads, and found that the package contained two “free” three-blade heads. Well, i wasn’t going to throw them out, so i gave them a try and, sure enough, i found them noticeably smoother and easier to use than the two-blade versions. Since that day a few months ago, i’ve been buying three-blade heads, as a result of a marketing strategy.
As someone who moved to the US only a few years ago, i tend to use the brands that i first tried. While many US brand names were familiar to me (Kelloggs, Glad, etc.), many were not (Post). In Australia, for example, Jif is not a brand of peanut butter, it’s a white creamy liquid used to clean the bathroom and kitchen.
I use Scott toilet paper, largely because it’s one of the first brands i saw, and i much prefer single-ply to that soft stuff that feels like you’re wiping your ass with a pillow. I had never seen an advertisement for it.
Also, we do a reasonable amount of our shopping at Trader Joe’s, which has a lot of it’s own branded stuff, and where you often won’t even find the brands that advertise on TV or in the supermarket magazines. As a vegetarian, i’ve discovered which fake meat products i like by trial and error; i don’t recall seeing advertisements for any of that stuff.
Advertising does “work” on me in a different way. I hate it. We usually mute the TV when the ads come on, or flick to another channel. But of course, even when i hate it, and even when i don’t use the product, i’m still affected by it. I know, for example, that when i hear that stupid fucking “Love Train” song, it’s probably an ad for Coors beer.
Sure, I’m affected by advertising – both in favor of products, and against them. When I realized my brand of toilet paper was the one with those “bears crapping in the woods” ads, I switched. Can’t stand those ads.
And from time to time advertising has made me aware of products I didn’t know about that I went out and got.
But I really think that “advertising” may be too broad of a term for people to accurately know how it affects them. Supplier discounts are a form of advertising – if you’re buying only on price, and the price is reduced because of some promo or other, then have you been affected by advertising?
How about free samples of food in grocery stores? Heck, Borders was passing around free mini-lattes last time I was there. That’s advertising, too.
Or how about stealth advertising disguised as product reviews, or articles? I’d be willing to bet that most people who go to newly released movies have their decision influence by advertising for the movie. Even if it was only that the advertising budget paid for the free screening by your favorite movie reviewer.
I think it would be impossible to say that advertising does not affect anyone in any way. Simply knowing of a product’s existence as a result of an ad, or as a result of being told by someone who saw an ad, is being affected by it.
I’m pretty jaded about advertizing. I know that in every instance of every ad by any moderately successful ad agency, you are being bombarded with “best case scenario” ads – that is, ads which present the product in the best possible light and espouse its features and benefits in a best-case way even if actual results are less than claimed.
Cosmetics and personal care products are probably the worst offenders. They can make lashes appear 300% larger, skin feel softer and look smoother, hair seem 40% more voluminous and shinier to the point of irridescence, teeth look noticeably whiter, armpits smell babe-magnetically good, eyes appear less puffy, lips look more plump, and make wrinkles appear to disappear, all thanks to the special ingredients pro-vitamin B5, jojoba, ylang-ylang, Butros Butros, gurana, ground ossified shark tail, yak’s milk, beer, oregano, shea and cocoa butters, fruit extracts, bat piss, eucalyptus, rose and tea tree oils, turkey gravy, clover honey, nightshade, kangaroos, and essence of oxtail soup. It’s all bunk and weasel words. Sure, the special ingredients might do something useful, and it might even better than the last passel of special ingredients they used, but the way it’s all talked up you half expect a stylist to pop out of the bottle and groom you 'til you’re ready for your close-up.
Hell, the above quasi-rant was certainly inspired by my ad-affected brain. Do ads make me buy things? Rarely, although I’m much more receptive to clever and amusing advertising than bland, idiotic, or in-your-face tactics – the last two being far more likely to make me avoid the products they peddle.
It’s true that everyone who views ads is, in some sense, affected by them.
On the other side of the coin, though, is the question of the extent to which advertising actually “works” in any real sense.
Advertising has, much to the delight of media outlets and the advertising industry, turned into something of an arms race. There’s very little concrete evidence that people would buy less shit if advertising was dramatically reduced, but the problem is that no-one wants to leave the field open for their competitors.
For example, if all soda manufacturers stopped advertising, we don’t really know that people would stop drinking soda. But if Coca Cola stopped advertising, and Pepsi didn’t, there a good chance that Pepsi would capture a higher proportion of the cola-drinking market. Advertising has become a forced expenditure, whereby you do it mainly because your competition does.
