There’s definitely one form of advertising that I know effects me; movie trailers. I’ve seen a movie trailer and made a conscious decision to watch the movie because I liked the trailer.
If I like a trailer, it’s probably for something I was already interested in seeing and would have seen regardless.
On the other hand there have been many trailers that completely turned me off from a movie.
Ads sometimes make me want the thing they are advertising…but not always that brand. I saw ad for Jiff peanut butter that made me want peanut butter, but I would never buy Jiff. I only like the hippie natural kind.
Earlier today my son said to me that he saw a commercial for Domino’s that made him want to get a Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake pizza for dinner tonight.
I don’t have a tv (not a brag, I just watch what I like on the PC) and I have ad blockers so I don’t see many ads. None do a thing other than annoy me.
What gets me is those mail flyers with restaurant coupon ads. I am often suckered by “It’s only 14.99 to feed all three of us!” steamy fried chicken image. We rarely do eat out but when we do it’s because mama has a coupon.
I remember when I was a kid, half the toys I wanted were ones I only saw on TV ads, and around half of those I actually got eventually (it wasn’t many, maybe three or four times). I think that’s the only times I’ve done it, and that was technically my parents being influenced by me. Since becoming an adult I’m too cynical to fall for it.
Brand Awareness is a good thing, though. I do recognise the necessity of advertising for our economy to tick over.
What I don’t get are ads like the IBM Watson ads. What the heck is it that they are trying to accomplish with that ad?
no thanks…the epitome of dumbest things on a pizza along with a pretzel crust and mustard for sauce :eek:
Did Italians stray from a normal crust and normal sauce/tomatoes?
Whats next a gingerbread crust or a graham cracker with marshmallow sauce? :smack:
I don’t watch TV, which makes me morally superior to all the rest of you mindless plebs.
I have a Mac, which makes me a better person than you are, unless you have a Mac. But I also have an iPod and an iPad, so even if you have a single Mac, I’m still a better person than you are. You’ll have to buy four Macs before you’re a better person that I am.
I hate ads. Why would anyone believe statements touting the wonders of a product when it’s the product owners crowing about it? It is illogical.
I won’t watch a TV show unless it’s been recorded, so I can skip the ads. I go out of my way to avoid products advertised on billboards or any other way. I listen only to radio stations that don’t have commercials.
I am unaffected by food ads. I grocery shop by price. Half the products in the store are owned by Kraft, now the Kraft Heinz Co., which is only a single division of Mondelez International at that. The other half of the store is owned by General Foods.
The last thing I’d do is buy a car because of an ad. Volkswagen ads and diesels, anyone? It’s probably owned by Mondelez anyway. The cars are cheesy enough.
The internet browser I use is crammed with ad blockers and anti-trackers. If an internet site won’t display unless my ad blockers and anti-trackers are turned off, I leave the site and won’t return. I don’t care if the site goes tits up. In fact, I hope it does because those clowns don’t care if the ads contain malware, even if it won’t run on Macs (noblesse oblige) and it’s likely they have no control over the ad content but run them anyway, so why should I give a damn about them?
Ads are like porn. If they aren’t perverted, why do so many people watch them?
Interesting that you mentioned Chili’s and Olive Garden rather than say, Applebees and Ruby Tuesday.
I wonder what factors might account for one business being “top of mind” rather than another. :dubious:
Where’s the poll?
TV ads? Do those still exist? I haven’t seen one in about ten years. 
Red Lobster with Endless Shrimp. I’ll see the commercial and be reminded that I need to go.
Here you go, S’mores Dessert Pizza.
I’ll have branded fruit and vegetables, but only because the store sells them with some brands I’ve never heard of. Well, Chiquita bananas, but I’m not sure if that’s the brand my store carries, or even whether Chiquita advertises!
Milk is store brand.
Meijer advertises, but I go there because it’s nearby. There used to be a Farmer Jack but it went bankrupt because I refused to use one of their stupid store cards.
Labatt Blue, but that’s because I like it and it’s dirt cheap in the USA. Microbrew, too, but they don’t advertise anywhere as far as I can tell.
Store brand pasta, because Prince moved out of the city and I don’t really care if Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day or not (I was impressionable in my childhood, you see).
I’m aware of Coke, Pepsi, and McDonald’s, but that may be because of my youthful impressionability; their ads must be targetting the current generation because they mean nothing to me.
