Do you buy things due to advertisements?

SteoL

smallBiscuit wrote: »

Faith+1 wrote: »

I bought Birds Eye Potato Waffles back in the day cos of that very catchy ad

Damn you, that add is running through my head now :eek:

Don't remember the ad tbh but do remember Birds Eye Potato Waffles being waffley versatile

kingtut

No it does not influence me it just pisses me off!! Most of the ads are stupid (and while people will argue that just talking about the product means the ad has worked are talking out their own arse!!)

Ads are for two reasons, 1 - to create awarness of the brand / product and 2 - to get people to buy it!!

If people do not buy it then it is a fail.

saa

Bollix to every poster on the first page I was debating whether to go down stairs for a nice refreshing 7up but was putting it off as bed is nice and toasty now I'm thirsty.

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising.

Advertising doesn't make me buy things except those JML adds, wow. or should I say SHAMWOW.. sorry.

Promotions work really well, I will buy more ****e I wouldn't have if its half price, so those groupon, boards deals sites get me good, darn.

kirving

Felt bad buying anything other than a Sony Bravia TV after seeing that bouncy ball advert a few years ago.

Colour.
Like. No. Other.

See, I remembered.

confused2216

To get a free creepy Bird's Eye polar bear you have to buy 5 packets of Bird's Eye fish fingers, now there's advertising.

'Spooky'

Hande hoche!

I'm fairly sure extensive advertising for the tank thong made me eventually buy a hoody.

Chuck Stone

I wouldn't be seen dead in a cheap coffin.

Chuck Stone

If advertising didn't work there'd be no ads on TV for pet food.

It's not like they aim the ads at cats ya feckin' dummies.

LOL.

sock puppet

conor1979 wrote: »

Supermarkets sell a lot of their own brand cola, and it sells. It sells because it is cheap, not because the supermarket does a massive advertising blitz!

They do but that's not really the point. Even if you're not influenced by ads in any way your choice is still restricted to a few brands because of what other people buy, and what other people buy is influenced by advertising.

Jordan 199

Nope. I don't let any adverts influence me when it comes to buying stuff.

CathyMoran

I have found food adverts useful for new products to let me know of their existance - if I like the product idea I will try it but I will only continue to buy it if it is reasonably priced and tasty.

I may crave a food that I love but have forgotten about if I see an advert for it so I am influenced in that regard.

In terms of day to day products if a brand is good quality based on prior experience I will tend to buy their products again - it is just the leap to get me to buy the first product - I would tend to be more swayed by internet reviews. In the past (pre 95) I would have been more swayed by tv adverts.

Dotrel

Nope. Pretty much everything I buy is a result of either :
1) the influence of other people I know (either telling me about something or demonstrating it to me)
2) the inherent need for something and then seeking it out the information to help decide which one I think might be the best choice

I rarely if ever am influenced by direct advertising. eg someone I know telling me a Nintendo WII is fun is going to have a lot more influence on me buying one than Jamie Redknapp (or whoever they have these days) peddling their wares on tv 100 nights in a row. Of course the ad might have influenced the friend to buy and then the friend is influencing me, so I guess the ad gets me that way in the end of it all.

WindSock

I buy things.

DonkeyStyle \o/

If advertising works and advertising appeals to us in an irrational way, is it really any more ethical than brain-washing or hypnosis for the same purpose?
If not, why is it legal?

jester77

It sort of works on me, I would be sitting down to watch a game and the beer sponsors come on before hand and it makes me want a beer, so I head across the street and grab a few beers. But it wouldn't be the beer advertised, it would be something I would actually enjoy drinking.

44leto

We all do, even if we are not aware of it. Say I have a choice of 2 item which are roughly the same, I will tend to choose the better known brand. We all do, its why they spend so much money promoting brands.

44leto

jester77 wrote: »

It sort of works on me, I would be sitting down to watch a game and the beer sponsors come on before hand and it makes me want a beer, so I head across the street and grab a few beers. But it wouldn't be the beer advertised, it would be something I would actually enjoy drinking.

