Advertising isn't designed for those with ASD

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Throughout the day, we are all faced with numerous advertisments of various forms in many different ways. Sometimes, I don't mind advertisments at all, especially when they are well directed. For example if I am at an electronics swap meet, an ad for a new speaker system will capture my attention and will be much more effective than say an ad for a baldness treatment on the TV while watching a show about World war II. It's misdirected ad's like that are the ones that drive me crazy, from companies that "bomb" practically all media outlets advertising a product or service that many people may have no need for at all. They must be effective to some extent, or I guess they woundn't keep using the "carpet bombing" approach to advertising. Personally, I thing the more precise direction of ad's to people that are interested and ready to buy your product is a much better solution.

The thing I 've noticed is that in many of the NT's I talk to, they seem to be affected by the "carpet bomb" ad attacks much more. Some of these include all sorts of medical miracle pills from male sexual enhancement drugs, to the aforementioned baldness stuff, among many other things. I guess after a while, these ad's start to drill into the weak minds of NT's becasue they will end up thinking about the purchase of the products or service even though they really don't need it.

One of the suprising ways I have noticed that advertisers really don't work good for me is when they place information in their adveritisments that are left open for interpretation. For instance, an autmobile ad may say "our XYZ car has more interior room" Okay, more room than what? Last years model?, a competitor's model?, a cardboard box? Of course, we're aspies, and we're gonna think about something like this, but the advertisers aren't going after folks like us that read too deeply, they are going after the typical NT that is shopping for a car, and they think XYZ car, lots of room...even though a competitor car may in fact even have more room. An effective ad for me would be one that would say "XYZ car has 80 cubic feet of cargo space, and that's 20% more than other cars"

The absloute worst ad's to me are the ones that do absloutely nothing to describe the product. Some don't even display the product, but simply display a logo, or say it's name. I can see were it's going to make me buy it that much more. Beer and perfume commercials are famous for that, but many other products are advertised like this. For example, the Budweiser frog ads. They're fun, but they don't tell me absloutely anything about the product, and after seeing the ad a million times, it doesn't make me any more interested in purchasing the product. There are some effective beer ad's out there though, like one I remember for Miller where a guy gets onto a crowded bus in the desert. He opens a beer and pours it. They close-up on the beer pouring into the glass (displaying the product) and then suddenly the interior of the bus becomes chillingly cold (visually decribes the product as being cool and refreshing).

Still, while many ad's are hoplessly ineffective for an aspie like myself becasue they simply don't contain enough, or any pertinent information, or they are simply mis-directed. I can still find ad's sometimes very entertaining, as they may contain gross exaggerations (the Joe Isusu commercials) or a pun in words (Aflac) or are just plain fun . It's also fun looking at advertisments from other eras in time. Since ad producers want to make their product look hip and modern, the era's style is readily apparent when compared with current styles and trends, which may not be so noticable, since we see them everyday. They also show what was important to people during a certain era in time.

I don't buy a lot of things that I otherwise would simply because of their ad campaign. For example, Tag. I don't want a pile of women jumping on me. It's probably not as enjoyable as people think.

Logically speaking, of course you are right; but I think most advertisers assume you are not interested and have never heard of the product. The goal of the ad is to make the name familiar to you, so when you are confronted with a choice you will remember the brand name and chose their product over other similar ones.



I love watching the drug ads. Not so much the ads; but the part when they must list the side-effects. The voice-over drops a couple of decibels and speeds up as the video portion of the ad gets cuter to distract you from: "Not for use by pregnant women or those wishing to become pregnant. May cause liver disease, increased risk of cancer, headache, nausea, blurred vision and diarrhea. (voice back to normal pitch) Ask your Doctor if Scruitol is for you!! !" Many times, you're not even sure what Scruitol actually does. Such ads play on hypochondria and the belief that A Doctor Knows and Will Help.



The car ads are really dumb, I agree. The idea seems to be to make you want the car because it is fast, sleek, good-looking, roomier (than what, yeah) practical, whatever. You are right, there is no solid info in these ads. I can't figure out how they work either.

I think most people, both NT's and aspies, can list a lot of reasons why ads are stupid and shouldn't work; but somehow they do. My best guess is that the dumber ones are just designed to get the brand name out there, so you will buy Budweiser rather than Auld Eagle Piss beer the next time you're at the package store.