I’m already an Apple fan, thank goodness for Apple because their ads actually tend to turn me off.
Most of what I watch has had commercials removed, and most sites are ad blocked, so I guess that leaves product placement.
Something must affect me somehow; I can’t dispute that. But I have a hard time reasoning what it might be.
I am not immune to advertising, but I have a pretty strong annoyability quotient; and if an ad has annoyed me, I will remember the annoying ad and I will not buy from that company (unless I absolutely need the product and there are zero competitors to buy from, at any rate. And I hold long grudges, so companies that have put annoying ads in the field may have lost me as a potential customer for decades. MacDonald’s certainly did, for example; Procter & Gamble would have except that it’s damn difficult to buy a non-P&G laundry detergent (check the back of the damn bottles & boxes some time), so I compromise by purchasing the “store brand” which is generally a surplus P&G product that didn’t score high enough on color consistency or some such thing).
Where ads have led me to make purchases, it’s typically been because I wasn’t fully aware of the existence of the product until seeing the ad, rather than the ad winning me over to a specific brand of a product type that I was already well aware of. I bought my first CD burner after seeing an ad: “Wow, they have those now? I can make my own CDs from my own music, or make CD-ROMS of my own?”
Very rarely does advertising steer me towards particular brands in preference over other brands. My decisions with regard to which brand to purchase are based almost purely on a combination of personal experience and price point - I’ll buy the least expensive whatever, unless my own personal experience with whatever has demonstrated that there is a brand that is clearly preferable to me in some fashion (I only buy Helmanns/Best Foods mayo on the rare occasions I buy mayo, for example).
What advertising does do is make me aware of new products/models I might enjoy, and keep brand names in my mind for when I’m making purchasing decisions for objects I don’t buy routinely. Like, to use the OP’s example, if I were contemplating eating out, having seen a recent commercial for Olive Garden might steer me in that direction. The thought would go something like: 1) I’m hungry, 2) I don’t feel like cooking my own food tonight for whatever reason, 3) I want to eat out this evening!, 4) where do I want to go? And the name “Olive Garden” is floating right there in my brain because I saw a billboard on my drive home from work. In the absence of a strong inclination in another food-purveyor direction, provided Olive Garden is a food I have enjoyed in the past (YMMV here), the recent exposure from advertising is as likely as not to cause me to select Olive Garden from my plethora of other options. All other things being equal, humans have a tendency to go with whatever brand pops into their head most quickly - which is mostly what the most recent ad was for.
I don’t watch broadcast or cable TV unless I’m somewhere away from home (airports, restaurants, relatives’ homes) where it’s on. So they don’t get many opportunities to sell to me.
My short answer is yes, but the likelihood of a response increases substantially if
- it’s a cheap item
- I was going to buy something like it anyway
So for example, if I want to go out to lunch for a burger, there are several chains I consider more or less equal. I have my favorite stand-by options, but if chain X has the new “super awesome burger” then they might get my five dollars. Though, to be honest, I’ve been increasingly disappointed by these kinds of specials in the last couple of years. I don’t even try Pizza Hut or Taco Bell specials anymore even though I like their everyday products.
Also, commercials sometimes increase consumption of things I already bought. A beer or whiskey commercial might make me think “That sounds good right about now.” Hard to say if or how much this increases my total consumption, but if it gets me to drink one more beer a week, it’s probably still a win for the beer industry.
Now that I think about it, I’m kind of a control, in that I don’t watch local TV and even if I did I have no understanding of the local language. I can’t even be confused by written cognates because there’s no alphabet.
Restaurants I choose are based exclusively on friends’ recommendations or a deliberate search for Western food. Chinese friends’ recommendations are usually based on a Yelp-like phone app called DianPing.
Anything I buy in the store is like I described above: it’s because it’s what they have. I’ll admit I buy Tyson chicken because it’s imported and I can’t read the packaging on the local brand, but that’s (old) brand recognition rather than a current advertising effect.
I’m amazed at another discovery: I’ve often poo-poo’d “social” media but now I recognize that everything I do buy to satisfy “wants” (not “needs”) is a result of things that can arguably be called “social media.” I don’t mean the Facebook or the Twitter, but things like Amazon reviews, cycling forums, and technology blogs (oh? The Retina iMac is available? Time to replace this yucky non-Retina model!).