I know this is true, I use to drink Carlsberg now I drink Hino and I start drinkinbg Hino during the Rugby world cup in 95 and I haven't switched, but Hino sponsor all the rugby which I do enjoy.

RATM

When going to college about 10 years back we had to do a module on marketing, the first time it was offered on the course. We all complained and called it a load of old tripe, spin disguised as lies, just another branch of the dark arts of advertising & PR.

But upon seeing how Nike sold millions of pairs of Air Jordan runners on the back of their endorsement deals with Michael Jordan I quickly changed my mind. I remember seeing a program where the Nike CEO explained how young kids believed that if they owned the runners they would be able to jump as high as Jordan and play at his level. The branding of Nike goods is highly aspirational, they put out the idea that if you buy their product then you too can be a world class sportsman. The strategy used to achieve this typically follows a set formula of appealing to sporting greatness and influencing public perception of their products by tying them to the most successful athletes in any given sport (Jordan in Basketball, Man U in football, Kenyans in long distance running, etc.).

Even more recently I was curious as to how much an iPhone Apple to assemble. A number of sites had the figure of a per unit cost of US$170. Yet iPhones sell for $600+ and the consumer market has tolerated it by and large. Why is it that nearly 70% of the end price to the consumer is not embodied in the actual device and hard drive? Because Apple have pulled off one of the marketing coups of the century- people see it as an aspirational product, a leader in its field, something we should all aim to achieve. The way Apple is viewed by the population at large didn't happen by accident, but by design of their marketing efforts to position the company in people's minds. Consumers don't question that it cost just $170 to put together, to many peoples minds an iPhone is worth $600 and some would be willing to pay even more.

As far as I am aware the birth of marketing can be ascribed in large part to the Nazi party. They were the first organisation to realise that in order to shape the world around us it is necessary to project an image to the public of what you want them to believe is true, rather than what actually is true. Josef Goebbels was a pioneer of marketing & media control methods and used these tools to brainwash a nation towards the idea that the Nazi agenda was the correct way forward. Goebbels early marketing efforts were so successful that the average German became dehumanised to the plight of the Jews. He manipulated public thought and discourse to a degree where humans discarded their innate sense of morals, ethics and justice. This came about because during World War 2 the work of Sigmund Freud in developing his theory of Psychoanalysis allowed at least some understanding of why humans act irrationally in decision making (I'm looking at you FF voters). Freud spoke of subconcious motivators that cloud our decision making ability, the death drive, the pleasure principle being just two examples of his early theories. Karl Jung developed Freuds pioneering work further into the new field of psychology. After World War 2 the US was developing economically at an astoinishing rate- practically every household in America had a fridge freezer by the end of the 1960's, an invention that vastly opened up new markets in the food industry.

At the same time of rapid economic growth occurring in the 1950's US the government was fascinated into exactly how Hitler had manged to control a whole nation into accepting a political viewpoint that is at odds with human morals and ethics. The US studied Nazism in depth post 1945 and they became fascinated with consumer psychology and the theories of Freud and Jung. Huge funds were pumped into understanding the neurological process of our decision making during shopping, a process that Freud believed was dependent and largely influenced by subconcious triggers in the brain. Washington saw this development as of such importance that they ordered Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc to invest heavily in further research of consumer psychology. As the universities didn't have the expertise in house to develop research programs the initial leaders of research into psychology in American universities were not American professors but former Nazis, headhunted from Germany just like the Nazi nuclear scientists were headhunted to work in American universities to work on the American nuclear weapons program. The Nazis were very close to Freuds research , and Goebells realised his discoveries tied in nicely with his own project of population control. Goebbels now knew that fear and angst are psychological drivers of human behaviour. His next step was carried out through mass propaganda which depicted the Jews as the cause of all Germany's economic ills. Once he had pressed the buttons of anger and fear of Jews in the German population the next phase of his plan was to provide a'relief' to the populations worries. That 'relief' was the extermination of all Jews. To any sane person such a solution was abhorrent but not to the German population of the late 1930's. Goebbels had tricked the population- he developed an irrantional fear of Jews to the point of hysteria. Then he came along and provided the solution and antedote to their fear and collectively they didn't question the extermination of the entire race. He became even more popular and powerful thereafter, but in effect what he had done was used marketing and media manipulation methods to create a problem that didn't exist. The he came along with the solution to the problem he and Hitler had invented and the population was so happy (and flooded with propaganda telling them they should be happy) that they didn't question the murder of innocent civilans, in fact a majority supported it.

