Advertisements: How Do They Persuade Us Essay

Advertisements be part and parcel of our lives. Perhaps, they are one of the most decisive and, at the same time, imperceptible f instruments moulding and channelling our purchasing habits, so to speak. On the face of it, advertisements promote products and services they create demand by dint of inducing and increasing consumption. Yet, the ways in which they convey their messages beat a profound issuance on on the whole aspects of our lives our happiness, our culture, family and interpersonal relations, business, stereotypes, wealth and status, individuality, and so forth.According to Leiss et al. (1990 1), advertising is a privileged form of discourse, in that it can attract our attention, insinuating itself into our impression processes and carving out a niche in our lives. As we shall see, advertisements succeed in selling us a lot more than merely products in fact, they contrive to reconstruct our relations to things and other packin short, they interfere with our sense o f identity, they equate us with things, and manipulate us.Williamsons observation succinctly encapsulates their powerfulness Advertisements are selling us something else besides consumer goods in providing us with a structure in which we, and those goods, are interchangeable, they are selling us ourselves (Williamson, 1978 13). In the feed study we are concerned with how advertisements, or rather ad men, to quote Packard (1957), persuade us to buy their products, and exploit our hidden needsboth processes taking place beneath our level of awareness.See moreFirst Poem for You EssayIn searching for more effective ways of persuading people to buy goods, a great many merchandisers or probers (Packard, 1957) turned to psychologists in order to gain insights into the deepest recesses of the psyche and the factors that motivate people, and then to capitalise on their expectations and fears. equipt with this knowledge, ad men nowadays exert a remarkable influence on peoples habits and con ceptualisation of the world and themselves in relation to setvalue which are, in great measure, determined by the market place.Packard (1957 14), perhaps one of the most vehement critics of the hidden persuaders who have ensnared us by appealing to our unconscious or subconscious needs, eloquently captures the state of the art The symbol manipulators and their research advisers have developed their depth view of us by sitting at the feet of psychiatrists and social scientists (particularly psychologists and sociologists) who have been hiring themselves out as practical consultants or setting up their own research firms.These motivation analysts have definitely become our shamans who, having helped to root on the fear of the devil in us, they offer redemption (Bolinger, 1980 2) by subject matter of the products they sell. They are not single interested in moving their merchandise off the shelves they are truly seeking out powerful communicative cues, a discourse through and abo ut objects (Leiss et al. , 1990), which will weld together people, products, and cultural models.In view of this, we no longer buy oranges, we buy vitality. We do not buy just an auto, we buy prestige (Packard, 1957 15). The sale of self-images (ibid. ) is now the norm. Advertisements barely focus on products only when it is the prospective vendees that they make overtures towhich is mirrored in the language go ford and in such features as the colours in the ad, its layout, and so on (we will upset some of these aspects in due course).As Ewen (1976, cited in Leiss et al. 1990 23) notes, advertisers have effected a self-conscious change in the psychic economy by inundating the marketplace with suggestions that consumers should buy goods in order to enter realms of experience previously unfamiliar to them. Gradually then, advertising has become a highly organized and professional dodging of magical inducements and satisfactions (Williams, 1980 1962, cited in Leiss et al. , 1990 2 5) which can sell us emotional security, reassurance of wealth, ego-gratification, creative outlets, love objects, a sense of power and roots, and immortality (see Packard, 1957 66-74 for further details).Many people would, at this juncture, hasten to defend advertising on the grounds that the consumer is a rational decision maker who avails herself of technology advertising cannot create new needs however can only help increase or speed up consumption (Schudson, 1984, cited in Leiss et al. , 1990 36) and without the help of advertising, consumers would have limited information about the products travel around them.What they lose sight of, though, is the fact that we never relate to goods only for their plain utility there is always a ymbolic aspect to our interactions with them (Leiss et al. , 1990 45). Now that we have briefly outlined the state of the art, we move on to the actual study of advertisements and the ways in which they persuade us. There are many approaches to this end, but we will draw upon devil semiology, or the study of signs, and content analysis. Semiology, on the one hand, is concerned with the emergence and movement of meaning within the textbook and between the text and the world surrounding it. Content analysis, on the other, focuses on the surface meaning of an ad, detecting similarities and differences.Indisputably, the growing predominance of visuals in ads has resulted in a kind of ambiguity of meaning, which renders the interpretation of the message more complex and challenging. Earlier advertisements explicitly stated the message by describing the product and adducing arguments in its favour. In the 1920s, however, visuals were more frequently used, and these two, text and visual, became complementary. Still, in the 1960s, the text shifted away from describing the visual toward a more elaborate and mystic form, whereby it functioned as a key to the visual (Leiss et al. 1990 199).Against this background of nucleotide change s in the form and content of advertisements, the abovementioned approaches, semiology and content analysis, offer us an insight into the structures of ads and help throw light on the subtle elements, expectations and assumptions, with which they are imbued. Roland Barthes (1973, cited in Leiss et al. , 1990 200-201), adjacent Ferdinand De Saussures tradition, divides a sign into two components the conformation and the signified.The signifier is the material object the signified is its abstract meaning. Let us illustrate this with Barthes own example Roses signify passion or love. If we analyse their meaning, we have three elements the signifierthe roses the signifiedpassion or love and the signthe passionified roses as a