advertising and its influences

Repetition

Volvo traditionally focused its image advertising on safety. Through repeptition, it built up a strong image of the Volvo as a safe car. Other brands have since caught up a lot in the recent years however most people would still consider the Volvo to be a safest car. Therefore safety is now an integral part of our perception of this brand.

Which would lead us to believe that the one effect of image advertising, is to produce gradual shifts in our perceptions of a brand with regard to a particular atribute..in this case safety. So it would be safe to assume that the people that drive a Volvo are very "safe" people.

Which brings me on to user image..

In advertising many brands focus often on the people that use the brand. What changes is not so much our perception, or the image of the product, it is the kind of person who typically uses the brand, or the situation on which the brand is typically used.

When these brands are advertised, the focus is very much on image but often with this important, subtle difference. The advert aims to change not how we see the brand itself but how we see the stereotypical user and the situation in which the brand is used.

So if the user image of a brand resembles us, or the type of person we aspire to be, we buy that product.

Persuasion

We have been told so many times that the role of advertising is to persuade. However how often is it said that after viewing an advert, "I want that now", or "I wouldn't buy that"?

Advertising itself is a relatively weak persuasive influence, especially in comparison with other forms, such as word of mouth, previous experience and reccomendations by "experts".

But what it comes down to, is point of sale advertising, i.e. your market.

• Coke Zero: Great Coke taste, zero sugar
• BA: The worlds favourite airline
• etc..

The words and pictures used to label and describe a brand can direct our attention to quie different aspects of the same thing; they can make us see it in different ways.

For example, take Bill Gates say if he were to release a biography, but the title was "Family Man", rather than "World's Greates Entrepreneur". Each im sure would sell millions, however the market that it would appeal to would bee completely different in both circumstances.

The idea is, that its the same product but being decscribed under one of its many attributes. So if we take the two examples from earlier and change the attribute that they convey:

• Coke Zero: We stole the taste from Coke
• BA: We hold the record for baggage loss

What about Subliminal Advertising?

There are those who believe that advertising is all powerfull and that the mechanism of advertising must be unconscious and that subliminal and this is why its effects are not open to introspection. Moreover if subliminal advertising did indeed have that kind of effect on our behaviour, and without our knowledge, then we clearly would need some protection from it. It is still widely believed that in the 1950s, subliminal advertising was made illeagal. However no actual legislation was passed.

However research into subliminal advertising has disproved this belief, even though subliminal advertising had been supposedly banned, but if this is the case and it has no real effect on the mind of the viewer then surely it would be an ineffective form of advertising. (1984, Advertising Age, James Vicary)

Following this research i believe that my work should veer towards using the method of subliminal advertising, as it quite clearly outlines what i initially intended to do, advertising without advertising, if it is as ineffective as it claims to be then this would be an ideal form to use.