Freud himself was Jewish but because Goebbels realised the value of his research and the implications of it on power structures he made sure he family wasn't moved to a concentration camp. His discoveries in what would later become psychology were used by the Nazis to 'market' their idealogy by tapping into a fear of Jews and stoking up the nationalism and creating associations and positive perceptions about the defunct Weimar Republic. The last piece in the jogsaw was to
shut down dissent by propaganda labelling any opposing view as ludicrous. Interestingly the US recently used the same method of propaganda during the War on Iraq- Bush and the media managed to convince the population that if you were opposed to the War in Iraq then you didn't 'support our troops' which then meant that you were 'unpatriotic and un-American'. Of course nobody believed that crap in Europe but that didn't matter a dam as it was the US population he had to trick to achieve his objectives.


Consumer psychology is the rock upon which marketing and advertising is set upon. They realised that if they could find out the factors that make us buy one product over another and then proceed to manipulate the factors that were favourable to consumerism and discard those that weren't then they would have a significant advantage in growing industry by appealing to the drivers and impulses running our subconcious. Supermarkets putting bakeries at the entrance to their store is a classic example of subconciously influencing you to place a bakery product into your trolley less than a minute after entering the store. The bakery smell triggers a process in your brain which associates a bakery smell with your childhood, and this sends neurological impulses to your decision making faculty which in turn never really critically assesses whether or not you actually need the bread or not. As the smell of the bakery goes up your nose it is transformed into an impulse in your brain. Part of that impulse feeds into the nodes in your brain that release the feeling of pleasure, also felt during sex or after eating. Your brain has subconciously associated the bakery smell with happy times in childhood and your purchasing decision is now biased in favour of a purchase as the impulse is one of pleasure, one of the main drivers of the human psyche.

As strange as it may seem the very organ that we depend on for rational decision making is also partly to blame for some of our flawed reasoning. But we don't really consider this factor because it happens in the subconcious in a nanosecond

Americans have pretty much got consumer marketing psychology down to a tee over the last 60 years and the rest of the world has followed suit. Once they had figuered out that the reasoning ability of our decision making process is flawed the next step was finding out a way to harness it. Branding and marketing is the vehicle used to achieve that purpose, it's main aim is to get our thought process associating positive attributes like 'hip','cool', 'desirable' with a physical product or service. Marketing and branding is the manipulation of ideas, thoughts and perceptions behind products. The company want to push out their version of what it is a product represents in a mental sense in our brain. Their version of what a brand represents mentally doesn't have to be the truth in order for it to take root in our brain. What is important is that the perception of the product triggers positive associations in our brain. If the marketeer can successfully convince us that a product has sufficient positive attributes (attributes which are just ideas in our head, planted there by advertising) then our flawed reasoning will neglect to think why an IPhone is so much more expensive than an Android phone yet secretly Apple owners know that both phones (more or less) carry out up to 95% of the same practical function, that of making calls and sending texts.


But the brain has another flaw. Over time it puts a positive glow on our perception of the past even when this hasn't been the case. This partly explains why humans make the same mistakes time and time again, the recent property bubble being a prime example. Our unintentional re-writing of past events is why brands like McDonalds and Coca Cola have endured so strongly over time, in spite of major public controversies that should have been their undoing. Coca Cola deliberately uses the same Santa Claus ads at Christmas as they did in the 1970's. Why? Because they want their product to trigger emotions of childhood, happiness and innocence and they use the character and symbol of Santa Claus to achieve this. In a split second in our brain the subconcious has made an irrational decision that reasons that Coca Cola=Christmas & Santa Claus=happy memories, therefore Coca Cola is good and the chances of us buying it in the future rise considerably. Our brain associates brands like these with our childhood which subsequently gives us positive feelings for both the era and the brand itself. Our brain is inherently flawed in this regard and modern day marketers spend their whole working week finding new and innovative ways to exploit that flaw so we keep buying their products.