whole. Of course, there is nothing inherently passionate or amorous about roses they are viewed as such within the context of western culture. In another culture, roses could signify something different, even the opposite of passion or love.Thus, any interpretatio n of advertisements from a semiotic perspective is bound up with cultural norms and values which may be at odds with those operating in different cultures or different systems of meaning. After all, the power of advertisements lies in, and appropriates, these very norms and values, with a view to reconstituting reality, magic spell tinging it with an arcane suggestiveness and elusiveness. Drawing upon several advertisements, we will endeavour to probe into the probers minds, weaving the two approaches together.More specifically, we will focus on the rhetorical devices employed (e. . , metaphors, metonymy, jingles, etcetera ), as well as the ways in which the text and the visual element prevail upon us to react, i. e. , to buy the product (e. g. , their proclivity for creating a problem, only to consign it to the omnipotence of the product, their spatial arrangement, etc. ). Unfortunately, an in-depth analysis is outside the remit of this study. Let us consider the following ad A b lack carrefour Zetec covers two pages in the magazine, while the text reads When the lorry in front loses its load, most device drivers would find themselves losing control.Not if youre driving the new 2. 0 litre Ford tenseness Zetec ESP. One of the first cars in its class available with an Electronic Stability Program. ESP constantly assesses the angle you are steering against information genuine from sensors on the behaviour and direction of the car. By reducing engine power and braking individual wheels it helps you to maintain control and stability, allowing you to stay on track. Its almost akin it knows what to do before you do. So sit back, enjoy the rile and expect more. And the motto just above the car is just steer. This common, albeit catchy, ad addresses the prospective buyer directly through the use of the pronoun you. What is more, the strategy it employs is that of creating a problemor rather setting a scene familiar to many a driver (When the lorry in front loses its load, most drivers would find themselves losing control. )Only in the first convict is there any mention of most driversapparently in order to juxtapose them to you, the prospective buyer. You are not like most drivers because you are driving the new 2. 0 litre Ford Focus Zetec ESP. some other device employed in the ad is the use of personification, as in ESP constantly assessesit helps youIts almost like it knows The new Ford Focus is more of a jinee in a bottle waiting for you to rub it than merely a car. All you have to do is sit back, enjoy the ride and expect more, revelling in the security its omnipotence affords.Finally, the pun in just steer, referring to the actual steering of the vehicle and, only obliquely, to the idiom to steer clear of, consciously or unconsciously, dares us to pop into the car and drive, reminding us of our inability to resist the temptation vs. he omnipotence of the vehicle. As Williamson observes, puns perform the correlating function seen in all ads, but in a way that begs to be decipheredcondensation draws together both the denoted and connoted meanings of the ad, therefore making a deterministic connection between them (Williamson, 1978 87). Yet, not all ads are so straightforward and direct. Let us examine the following ad (found in Williamson, 1978 25). The ad shows Catherine Deneuves face and a Chanel No 5 bottle. There is no text linking these two they are simply juxtaposed. But are they really linked, in the first place?One could say that they are supposed to be linked, in terms of an assumption that they are inextricably related. This link, though, is arbitrary, drawing upon our knowledge of a glamorous world of films and magazines, which Deneuve has come to be associated with. Thus, in juxtaposing her face, which signifies beauty and glamour, with Chanel No 5, there is a latent transference of meaning from Deneuves face to the product, and back again. Not only is her face rendered an object that is summoned to palisade in favour of the product, but it also depends on that product for the beauty and glamour ascribed to it.Here, the use of language is irrelevant, as the ad appropriates the relationship obtaining between signifier (Catherine Deneuve) and signified (glamour and beauty). In other ads, the visual, not only complements, but virtually transcends, the text, to convey a meaning which is not always easy to decipher. Consider the Gordons Gin ad, where there are two different photographs of a famous actor of the 1950s, the second one being obviously altered to the point where the actor is barely recognisable. On the left side of the first photo, there is a text in italics, reading Gordons is made with the pick of the Tuscan Juniper.On the right side of the second photo, the text written in a regular typeface reads Other gins are made with whats left. Finally, at the can buoy of the page, there is a Gordons Special Dry London Gin bottle in the middle of the sentence If youre not dri nking (bottle of Gin) what are you drinking? Apparently, the significance of the ad resides in assumptions and values outside its grammar (Williamson, 1978).First of all, the juxtaposition of the two photographs appropriates the general belief that a good photograph means good quality, which then invites the reader to make the connection between he quality of the first photograph with that of the product through the association of the text in italics with the first picture, and the regular text with the second. Furthermore, the thin typeface (i. e. , italics) stands in stark contrast to the regular text, as it is associated with glamour and prestige and arouses elegant feelings.So, the last sentence If youre not drinking (bottle of Gin) what are you drinking? could easily be rephrased as If youre not one of those who prefer our gin, then who are you? erstwhile again, the product is put on a pedestal, while tinkering with our desire for approval, that is, suggesting to us that we will find our identity only if we indulge in it. In addition, the use of the calligram, i. e. , the picture of the bottle, instead of the words naming it, establishes the product as something that has a substance all its own, which is beyond words. As Williamson (1978 91) has noted, the calligram playfully seeks to erase the oldest oppositions of our alphabetical civilisation to show and to name to figure and to speak to reproduce and articulate to look and to readIt is a double trap, an inevitable snare.