Absolutely. I just can’t think of an instance affecting me personally. I shave my face because my beard never turns into an actual beard, it stops at the “looks shitty and itches all the time” stage. I shave my armpits because I tried it once and found it comfortable. I don’t have a car to wash, but if I did and I did wash it, it would be for the same reason I clean my apartment: I enjoy cleanliness. I use an ordinary toilet brush because I don’t like seeing shit when I lift my toilet lid.
Now, some might say that advertising has affected me to clean or use a toilet brush in the first place. If so, it wasn’t me but rather my parents or grandparents. I use one because we did when I grew up and I got accustomed to it.
Oh, absolutely, one’s visibilty in the marketplace is vital to continued success. It isn’t enough simply to have a product. It isn’t even enough to have the leading product. If someone else is advertising and you aren’t, guess who’s going to make the big bucks?
There’s really no question as to the necessessity of advertising – really the question right now is how to advertise. With the advent of billboards on wheels, full-coverage bus decals, the latest battle to introduce marketing and product placement in video games, and the current trend for virals, it’s all about shifting to or adding new focus on new, different, and effective ways to advertise. I was reading an article over the weekend about virals and their place in the ad jungle – and more importantly their future there. It was rather interesting, and the article suggested that they were becoming victims of their own success – the reason virals worked was because they were few in number, they were clever, and most importantly, they weren’t shoved in your face. It was advertising on the user’s own terms – they chose to view this amusing ad they were told about. And they worked. There was no information as how many of the millions of views these virals got by users going and seeing them based on word-of-mout translated into sales, but at least it proved the effectiveness of the viral concept as a means to effectively trick users into doing your promotional work for you.
How’s that for advertising affecting the individual? Hands up all ye who have ever visited Kontraband. (I have done, and do occasionally)
If I’m being honest though I have to say that very few ads ever get me to buy anything. But I’m also the type of consumer who much prefers to do any kind of shopping on his own terms. I research everything I’m planning on buying if it’s going to cost more than a few bucks and is something I want to make sure I get right the first time. I staunchly refuse to have my mind made up for me. I’m all for being made aware of a products existence, particularly if it happens to fall upon my particular interests at the time, but ads alone will, at the very most, prompt me to go researching it and similar products myself. (This generally doesn’t apply to most consumables – I’ll try just about anything once, but I’ll stick with the one that satisfies my needs the most no matter what it is.)
Everyone who believes they aren’t influenced by marketing should read Brian Vaszily’s articles. Although I dislike that he’s associated with the Quack Mercola, his marketing articles are very, very good.
I have no problem trying a product I saw advertised and possibly becoming brand loyal if it is a fantastic product, but other than that I think advertising has little effect on me.
For example, I have very sensitve teeth and require toothpaste that makes eating foods that have sugar or are hot/cold not hurt like the stabbing of a thousand knives into the nerves in my teeth. However, I have tried Sensodyne, Butler, and many other brands of sensitive teeth toothpaste. The one I use is the one that I found at the dollar store. It works just as well and it is cheap. I don’t even know the name of the one I use, all I know is that the tube is pink, and no amount of advertising will convince me I need to switch to a certian brand of toothpaste. When it comes to deoderant though I am a Dove girl through and through. It is the only one that works for me that I don’t think smells horrible. I probably tried it because I saw an ad, but I KEEP using it because it is a quality product.
“Affect” is a very broad term. When I see an advertisement, the photons from the TV screen go into my eyes and change the chemical pattern on my retina. That’s an effect. The real question is whether advertising makes me more likely to buy the product that was advertised.
The only honest answer I can give is, “sometimes”.
Sometimes an ad convinces me to purchase something that I otherwise would not have purchased. Sometimes an ad convinces me to purchase a particular brand of something when I otherwise would have purchased some other brand. Sometimes an ad has no effect on my purchasing habits whatsoever.
I generally think that the power of advertising is highly overrated. People don’t buy Hummers because the commercials make them look cool. (All car commercials make the car look cool. Even the VW Beetle.) They buy them because they think that other people will think that they’re cool if they have one, or because of some practical reason, or because they have some particular individual reason for it. Advertising can sometimes tip the balance of competing desires, but it’s only one factor among many. It is also one of the weakest factors.
I agree that advertising can often be the ‘tipping factor.’
I grew up in a time when there were no ads on shopping carts.
I guess it so permeates my existance now that I don’t pay as much attention as I once did. My eyes glaze over, my ears tune it out.
