The image of the advertising industry has changed dramatically. The advertising industry uses psychological tricks to convince customers that they need a particular product or product.
More than half a century ago, Vance Packard exposed the actions of marketers to attract the attention of buyers. Times have changed, tools for influencing consciousness have become more perfect. Well-known marketer Martin Lindstrom described them.
In his 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders, journalist Vance Packard first spoke about the psychological tricks that the advertising industry uses to convince Americans that they need a particular product or product. The image of the advertising industry has changed dramatically. People from Madison Avenue began to be perceived as servants of Mephistopheles, writes The Economist.
Published in September, a book by renowned marketer Martin Lindstrom, entitled Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, is an effort to write a modern version of Hidden Persuasion. The meaning of the title can be conveyed as follows: "branding" of consciousness - tricks used by companies to manipulate us and induce to purchase a product. Lindstrom, who has clients such as McDonald's, Procter & Gamble and Microsoft, knows the industry very well. It is much more complex today than it was in the 1950s, and no less cynical.
Marketers have far more information about potential customers today than ever before. Whenever you use a loyalty card, you "surrender" personal information. Whenever you search for something in a search engine or click "Like" on Facebook, you are revealing something else about yourself. Google and Facebook protect the privacy of individuals, but they also make money selling general information to advertisers.
Professional data analyzers use electronic information to create a detailed picture of what you bought before and how you bought it. They can then draw your attention to products that they think you are likely to want to buy in the future. Smartphones can tell you that there is a store nearby that has exactly what you were looking for.
Marketers are looking for new solutions by resorting to science. Studies have shown that music can influence people's behavior: shoppers in American department stores that play slow-paced music spend 18% more time in the store and make 17% more purchases than those who walk through the halls in silence. … Marketers continually track shoppers as they walk the supermarket, listen to their conversations at the checkout, and observe the reactions of voicing consumers.
Even more effort is being devoted to attracting children. Small shoppers have a wonderful ability to get their parents (wallet carriers - from the point of view of marketers) to buy what they need. More importantly, habits learned from childhood can last a lifetime. Therefore, companies shower their children's audience with advertising messages from infancy.
On average, a three-year-old child in the United States knows about 100 brands, writes The Economist
Many people remember annoying ad jingles much better than the multiplication table. When choosing between carrot sticks and McDonald's carrot sticks, kids will prefer the latter. From the point of view of the company, the sooner a customer can be hooked up, the better. Experiments with rats have shown that addiction to "junk food" can develop in the womb, writes The Economist.
Also, marketers will devote a lot of time to campaigns targeting male audiences, getting men to shop like women, as Lindstrom puts it. Today, many men often buy traditional women's products. An entire industry of men's cosmetics and care products was created practically from scratch, its volume is currently estimated at $ 27 billion, writes The Economist.
Marketers have long known that the most powerful persuasion factors are peer and community influences. What is new is that the information revolution and social media have dramatically increased the likelihood of the outbreak of "social epidemics". Now you can create a video that will go to the masses and will spread rapidly. You can neglect this, but it is impossible to get away from the broadcast information.
Many people think they can hide from hidden exhortations. They switch channels during ads and rely more on customer feedback than marketing gimmicks. They join the movement against Enough consumerism. Nevertheless, marketers have every chance of winning. Software maker SAS analyzes social media posts to identify people whose comments influence others; companies can then target these influential opinion-makers.
Photo: Alex France flickr.com/alexfrance
