Could you be wondering whether advertising is a mind game or not? Can advertising influence your subconscious mind? Sure, you’re at the right place. Naturally, our mind is responsible for driving most of our decisions and actions. Brands will create and use ads to influence your purchase behaviors or purchase decisions.
Advertising is a mind game because most products are unnecessary, so marketers must persuade viewers that either a need or a desire exists where it does not. Those who fall victim to marketers’ tricks then purchase the advertised product and justify the advertisers’ efforts.
Now how do the ads control you? Theoretically, there are specific methods to get into the subconscious of a human mind. The advertisers will use the techniques to corrupt your mind, ending up in their trap. Few of these methods are repetition, delayed action, triggering emotions, and reverse action. We’ll highlight each individually.
• Repetition – Companies will keep bombarding their information now and then until a time when your mind starts to accept the information, no matter how illogical it is. For example, a perfume that attracts women seems absurd, but after bombarding this idea, you’ll find out the brand’s sales go up.
• Delayed action – An ad can insert something in your mind that stays in mind and gets triggered after some time or at certain events.
• Triggering emotions – A brand can trigger your emotions in ads to associate your subconscious mind with the service or product.
• Reversed action – An ad can challenge your mind, thus affecting your purchase action or behavior.
Advertisers can also use high profile people, specific color schemes, music, and visual effects, all to help their ads penetrate your mind as the target audience.
Why Is Advertising A Mind Game?
We live in a world of advertising and in which it accepts all advertising forms, whether you realize it or not. As a brand retailer or owner, it is vital to understand why advertising is essential to your brand’s success and what it does. As viewers, we assume the purpose of an advertisement is to inform us about the properties of a brand or product, such as a particular soap leaving fewer streaks than the other soap brand.
With this in mind, a business cannot survive without advertising, especially in a world that uses advertising for everything and depends on it for all levels of communication and media.
As we’re all exposed to an immense cacophony of advertisements every day, advertising is a mind game. Have you ever read, heard, or seen an ad that makes you share and buy products? It is no surprise. Many brands want to be associated with positivity, happiness, laughing, and smiling customers to increase sharing and engagement.
Brand advertisers will try to get their audience to buy stuff by bombarding advertisements and images of good-looking people, pleasant sounds, attractive locations, sleek cars, and more to portray an optimum feel of the brand or product. Emotional responses to ads influence a person’s intent to buy than the ad’s content. The advertisers target your senses to affect your actions or how you perceive their product or brand.
Some Common Tactics Advertisers Use To Manipulate Viewers
Today’s viewers must be more vigilant in the face of clever and deceptive marketing techniques. Salespeople and retailers have numerous methods to manipulate their viewers, such as creating a false sense of scarcity or urgency, decoy pricing, and instant markdown.
Even though consumer protection laws intend to discourage misleading advertising, some ads go unchallenged if no consumer files a lawsuit. For extended brands that can afford an occasional case, the payoff is most likely worth the risk of running the ad.
Viewers struggle to navigate an increasingly aggressive environment with sneaky advertising tricks and techniques. The many ad designs are there to fool you. It is no wonder that 50% of viewers do not trust what they read, hear or see in advertisements. The topical book Hidden Persuasion by Matthijs van Leeuwen, Marc Andrews, and Rick van Baaren delve into subtle ways advertisers manipulate viewers, even at the subliminal level.
Here we are. Let’s jump into some of the few tactics advertisers use to manipulate their viewers.
1. Endorsements
An advertiser may use celebrity endorsements as a manipulation strategy to advertise their products. The celebrities endorse the product or service by telling their own experiences with the product or service. Once the endorsement grabs your attention, you will have more interest in the advertised product than a non-endorsed product. It is because celebrities possess a status. Once you like the star, you will be more motivated to assess what kind of products or services they are endorsing.
2. Ideal Family and Ideal Kids
Advertisers using the above tactic will show that the families or kids using their product are happy-go-lucky families. The ad will cover a well neat furnished home, well-mannered kids, and a simple and sweet kind of family. A perfect example of this kind of ad is the Dettol soap ad. It shows everyone in the family using that soap and is always protected from germs. The ad also shows a florescent color line covering the whole body of each family member when compared to other people who do not use this soap.
3. Emotional Appeal
Advertisers may use emotional appeals to generate memorability and engagement. In such a case, you’ll find out that the advertisers use all kinds of emotions that can dramatically affect how you respond to the advertising. Additionally, they enhance perceptions and empathy with the brand for more consumer engagements. That way, you develop a stronger attitudinal and behavioral response for purchase intentions.
4. Bandwagon Advertising
Bandwagon advertising involves persuading customers by making them feel that a product or service is popular and everyone else has it. It makes the viewers feel like they are missing out or falling behind if they do not join the crowd and be part of the trend. If you are not good at making decisions or are nervous to try something new, you will find yourself purchasing without even a second thought.
5. Surrogate Advertising
An advertiser may use this advertisement technique if they cannot advertise their products and services directly. They will use indirect advertisements for promoting their product and letting viewers know about the actual product. This form of advertising is common in liquor ads. The ads will never show someone drinking real liquor, but in place of that, they will show someone drinking a soft drink, soda, or some mineral water.
6. Statistics
Statistics has a lot of power. Advertisers will use real examples and numbers to prove how well their product works. For example, our product cleans 99.99% of germs. The majority of people say that numbers don’t lie. Sure, it might be true. However, you’ll find that, at times, statistics can be misleading. Advertisers may also deliberately use misleading statistics to manipulate viewers and prompt an agenda.
7. Promotional Advertising
Promotional advertising involves giving away product samples for free to consumers. The main objective of promotional advertising is to prompt you to show interest in a product or service by first trying it and then ideally buying it. This form of advertisement is used by companies when they launch new products, especially products with perceived high risk.
8. Patriotic Advertisements
Patriotic ads show how you can support your country by using a particular product or service. The ads will convince you to buy the product to show love to your country. For example, two brands may form a union to produce a product or offer a service, and in their ad, they will convince you to buy one of their products to help a child go to school.
9. Weasel Words
In this tactic, you will find that the advertiser only suggests a positive meaning without, in fact, making any assurance. For example, an advertiser can say that a particular diet product can aid you to lose weight as it helps them lose weight. The advertisement does not provide a guarantee of you losing weight.
10. Unfinished Ads
Advertisers may also use unfinished ads to manipulate their viewers. They generally play with words by only mentioning that their product works better. However, they are less likely to answer how much more it works best than their competitors.
11. Complementing the Clients
An advertiser uses praises to constitute a kind of verbal bribery to serve their interests. The glory might have a hidden intention of wrangling something from you.
12. Bribery
Advertisers use this technique to bribe customers to buy a product and get something extra. For example, “buy a burger and get free fries.”
Conclusion
Nowadays, advertisements are everywhere embedded in our daily life. Every organization needs to advertise its products and services to inform viewers about the product or service, increase the sale, acquire market value and gain reputation and name in the market.
These advertisements are potent resources that inform viewers of the latest news on a particular product or service in many ways. Most viewers can get more information and product details from media, the internet, newspapers, and radio stations.
Even though advertising is a significant informative source, it can also be considered a manipulation tool to control the minds and desires of the consumers and persuade them to buy things they do not need.Cancel