I'd never thought I'd say it but it is now gotten to the point where arguably marketing is the most critical function in any company producing for the mas market. Engineers and designers take physical products from the innovation and conception stage all the way through to becoming actual reality. Marketeers then step in and distort that reality into perceptions that provoke positive associations upon the brand and product. If only around 30% of an IPhone's $600 value to the consumer is made up of the parts that go into assembling each unit then it follows that the other 70% of the selling price has been created by the added value the consumer perceives about the product and what it embodies in a mental sense as well as the physical design and feel.

If a marketing strategy can leadsto 70% of the value of a product being ascribed to a factor that is largely a mental construct which is arrived at with a flawed thought process then I would say that not only do we buy products based on the marketing behind them but we also pay over the odds for those same products when the marketeer has successfully pushed the correct buttons in our psyche.

Liam Byrne

RATM wrote:

We all complained and called it a load of old tripe, spin disguised as lies, just another branch of the dark arts of advertising & PR.

But upon seeing how Nike sold millions of pairs of Air Jordan runners on the back of their endorsement deals with Michael Jordan I quickly changed my mind. I remember seeing a program where the Nike CEO explained how young kids believed that if they owned the runners they would be able to jump as high as Jordan and play at his level.

So ye were right ? Therefore no reason for the "But" at the start of the sentence ?

Tar.Aldarion

The only time I ever hear advertisement is my gf singing the jingles :pac:
Don't really know if it affects me, that's the point. I don't really think it does as I prefer cheap stuff over anything. Have very picky taste so it doesnt really matter how much it's advertised to me. Also look up technology things til death so it doesnt matter if it's x,y or z brand.

wilkie2006

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Yup - I associate those ads with lies and deflection. And I associate "3" with encountering Jedward far too regularly and having to dive for the remote in order to change channel, something I will never forgive them for and - as I said earlier - avoid buying from them because of.

I don't wish to patronise you, Liam, but I don't think you understand how marketing works. 3's association with Jedward is because the majority of 3's customers/their target audience are between x and y years of age - the same age as those who like Jedward (or at least aren't repelled by them). Additionally, X Factor viewers tend to have lower incomes and it's no coincidence that 3 is a budget phone provider.

There are very few companies that don't have a target audience for their products. No successful business will ever try to sell one thing to everyone. They pick their core demographic and advertise to them. If people outside this group elect to buy the product then great, but they're not expected to.

Earlier in the thread you mentioned a number of advertising slogans that companies broadcast. I can't recall exactly what they were but let's say there's Nike's "Just do it", Lynx's "The Linx Effect" and Carlsberg's "Probably the best lager in the world" (I appreciate that you didn't cite all of these but it doesn't matter, they're all the same for the purposes of this example). The use of these slogans is not to drive sales directly. Their purpose is a) to try to generate discussion about the product among consumers (like Budweiser's "What's up?" thing [some are more effective than others]) and b) to implant a consistent message in the minds of consumers' that can repeated quickly and concisely over a number of different ad campaigns (i.e. the ad might change radically but there's always something consistent to remind you you've heard of the brand/product before). How advertisers influence people is through the tone of their messaging (which includes the lighting in the ad, colours used, accent of the actor delivering the voiceover, the content of the voiceover, the precise language of the voiceover, etc).

For example:

A Pepsi Max ad is targeted at a young audience. The ads are slapstick, colourful, loud, whacky and somewhat amusing. WHat Pepsi are trying to do is associate the drink with these qualities. The message behind the ad is not "Maximum cola taste and no sugar", it's "if you're a playful, young, energetic guy then this is the drink for you".

