Persuasion in Advertising - Report Example

Persuasion in Advertising Advertising and marketing is all about conveying a single, unified message down to the target audience in a manner which meshes along well both with the client’s budget as well as the aspirations and expectations of the people for whom the brand is being marketed or advertised. It is formed on the basis of psychological and physiological movements which are studied by the advertising and marketing people so that the client (the company people) also remain happy and their business flourishes in the longer run. However, to get this very message down to the intended people is not an easy job to start with. It needs to be very targeted, precise and significant for them in order for them to take notice and understand that the particular brand connects with them in the best and most easiest of manners possible and hence they should be the ones to buy it for themselves and for this reason satisfy their need or even please themselves more than they had already expected. It is a sure tough job for the people who have to extract the perfect message which needs to be sharpened again and again before it actually gets down to the right kind of people who will make the actual purchase and therefore the product will be sold in the end. Psychologically speaking, consumers connect with what is there on the electronic and/or print media for them in the form of a message that says a lot about their preferred brand and lists down the details as to how it could benefit the same person if he or she uses it. Advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media. This is all the art of selling and it comes under the heading of marketing and for marketing to happen in the first place, advertising is of fundamental importance. Without advertising, marketers can only think of their product lying on the retail outlets waiting for angels to come and satisfy themselves. People need to be told the plus points of their brands (by the company) so that they actually go out and make the eventual purchase which in all fairness, not an easy job for the company, say that is producing a shoe polish which does not stick on to the shoes as much as do the other competitor shoe polishes already available in the market. Advertising is a part of the social psychology and as we are discussing the persuasive part of it, hence there is a direct linkage here. Hence the branch of human psychology that deals with the behavior of groups and the influence of social factors on the individual is indeed the social psychology and as we are getting the hang of things from the advertising and persuasion perspective of it, the both are seen as being quite imperative here. For persuasion, one needs to take into notice the fact that this is a two way process and not a hand which can clap alone and on its own. People need to be given some benefit for their own selves so that they listen to or read the intended selling message or the advertisement. If they are not interested, then there is no use of selling the brand at all. Advertising creates the interest that eventually leads to the selling exercise. So in order to keep the product in the mind of the consumer, the selling message needs to be hit again and again in his or her mind till the time he or she makes that essential purchase of the product and even then the advertising and marketing of the brand does not stop as selling again and again is the ultimate motive of the business on the basis of which it stands. (Kilbourne, 2003) Therefore, this message has to be transmitted to the target people again and again so that they continuously buy their products and in the larger interest not only benefit themselves (the consumers) but also the company as it will have more profits and eventually a larger business share in the stock market and so on and so forth. Hence all this cannot be remarked as a one time activity, it needs to be on a continual basis. Persuasion thus needs to be on a consistent basis and it needs to produce feelings and ideas in the mind of the person who is directly or indirectly getting influenced by it. In the case of advertising, this persuasion takes a psychological turn and proves to be very helpful in making the actual sale that is so very necessary to comprehend here. Persuasion is also done through the word of mouth approach that essentially takes into consideration the fact that the more people are happy and satisfied with the brand, the more they will buy it again as well as encourage their near and dear ones to make that step of having the eventual purchase on their part so as to give satisfaction to their own selves and thus indeed the benefit the brand and more than that the company itself in terms of its business. The word of mouth approach has its drawbacks as well as it can easily ask for negative message to get across and that too more quickly and in an ineffective manner than the positive counterpart. Persuasion and influence in the world of advertising are also heavily dependent upon how and what the message actually says. This depends on a host of factors which may range from the actual duration of the ad message to the number of visual shots that are changed in it. Lighting, direction and the eventual follow up of the ad are also very significant here. When we talk about the print media, typography (the language of playing with different fonts and its sizes), colors, graphics and the like are pivotal to bring about a single unified message that persuades and influences the consumer to buying into a particular product than its competitors’. Apart from the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ factors, it is also quite imperative here to state that the number of times the actual message is going to be run on television or radio or the size of the print ad in the newspapers and magazines or the exact placement of the billboard or shop sign in the outdoor medium reflects the favorable or unfavorable response from the people. So the amount of times the message is hit on the consumer’s mind and the heart reflects his positive or otherwise feelings about the product, not to forget the persuasion or repulsion towards this product as well. This could happen on quite a relevant stage for the high involvement product and not so importantly for the low involvement ones but nonetheless it happens and must be taken note of by the people at the helm of affairs in the company producing the product and the ones who work in the ad agency promoting it courtesy marketing and advertising methods and strategies. Persuasion and influence in advertising and the marketing world is an art rather than science itself. It has to be understood in the light of the different consumers that visit the marketplace at different times of the day as well as the times that they actually visit in a week or a month for that matter. Thus advertisers must understand what actually goes into persuading and convincing them (the consumers) into making that purchase rather than opting for the competitors’ product when they actually enter the store and buy. Works Cited Kilbourne, Jean. Deadly Persuasion. 2003 Word Count: 1,277 Read More