Are you convinced by advertisements?

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Ads have never worked on me. My ex used to do local advertising for this pizza place... he once called me 'one of those unreachable people'. I do not watch tv much or listen to the radio and I throw away those mailer things I get (unless I am feeding my snakes that day.. then the ads become tank liners for feeding time). My husband does like the television though, and sometimes I will watch what he is watching and grow disgusted by all of the stupid crap that is being pushed on us all like it's necessity. This is something I can get a bit punchy about so I should cut it short before I go off on a tangent... I'll leave it with this, I agree with ZEGH8578, I am infuriated and offended by ads and also think they should be banned.

I mute all commercials on the TV. 99.999% are loud, obnoxious, annoying, and quite frankly would never make me want to buy the product.

Ad blockers on computers, simply because they slow down my ancient computer.

I'm immune to advertisements. In fact, I rarely see them, because I almost never watch commercial TV or listen to commercial radio, and I have an ad blocker on my computer. I don't like the way commercials tend to be so loud, either. And I find advertising aimed at children to be just morally wrong.

However, there is one thing I noticed. If I'm watching something (usually a DVD from Netflix, while sitting on the couch with my husband), and the characters in the movie get a cup of tea, I really want one, too. Watching things like "Miss Marple", make me want to drink a lot of tea, for some reason.

And if the characters are drinking alcohol, I want to, also. We've been watching the British "Life on Mars", and every time they go to the pub, I want to get up and grab a beer or a cider. (I specified "British", because I've seen trailers for the American one, and the lead character seems like a real jerk, so I don't want anyone to think I watch that one. Why we have to redo perfectly good shows is beyond me. )

advertisements makes me want to jump out a window. people who write these things clearly think we're idiots. those sprint ones, 10 people are eating breakfast on a plane and finalizing a report, 100 people are saying goodbye for the last time..., just add on to my theory.

wait one's on now...what makes a hershey's bar pure? how about pure togetherness? *i'll stop the world and melt with you*
what on earth are they talking about? i have not seen an instance where chocolate brought the world together in harmony.

oh goody now the hippieish iphone %100 you commercial with whoopi goldberg! is that cat stevens in the background? i'm sure he's totally into our materialistic culture. non-comformist song playing for a comformist media, beautiful.

Sometimes an ad might interest me but more often I will swear NEVER to buy that product.

However those ads are not directed at you and me. They are aimed at the brainless sheeple who will fall for them.

Do they "work"? Damned right they do. They spend millions of dollars testing them.

If you or I say "I will never buy that product" then so what? A million other morons will.

Usually watch ABC2 or SBS , where there usen't to be adds but now they put them in a block at the beginning or end.

I've always mentally tuned out to adds, my partner will sometimes ask about or remark on one and is STILL surprised I have no clue. Can't stand them to the point I just ignore them by thinking about other stuff.


One add I did take notice of, and that was probably 50 years ago was :

Louey the Fly, Louey the Fly...
"LOUEY the FLY, straight from rubbish tip to you,
he's dirty and mean, and mighty unclean
affraid of no one is Louey,
except for the man with the can of Mortien.
.... Poor dead Louey,
apple of his own mother's eye was dead ,
Poor dead Louey the Fly,
dead from the man with the can of Mortien.
M_O_R_T_I_E_N.

I guess that was the add to top all adds for me.... loved the song, and the cartoon character of LOUEY. Felt a bit sorry for him too.
And never bought Mortien.

I think that more or less everybody are affected by advertisements. Some products rely more heavily on the message than others, and yet others rely more on imagery. But they all have the aspect in common that they make themselves known.

As a simple situation specific example, you are statistically more likely to buy the more well known shampoos than the "lesser" ones. Next time you're in the store, try to take notice of what brands you put in the basket. And don't forget the old saying "all PR is good PR" (although it's a truth with modifications (Norwegian: sannhet med modifikasjoner)).

Indoctrination is a keyword. Have the information repeated often enough, and you will start believing in it, and remember it, and even to some extent prefer it - and justify your choice by exclaiming to yourself this particular product's benefits over the others without even realizing where your "insight" comes from. It's automatic.

awwwwwww! thats a good angle to take tho, theyre making it look cooler and faster
i always feel bad educating my sisters about such stuff, cus its often too late, and i dont wanna rip on their things that they love

This is true.