For jewelery or expensive cars it's all about elegance. The people who the companies want to sell to are/perceive themselves to be sophisticated and discerning. The ads will typically be slow-moving, calming and very considered. The actors in the ads will be shown to almost ingest the product and savor it like a connoisseur might. Unlike the garish colours associated with cheaper, "fun" cars, these ads use rich, deep shades of purple, red, grey etc.

As I've said before, an ad's purpose isn't just to spread awareness of a product; it's there to encourage the consumer to make an association between the brand and certain brand qualities.

I know you've said that you're impervious to advertising but what about this: Have you ever bought something that you're not familiar with as a gift for someone else? Say, jewelry for a wife or g/f? If you don't typically buy jewelry you're unlikely to know what women consider cheap or gaudy. The solution? You go to Brown Thomas because you know it stocks expensive, quality stuff (thanks to BT's advertising you associate it with premium goods).

wilkie2006

RATM wrote: »

When going to college about 10 years back we had to do a module on marketing, the first time it was offered on the course. We all complained and called it a load of old tripe, spin disguised as lies, just another branch of the dark arts of advertising & PR.

But upon seeing how Nike sold millions of pairs of Air Jordan runners on the back of their endorsement deals with Michael Jordan I quickly changed my mind. I remember seeing a program where the Nike CEO explained how young kids believed that if they owned the runners they would be able to jump as high as Jordan and play at his level. The branding of Nike goods is highly aspirational, they put out the idea that if you buy their product then you too can be a world class sportsman. The strategy used to achieve this typically follows a set formula of appealing to sporting greatness and influencing public perception of their products by tying them to the most successful athletes in any given sport (Jordan in Basketball, Man U in football, Kenyans in long distance running, etc.).

Even more recently I was curious as to how much an iPhone Apple to assemble. A number of sites had the figure of a per unit cost of US$170. Yet iPhones sell for $600+ and the consumer market has tolerated it by and large. Why is it that nearly 70% of the end price to the consumer is not embodied in the actual device and hard drive? Because Apple have pulled off one of the marketing coups of the century- people see it as an aspirational product, a leader in its field, something we should all aim to achieve. The way Apple is viewed by the population at large didn't happen by accident, but by design of their marketing efforts to position the company in people's minds. Consumers don't question that it cost just $170 to put together, to many peoples minds an iPhone is worth $600 and some would be willing to pay even more.

As far as I am aware the birth of marketing can be ascribed in large part to the Nazi party. They were the first organisation to realise that in order to shape the world around us it is necessary to project an image to the public of what you want them to believe is true, rather than what actually is true. Josef Goebbels was a pioneer of marketing & media control methods and used these tools to brainwash a nation towards the idea that the Nazi agenda was the correct way forward. Goebbels early marketing efforts were so successful that the average German became dehumanised to the plight of the Jews. He manipulated public thought and discourse to a degree where humans discarded their innate sense of morals, ethics and justice. This came about because during World War 2 the work of Sigmund Freud in developing his theory of Psychoanalysis allowed at least some understanding of why humans act irrationally in decision making (I'm looking at you FF voters). Freud spoke of subconcious motivators that cloud our decision making ability, the death drive, the pleasure principle being just two examples of his early theories. Karl Jung developed Freuds pioneering work further into the new field of psychology. After World War 2 the US was developing economically at an astoinishing rate- practically every household in America had a fridge freezer by the end of the 1960's, an invention that vastly opened up new markets in the food industry.