OTOH
I am such a sucker for sexy packaging. I willingly purchase hair or skin products that I really do not need just because of their attractive shape, color etc.
I took marketing and advertising classes in college (I have a BBA in computer information systems and marketing), and the most important bit of information I came away with was this: at least now I know when I’m being manipulated. Everything from the point-of-purchase displays near the register (like the gum and soft drinks) to the products displayed on the end caps to the billboard you pass on the way to work: those are all forms of advertising. If you live in the first world, you can’t not be affected by advertising.
Like someone else mentioned above, I don’t watch TV unless it’s on DVD, watch very few movies in the theater, read almost no magazines, use AdBlock and FlashBlock on Firefox, and rarely even leave the house. Yet I’m not immune to advertising either.
All advertising won’t work on all people, and certain types of advertising will actually cause a negative effect on some people, but unless you’ve never chosen a movie based on its trailer or movie poster, never picked up a new product to try that was set out on a special display at the store, or never seen something advertised in any media and thought, “That looks interesting,” you’ve been affected by advertising.
If you wanted to say that certain *types *of advertising could never work on you, I can believe that, but you’re not helping yourself if you refuse to believe that advertising influences you.
I think most people don’t realize how pervasive ads are, and the people who don’t claim to be effected by them are just as effected as the rest of us.
While it’s true that if you are interested in a product and you notice a ad you may pay attention to it, that is not always the case. Sometimes you pay attention to a ad that you have no intention in getting - I would wag that if this is the case you are less likely to buy it then someone who doesn’t pay attention to it. In other words I think noticign the ad allows you to dismiss it, while not paying attention does not allow this choice.
I never did understand these. If Anagramless Guy’s nether bits smelled rainforest fresh, or like tropical lobster or something, I wouldn’t be excited. I’d be skeeved.
I was driving around northern Virginia with my wife and we were starving. I saw a Pizza Hut and rolled in, hopped out of the car and went up to the take out register practically drooling. I’d been wanting to try this one for a while and now was my big chance!
“I’d like the pizza with the pieces of steak in it”
“Um…sorry sir, we discontinued that two and a half years ago. It was just a promotional thing”.
:smack:
Interesting. Where do you think, though, that people get the idea that other people will think they’re cool for having a Hummer?
I remember, years and years ago, hearing about a study that indicated that the effectiveness of advertising varied according to education level and intelligence metrics (e.g. IQ). The study claimed to demonstrate that the more highly educated/intelligent you are, the more advertising affects you, and the more likely you are to believe that it does not affect you. I can’t vouch for its methodology though, as I just heard a passing report on it.
[QUOTE=Kyrie EleisonThe study claimed to demonstrate that the more highly educated/intelligent you are, the more advertising affects you, and the more likely you are to believe that it does not affect you. I can’t vouch for its methodology though, as I just heard a passing report on it.[/QUOTE]
I can’t see how this would work. It would seem to me that the more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to be taken in by the advertising, especially if you are old enough to have fallen for it too many times before and found that the claims the ad that made you try it made were spurious at best, and thus approach pretty much all advertising these days with proper dubiousness. This is how I feel anyway. I’ll watch ads, especially if they feature entertaining visuals or amusing concepts or dialogue. The vast majority of the time though, I don’t even take he ads into consideration when shopping for something. If I see something I want, I’ll read all the pomp the manufacturer has to say about it just to get a bit of a bead on what I’m supposed to expect – but immediately afterwards I’ll go and google up all the independent reviews and user discussions on the product that I can find so I can get a much more secure bead on what I can actually expect, because let’s face it – the manufacturers are the last ones who are going to fess up to their own product’s shortcomings. In the end I base my decision on the research that I’ve done. With the possible exception of foodstuffs and restaurants/fast food joints where it’s always going to be a subjective opinion as to quality and taste, I don’t think I’ve ever been pursuaded to buy anything based solely on its advertising – at least, not since I was in my early to mid teens, anyway.
I don’t see very much advertising these days, and I don’t think I’m very affected by it. I tend to buy whatever’s cheap. I have a generic Made In China MP3 player, not an iPod. I wear mostly New Balance shoes, but that’s because they’re cheap (come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a New Balance ad). I’m also fairly brand-loyal to Head and Shoulders, because it’s the first product I found that kept my dandruff under control and I just kind of stuck with it, so that’s score one for advertising there. For everything else, though, it doesn’t really have an effect on me.