This is one of the ways I am occasionally influenced by advertisements. Not shampoo per say, I generally get what's cheapest (go ahead, check my cart. it's 90% Wal-Mart brand ) but it's happened once or twice in the past with certain things... which reminds me I totally needed to get conditioner at the store that I just got back from. And I forgot it. Damn it.

I digress.

Last edited by mitharatowen on 03 Oct 2009, 1:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Maybe I'm mean, but I think it's a valuable lesson. It has led to some very interesting conversations in the store if they're allowed to pick out a toy. Don't just pick something because the box looks cool, or the kids on tv have 6 friends because they bought X toy and it does 2023873080 different things. Actually think about it. What does it do? What would you use it for? Do you have something like it already? I'd like to think I'm raising little conscientious shoppers.

That's a good point, I never realise it that way. I guess ads do have an impact on you, just by one watching them.

Make my dream come true. Give me a government job to make sure that all ads are truthful and honest.

"More dentists use this toothbrush"
Really? More than what? More than six? More than last year?"

"Our soap cleans whiter than white" Really? What the hell does that mean? Prove it!

Give me the job and I would make them too scared to claim anything.

I love seeing ads unless they're really loud or really annoying.
I consider them to be a learning experience and something I can draw inspiration off of. Of course, I was in the advertising business (please don't kill me) so it's different for me than it is for the average person.

And the government would never do that. Then their own ads would be exposed.

i have never been influenced to buy anything from watching an ad.

i like the tunes in some ads, and i remember them in my mind, but i can not say what product or service those ads were promoting.

mostly i become disillusioned with society when i watch ads. they are a very well crafted message designed to appeal to a large percentage of the population.

so if i watch an ad and absorb how it transpires, then i can get an idea of what appeals to average people in society.

they dumb ads down so they appeal to the average person (which is the bulk of the populace).

errkkk!! i dislike the way people talk on ads.

there are fluffy feminine motherly voices who softly espouse the virtues of cleaning products, and gladiatorial gruff voices that extol the virtues of their choice of razor.

i have noticed that most products advertised use children to attract the publics attention.

i am not in the least inclined to listen to a child on the tv, but most people can not ignore the comments from a voice of a child.
i think people are far too focused on children these days. they lose their own identity as soon as they have a child, and then their life is dedicated to molly coddling their children.
they glorify their children with a verve that i find totally alien to my subjective reality.

in australia, they recently made an ad for qantas which was the largest budget ad in our history. it contained only children running aimlessly through a few scenes and i can not see how it was so expensive to make. the ad irritates me. it was not even sung in the english language mostly. it was sung by some annoying boy in an aboriginal dialect i guess.
who knows what he was saying.

------------
there is an ad for a vacuum cleaner and it shows the cleaner sucking up sugar from a smoothe table as an example of it's sucking power.
__________
there is an ad where a little girl is at a beach and decides to go for a swim. as she runs toward the water there are about 500 lifeguards all coming to alert and watching her and all the helicopters in the air converge on where she is to keep a careful eye on her.
the final scene is her standing at the waters edge and 500 burly lifeguards all with their arms folded looking intently at her.
the slogan was "whatever it takes".
i am not sure what the ad is selling but i dislike it very much.
_____

every ad i see i find fault with, so the companies who commission the ads are lucky i do not remember what the ad was selling or they would have one less potential customer.

Last edited by b9 on 04 Oct 2009, 10:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

mitharatowen is dead on the money people are influenced by them.

It is not quite, I must buy this product now, but what is called "Brand Awareness". So the next time you need something that brand will come up. The next stage is the merchandising at the point of sale.

Yes, I've read that this is actually how it works and it works on a subconscious level. It's not that people think to themselves "what a great product, I believe all the claims that are being made about it" because many people pride themselves on being immune to that and much too skeptical to fall for claims. (Although somebody is buying Acai and Hoodia purely on strength of claims, I suspect.) But no matter how consciously skeptical you are of claims, hearing the name of a product enough times does embed it in your memory. You don't have to believe the claims to buy the product. It just has to be at the forefront of your mind, crowding out thoughts of other products. I think some companies even use this conscious skepticism as an advertising technique. They make ads with absolutely absurd claims that you can consciously reject as being absurd while patting yourself on the back for not being a sucker. But the sheer absurdity of the claims makes the product stick in your head, making you more likely to buy it while rejecting its' claims. Axe Body Wash for example.