At the same time of rapid economic growth occurring in the 1950's US the government was fascinated into exactly how Hitler had manged to control a whole nation into accepting a political viewpoint that is at odds with human morals and ethics. The US studied Nazism in depth post 1945 and they became fascinated with consumer psychology and the theories of Freud and Jung. Huge funds were pumped into understanding the neurological process of our decision making during shopping, a process that Freud believed was dependent and largely influenced by subconcious triggers in the brain. Washington saw this development as of such importance that they ordered Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc to invest heavily in further research of consumer psychology. As the universities didn't have the expertise in house to develop research programs the initial leaders of research into psychology in American universities were not American professors but former Nazis, headhunted from Germany just like the Nazi nuclear scientists were headhunted to work in American universities to work on the American nuclear weapons program. The Nazis were very close to Freuds research , and Goebells realised his discoveries tied in nicely with his own project of population control. Goebbels now knew that fear and angst are psychological drivers of human behaviour. His next step was carried out through mass propaganda which depicted the Jews as the cause of all Germany's economic ills. Once he had pressed the buttons of anger and fear of Jews in the German population the next phase of his plan was to provide a'relief' to the populations worries. That 'relief' was the extermination of all Jews. To any sane person such a solution was abhorrent but not to the German population of the late 1930's. Goebbels had tricked the population- he developed an irrantional fear of Jews to the point of hysteria. Then he came along and provided the solution and antedote to their fear and collectively they didn't question the extermination of the entire race. He became even more popular and powerful thereafter, but in effect what he had done was used marketing and media manipulation methods to create a problem that didn't exist. The he came along with the solution to the problem he and Hitler had invented and the population was so happy (and flooded with propaganda telling them they should be happy) that they didn't question the murder of innocent civilans, in fact a majority supported it.

Freud himself was Jewish but because Goebbels realised the value of his research and the implications of it on power structures he made sure he family wasn't moved to a concentration camp. His discoveries in what would later become psychology were used by the Nazis to 'market' their idealogy by tapping into a fear of Jews and stoking up the nationalism and creating associations and positive perceptions about the defunct Weimar Republic. The last piece in the jogsaw was to
shut down dissent by propaganda labelling any opposing view as ludicrous. Interestingly the US recently used the same method of propaganda during the War on Iraq- Bush and the media managed to convince the population that if you were opposed to the War in Iraq then you didn't 'support our troops' which then meant that you were 'unpatriotic and un-American'. Of course nobody believed that crap in Europe but that didn't matter a dam as it was the US population he had to trick to achieve his objectives.


Consumer psychology is the rock upon which marketing and advertising is set upon. They realised that if they could find out the factors that make us buy one product over another and then proceed to manipulate the factors that were favourable to consumerism and discard those that weren't then they would have a significant advantage in growing industry by appealing to the drivers and impulses running our subconcious. Supermarkets putting bakeries at the entrance to their store is a classic example of subconciously influencing you to place a bakery product into your trolley less than a minute after entering the store. The bakery smell triggers a process in your brain which associates a bakery smell with your childhood, and this sends neurological impulses to your decision making faculty which in turn never really critically assesses whether or not you actually need the bread or not. As the smell of the bakery goes up your nose it is transformed into an impulse in your brain. Part of that impulse feeds into the nodes in your brain that release the feeling of pleasure, also felt during sex or after eating. Your brain has subconciously associated the bakery smell with happy times in childhood and your purchasing decision is now biased in favour of a purchase as the impulse is one of pleasure, one of the main drivers of the human psyche.

As strange as it may seem the very organ that we depend on for rational decision making is also partly to blame for some of our flawed reasoning. But we don't really consider this factor because it happens in the subconcious in a nanosecond

Americans have pretty much got consumer marketing psychology down to a tee over the last 60 years and the rest of the world has followed suit. Once they had figuered out that the reasoning ability of our decision making process is flawed the next step was finding out a way to harness it. Branding and marketing is the vehicle used to achieve that purpose, it's main aim is to get our thought process associating positive attributes like 'hip','cool', 'desirable' with a physical product or service. Marketing and branding is the manipulation of ideas, thoughts and perceptions behind products. The company want to push out their version of what it is a product represents in a mental sense in our brain. Their version of what a brand represents mentally doesn't have to be the truth in order for it to take root in our brain. What is important is that the perception of the product triggers positive associations in our brain. If the marketeer can successfully convince us that a product has sufficient positive attributes (attributes which are just ideas in our head, planted there by advertising) then our flawed reasoning will neglect to think why an IPhone is so much more expensive than an Android phone yet secretly Apple owners know that both phones (more or less) carry out up to 95% of the same practical function, that of making calls and sending texts.


