Persuasion Theories in Advertising
We are bombarded daily with a variety of communicative devices that attempt to influence our thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes in some way. The primary role of this advertising methodology is to persuade, to change the way we construct a certain meaning in our head. Persuasion is a very powerful tool in affecting our idea of how, what or who people should be. The media uses this tool in an attempt to create a need for their product in society. In the ad for Orthro Tri-Cyclen birth control pills they focus on the added benefit their product has over other birth control pills and topical skin medications. The producers try to entice the consumer into using their brand by promising extra rewards. The strategy producers’ employ to execute this persuasion and the effectiveness of that strategy will be identified and analyzed through the advertisement for Ortho Tri-Cyclen birth control pills.
Advertisers use a variety of techniques to modify our thoughts, beliefs and actions. One such strategy is the source used to transmit their message. We, as consumers, judge the source and formulate an opinion about the product based partly on their representation of it. There are three main categories, or source characteristics, we use to analyze a source, credibility, similarity and attractiveness. In this ad for Ortho Tri-Cyclen the source is the young woman who serves as a spokesperson for the company. I will use the characteristics mentioned above to assess the source presented.
Credibility is an essential factor to a communicator’s effectiveness. Their message is believed to have a greater influence if they are perceived as credible sources. Credibility is dependent on a source’s believability, which in turn depends upon five sub-factors: competence, trustworthiness, extroversion, composure, and sociability (DeFleur, Kearney &Plax, 1998). This source’s credibility is questionable because she is in no way presented as being an expert in either birth control or dermatology. Any knowledge she has on the subject is assumed to be through experience. However, she is not professing a superior position of ‘ I know what is best for you’. Rather she is in the position of ‘it worked...
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...choose to be sexually active, so addressing the effectiveness of the Pill alone is more convincing. The prosocial aspect of the persuasion is a key factor in reaching college students. Receiving an extra benefit, even if it is expected, is always advantageous to the prospective buyer.
After analyzing this ad it is evident, that persuasion is a very complex process. Many different components contribute to the effect a message will have on its intended receiver, and in advertising the efficacy of the message will hopefully bring about the desired change. A main objective of advertising is creating brand preference and Ortho Tri-Cyclen accomplishes this by offering an added benefit to using their product. They attach their product to the intrinsic human needs of safety and acceptance, as described by Maslow. The source used is appropriate for the purpose of the ad, in that she effectively represents the product without overshadowing it, and appeals to the target audience of average women with average concerns. Although the persuasion in this ad is very discreet, it is only part of a grand scheme that successfully reaches it’s intended audience.
Rationale This Further Oral Activity will be presented on a T.V. show format (based on the show “The Gruen Transfer”), with the host focusing on the false advertising of well-known health foods and drinks. This FOA will focus on the persuasive language and manipulative strategies used by businesses to influence and mislead consumers into believing false perceptions of their product, using case examples to support the evidence presented. The purpose of this FOA is to inform the audience on the plethora of manipulative and persuasive language used in advertising for ‘supposedly’ healthy products, while the target audience is Australian T.V. viewers 18-50 who are interested in the influence of advertising. The context of the piece is based on today’s world of marketing and how persuasive advertising strategies can influence Australian consumers.
It's a very simple message, and one that comes across very clearly due to the nature of the advertisement's simplicity. All in the matter of seconds, the advertisement leaves the reader with a clear sense of what the product does.
Summary – It can be very useful when things do not tend to fall your way by then switching things up on your opponent and using their most positive words in order to make it look negative. Every argument needs facts and if that does not work for you, you should probably redefine the issue being made. The importance and relevance of the argument should be taken into consideration. Remember that manipulating the definition of things in your favor is the way to go.
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
“The Persuaders” by Frontline is about how advertising has affected Americans. It starts out by stating the problem of attaining and keeping the attention of potential customers. Balancing the rational and emotional side of an advertisement is a battle that all advertisers have trouble with. Human history has now gone past the information age and transcended into the idea age. People now look for an emotional connection with what they are affiliated with. The purpose of an emotional connection is to help create a social identity, a kind of cult like aroma. Because of this realization, companies have figured out that break through ideas are more important than anything else now. But there are only so many big
It is clear that most DTC advertisements in the pharmaceutical industry easily approach consumers and inject distorted information about drugs into them. DTC advertisements provide clarity in product performance claims, with less reliance on implied benefits (Beltramini 574). Furthermore, DTC advertisements have made a huge impact on public consciousness with constant exposure to their consumers and sell less effective drugs (Lurie 445). Consumers do not recognize the danger of ineffective drugs due to the embellishment of the marketing strategy. Zelnorm, a drug for women with irritable bowel syndrome, is an example of how a highly visible television advertising campaign makes this less effective drug popular. From a pharmaceutical company’s analysis, while 0.1 percent of patients treated with the drug had a heart attack, chest pain, or a stroke and one died, patients taking a placebo had 0.01 percent of these symptoms and none died. Despite inefficiency of the drug, it became a popular treatment for irritable bowel syndrome because of television advertisement campaign; it displays attractive young women whose bellies are inscribed with the catchphrase, "I feel better" (Shuchman 2239). The reason that ineffective drugs, such as Zelnorm, became popular is because most people who have not enough knowledge to evaluate drugs
Advertising is as old as civilization itself. They are forever interconnected. If one changes then so does the other. So as our society evolved dramatically by the influence of technology and social media, so did the way we advertised. With the power of technology, advertising gained the ability to be everywhere at once. These locations ranged from billboards, to projector screens that hang from skyscrapers, to even in your homes in the form of commercials. The evolution of advertising in the modern world is both somewhat disturbing and innovative at the same time.
