Advertisement Analysis

You see them on the bus, on your television, on billboards when you are driving your car, online, in the newspaper, and your favorite magazine. Advertisements, whether you like it or not, have become a permanent part of your world. Despite the constant bombardment, the majority of the population go along with their day seemingly unaffected. Advertisements are treated like a buzzing fly: a slight annoyance but easy enough to ignore. But just how much we actually can ignore is debatable.

An article written by Art Markman speaks about advertising and the affect it has on the subconscious mind. He makes a wild and almost offensive statement that we are unable to avoid the effects of advertisement even though most of us think we can. His strongest argument is related to affective conditioning, where the advertisement uses images and sounds that are already perceived as good by the viewer, and placing them with the product it is trying to sell. His theory is that advertisements use this psychological trick to make us feel good about the product, and that is enough to make us to want to purchase it. Markman uses a study done by researchers Melanie Dempsey and Andrew Mitchell to prove his point.

This study that Markman provided is one of the reasons that I agree with his claim. Dempsey and Mitchell’s study showed that in this case, affective conditioning was very useful in getting consumers to choose a product. The study was done by having two brands of pens. One of the brands was undeniably better quality than the other, and such information was given to the participants. However, the researchers had a certain number of the participants be exposed to flashing images of positive items paired with the brand name of the worse pen. At the e...

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...it comes to advertisement. (This barrier being what Markman means when he says people assume they can tune out commercials.) However, these barriers can be past with the right type of affective conditioning for the individual.

While the amount of advertisement we can actually ignore is debatable, it can be helpful to know what affective conditioning you personally are susceptible to. Advertisement is a permanent part of our world, for companies will most likely not stop producing them anytime soon. Being a little more aware of that fly buzzing around could help aid you in not overspending on products you did not know you wanted.

Works Cited

Markman, Art. “Ulterior Motives: How Goals, Both Seen and Unseen, Drive Behavior.” Psychology Today 31 Aug. 2010. Web. 20 Jan 2014.

Scott, Walter D. “The Psychology of Advertisement.” The Atlantic 1 Jan. 1904. Web. Jan 2014.