But the brain has another flaw. Over time it puts a positive glow on our perception of the past even when this hasn't been the case. This partly explains why humans make the same mistakes time and time again, the recent property bubble being a prime example. Our unintentional re-writing of past events is why brands like McDonalds and Coca Cola have endured so strongly over time, in spite of major public controversies that should have been their undoing. Coca Cola deliberately uses the same Santa Claus ads at Christmas as they did in the 1970's. Why? Because they want their product to trigger emotions of childhood, happiness and innocence and they use the character and symbol of Santa Claus to achieve this. In a split second in our brain the subconcious has made an irrational decision that reasons that Coca Cola=Christmas & Santa Claus=happy memories, therefore Coca Cola is good and the chances of us buying it in the future rise considerably. Our brain associates brands like these with our childhood which subsequently gives us positive feelings for both the era and the brand itself. Our brain is inherently flawed in this regard and modern day marketers spend their whole working week finding new and innovative ways to exploit that flaw so we keep buying their products.

I'd never thought I'd say it but it is now gotten to the point where arguably marketing is the most critical function in any company producing for the mas market. Engineers and designers take physical products from the innovation and conception stage all the way through to becoming actual reality. Marketeers then step in and distort that reality into perceptions that provoke positive associations upon the brand and product. If only around 30% of an IPhone's $600 value to the consumer is made up of the parts that go into assembling each unit then it follows that the other 70% of the selling price has been created by the added value the consumer perceives about the product and what it embodies in a mental sense as well as the physical design and feel.

If a marketing strategy can leadsto 70% of the value of a product being ascribed to a factor that is largely a mental construct which is arrived at with a flawed thought process then I would say that not only do we buy products based on the marketing behind them but we also pay over the odds for those same products when the marketeer has successfully pushed the correct buttons in our psyche.

Brilliantly put. Nice one.

efb

I want a fcuking meerkat teddy!!!!

wilkie2006

conor1979 wrote: »

Supermarkets sell a lot of their own brand cola, and it sells. It sells because it is cheap, not because the supermarket does a massive advertising blitz!

Exactly. People aren't buying it because they love the taste of Tesco's own brand cola, they're buying it because it's a cheaper alternative to Coca Cola. Tesco don't need to advertise it; they're getting custom off the back of Coca Cola's advertising from people who can't afford Coca Cola or who aren't their target demographic.

Can you imagine many 16 year-olds who would happily buy Tesco's cola over Coca Cola? I would venture there aren't many because Coca Cola has has become an accoutrement of youth. Maybe a fifty year-old wouldn't care but Coca Cola's target audience do.

ScumLord

Advertisers put a lot of thought into every aspect of an ad but they can't work miracles, supermarkets probably use more underhanded tecniques than advertisers.

I don't watch ads at all, I don't have a TV and I don't read newspapers and find for the most part I drown them out or become to occupied by their methods and techniques rather than what they're selling.

Shenshen

No.

I do however frequently decide not to buy certain items if the ads I've seen for them annoy me.

Archeron

Shenshen wrote: »

No.

I do however frequently decide not to buy certain items if the ads I've seen for them annoy me.

Thats the same for me. "The best thing to happen to food since me". What a pretentious shitehawk, I will never buy a knorr stockpot under any circumstance because of that gimp.

ScumLord

Archeron wrote: »

Thats the same for me. "The best thing to happen to food since me". What a pretentious shitehawk, I will never buy a knorr stockpot under any circumstance because of that gimp.

You should really be buying stuff based on it's ability to satisfy. Not buying something because you don't like it's ad is as ridiculous as buying something because of it's ad IMO.

wilkie2006

ScumLord wrote: »

You should really be buying stuff based on it's ability to satisfy. Not buying something because you don't like it's ad is as ridiculous as buying something because of it's ad IMO.