Have you ever seen an advertisement for a product and could immediately relate to the subject or the product in that advertisement? Companies that sell products are always trying to find new and interesting ways to get buyers and get people’s attention. It has become a part of our society today to always have products being shown to them. As claimed in Elizabeth Thoman’s essay Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, “…advertising offered instructions on how to dress, how to behave, how to appear to others in order to gain approval and avoid rejection”. This statement is true because most of the time buyers are persuaded by ads for certain products.
Beginning a long time ago, many companies started using sex in their advertisements; however, contemporary advertisements are beginning to use different aspects of nature to sell their products. For years, sex appeal was perhaps the most important attribute of a product. Companies would show young, half-naked bodies in their TV commercials and magazine advertisements. The producers sought to force the public audience to take pleasure by looking at these beautiful ladies, while also making viewers feel naughty at the same time. Advertisers thought the audience would not be able to avoid looking at these well-endowed women. And to consumers, the women were appealing, and that made the product itself appealing. In some recent commercials, however, the concentration has changed from sinful desires to the more healthy approach to life. Everyone wants to appear healthy and in good shape. To achieve this, many people are eating better, working out more often and using healthier products on their skin. To demonstrate the idea about natural products, I have chosen three advertisements to show how these companies use nature to sell their products .
According to Merriam Webster, the term “ethical” can be defined as “rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good and bad.” Being able to differentiate between what is good, and what is bad is key when it comes to many things. One of these things includes persuasion. There are many concepts that can explain why certain principles of persuasion can be more ethical than others, and many that are critical to being an ethical communicator. Said concepts are explained in Rothwell’s text, In the Company of Others, Robert Cialdini and Steve Martins video, Science of Persuasion, and Stephen Carter’s text, Integrity.
Dove is a personal care trademark that has continually been linked with beauty and building up confidence and self-assurance amongst women. Now, it has taken steps further by impending with a new advertising strategy; fighting adverse advertising. And by that it means contesting all the ads that in some way proliferate the bodily insufficiencies which exits inside women. Launched by Dove, the campaign spins round an application called the Dove Ad Makeover which is part of the global Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” what has been continuing ever since 2004 and times print, television, digital and outdoor advertising. As Leech (1996) believed,” commercial consumer advertising seems to be the most frequently used way of advertising.” In which way the seller’s chief goal is to sway their possible spectators and attempt and change their opinions, ideals and interests in the drive of resounding them that the produce they are posing has a touch that customer wants that will also be in their advantage, therefore generating false desires in the user’s mind. Dove is vexing to influence their viewers to purchase products they wouldn’t usually buy by “creating desires that previously did not exist.”(Dyer, 1982:6)
According to the text , Social Psychology, “social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another”(pg. 4) this is viewed in a variety of social topics incorporating group behaviors, attitudes, conformity, obedience to authority, stereotypes and peer pressure. Outside factors can have a positive or negative affect our view of ourselves and each other. These outside factors are used to persuade and influence group behavior. Persuasion is defined as “the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors” (Myers, 2010, pg. 230). The principles of this process of persuasion according to researchers, Robert Cialdini and Thomas Davidson, are attractiveness and likeability, reciprocity, social proof, consistency, authority, and scarcity (Davidson, 2008)(Myers, 2010, pg. 237). These principles of persuasion impact our self-perception, our attitudes and behaviors, and our culture.
Every day in our life's we are persuaded to make choices. Persuasion is a very
Finally, the liking principle is one that will often be used in the art of persuasion. This can be used effectively, where a product can be seen as “likable” if for example it has been endorsed by someone perceived to be physically attractive or perhaps someone that demonstratives the behaviors of a friend, such as showing similar traits or someone that can be related to.
I work in marketing so I have strong opinions of what I feel is believable and what is not. I believe producers of persuasive messages attempt to foresee every possible audience response and attempt to create ads that appeal to everyone in their target audience. My role is to do the research for myself after encountering a product I might be interested in. I think hearing more personal testimonies and seeing multiple before and after and progress pictures of numerous women would persuade to trust this product