Advertising’s 15 Basic Appeals
In the article “Advertising’s 15 Basic Appeals” Jib Fowles describes fifteen appeals that are usually used by the advertisers in order to attract attention of the audience. One of the tasks of the advertisers is to create an ad that would boost the desires and motives of a person and provide this person with the information about the product. Nowadays the people are overloaded with the advertisements and only 12 advertisements produce a reaction during the day. Therefore the ads have to be well-thought and catchy in order to be effective. There are several appeals which advertisers use when creating new ads: the need for sex, affiliation, achievement, attention, feeling safe, etc. These appeals are also very common in the pop culture.
For example, Super Bowl has a very large TV audience and many companies invest a lot of money into advertising during this event. In just 1 minute a company must present a product/service and motivate the viewers to purchase it. So choosing an appropriate appeal is very important. For example, Wix.com appealed to the need of guidance and used the main characters from the Kung Fu Panda to advertise the Wix.com platform. LG also appealed to the need of guidance. In the advertisement Liam Neeson is talking to his real-life son Michael Neeson about the technological revolution and persuades him that “the future is staring at us”.
In conclusion, Jib Fowles states that appealing to the need for sex or to aggress is very risky and should be avoided. There are some approaches that may help to improve the effectiveness of an advertisement. Using humor or celebrities in the ads are often the useful tools, because celebrities are figures of authority and role models for the people. Therefore, celebrities, pop culture, and advertising have always been interconnected and influenced the people’s decisions.
The Cult You’re In
In the article “The Cult You’re In” Kalle Lasn criticizes advertising that influences the people’s lives and turns people into the citizen-consumers. Most ads are often illusive and make the people strive for something that cannot be achieved. The pop culture increases this negative influence.
At different stages of life a person has to rethink his or her life goals and the pop culture has a huge and sometimes even decisive impact on the person’s decisions. For instance, young people dream to be famous and successful. When they grow up, they change their priorities and are not as ambitious as before, but still their next steps in search of the meaning of life are influenced by advertising and pop culture that can be seen on TV, online or in the traditional mass media. As the result, the society is like a cult and there are many unwritten rules that people have to follow.
Such a concept is true to a large degree. We live in a consumer society with very strong pop culture and we follow certain rules in our private lives and at work. The possessions define the level of success and therefore it is important to earn enough to be able to afford to buy the products and services that are regarded in the pop culture as the attributes of wealth. So even though we are the free people and always have a choice, there will always be a large number of the other people who take similar decisions and as the result the differences between the people are not so big.
However, the pop culture may be different based on the incomes and other factors. Market analysts, advertisers, producers, sociologists may assess the differences and precisely categorize the people offering them proper products and ideas. It seems that we were caught in a consumer maze indeed and it is important to learn to live in the consumer society taking into account all its strengths and weaknesses.
The Brain: Marketing to Your Mind
In the article “The Brain: Marketing to Your Mind” Alice Park writes that new technologies will make marketing and advertising more advanced. As the result, the companies will have more control over the purchasing decisions. Nowadays scientists use high-tech brain scanners in order to analyze how the people make their decisions if they want to buy something. Sometimes the brand has more value than the content of the product. The author writes about the research that was carried out by P. Montague of Baylor College of Medicine. Montague conducted a blind taste test with 67 people which showed that the brand perception has a very large impact on the people’s decisions, despite the fact the compared products have more or less similar features (in this article Coca-Cola and Pepsi).
Advanced technologies are used in different industries and they shape the pop culture nowadays. A large number of gadgets changed the way how we see the celebrities. We recognize the talent of a person, but at same time we follow this person in the social media or in the press and this person becomes much more interesting to us. In turn, celebrities use technologies to increase their popularity or to advertise the products.
One more multifaceted industry that has already started to influence the pop culture and lives of the people is the internet of things that allows the people to use technologies for different purposes every day. In the short term, the technologies will be even more important. Not only the internet and e-commerce will become more popular. The technologies will be an essential part of our lives and there will be much more scientific breakthroughs. Nevertheless, as it was written in the article “The Brain: Marketing to Your Mind” some issues concerning the application of technologies may be very controversial. For instance, advertising by means of sophisticated technologies may lead to the unfair manipulations.
References
Sorapure, Madeleine, Petracca, Michael. (15 July 2011). Common Culture: Reading
and Writing about American Popular Culture. Pearson Education , USA. Print.