That's quite a good point!

07438991

Forget logic..

I buy lynx because I like that add and see that affect it can have on the ladies... :cool: (a guy can dream can't he...) :pac:

D

Yes, if i'm ever asked what drink i want in a fast food place I automatically say coke, even though i don't really like it.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I don't think ads can have much effect on me as I often remember ads, but not the company they're for. For example I'm not sure what beer company the ad in an airport bar is for.

Fergus

I understand the rationale behind branding and differentiation, but I never buy a branded product if there is a cheaper functional equivalent. I only want to pay for the product, not the marketing budget.

It's fair to say some people are more susceptible to marketing than others.

skylight1987

i bought chanel no 5 perfume cause of the add with nicole kidman in it
it was a magical add , perfume not great though , a bit over powering

Liam Byrne

wilkie2006 wrote:

Have you ever bought something that you're not familiar with as a gift for someone else? Say, jewelry for a wife or g/f? If you don't typically buy jewelry you're unlikely to know what women consider cheap or gaudy. The solution? You go to Brown Thomas because you know it stocks expensive, quality stuff (thanks to BT's advertising you associate it with premium goods).

Why would I go out with or marry someone who doesn't have a compatible mindset to mine ?

Have never shopped in BT and probably never will.

ScumLord

Fergus wrote: »

I understand the rationale behind branding and differentiation, but I never buy a branded product if there is a cheaper functional equivalent. I only want to pay for the product, not the marketing budget.

It's fair to say some people are more susceptible to marketing than others.

Depends on the brand again. With some brands you can be certain of quality, weather it's high end quality or just enough quality to satisfy.

I think the problem is with a lot of high end brands around today is they have abused that relationship. At one stage you could have said if it had the Sony logo on it you could feel fairly safe you where getting something well made but now they abuse that logo and pass off cheap crap under their good brand.

I've had it with buying cheap stuff, it's mainly from buying cheap computer parts that I've learned that lesson. In the long run your better off going for the better quality stuff because in the long run it will work out cheaper.

ROFLcopter

I bought the titanium 2 knife set off the telly only to discover they were shyte and made out of some sort of cracker.

smash

I bought a shamwow in woodies!

Fergus

ScumLord wrote: »

Depends on the brand again. With some brands you can be certain of quality, weather it's high end quality or just enough quality to satisfy.

I think the problem is with a lot of high end brands around today is they have abused that relationship. At one stage you could have said if it had the Sony logo on it you could feel fairly safe you where getting something well made but now they abuse that logo and pass off cheap crap under their good brand.

I've had it with buying cheap stuff, it's mainly from buying cheap computer parts that I've learned that lesson. In the long run your better off going for the better quality stuff because in the long run it will work out cheaper.

That's what I meant by 'functional' .. there are a few cases where I buy a brand because I know it provides a particular quality or function that is not available from the no-names or competitors.

Regarding cheap.. there's cheap and there's China-cheap. The Chinese have become masters of producing knock-off stuff that can work just long enough to get a good feedback post on ebay.

But within the various 'high' and 'low' end of brand goods, I've not found much relationship between price and quality. e.g. big German brand name appliances don't seem much better/worse internally than cheaper UK brands. Dyson vacuum cleaners are made of the cheapest plasticy rubbish. Sure, they'll happily send you replacement parts free for life.. but you paid 5-10 times over the odds for the thing in the first place.

The general trend of marketing seems to be about training the people to be good unquestioning consumers that just keep buying more stuff. Who cares that nothing lasts? When something breaks it's just a welcome excuse to 'toss it' so you can get more new and shiny! Consuming for the sake of consuming.

Marzipan85

as an adult, no. i think advertising is more about making people familiar with a brand. people will usually only buy things if they need them and if they are at the right price.

wilkie2006

Marzipan85 wrote: »

people will usually only buy things if they need them and if they are at the right price.

No way! Advertising's role is to trick people into buying stuff they don't need. Without advertising, we wouldn't even want most of the things we buy.