Advertising

40s and 50s

• Era of the hard-sell
• Rosser Reeves “irritation school of advertising”
• Relied on brain-numbing repetition and treating the consumer as an idiot
• The USP – Unique Selling Proposition
• It was jack-hammered into consumers’ skulls

A Reeves ad

60s

• The positioning era
• Shift to the soft-sell
• Compare your product to your competitors’
• Treat consumers as intelligent
• Appeal to emotion more than intellect

General comments on ads

• Advertising is limited in time and/or space
• Breaks the rules of grammar and syntax
• Ads contain two elements
• Copy
• illustrations

Two basic ways of presenting a sales message

• Intellectually
• Usually about the product’s function
• Usually copy heavy and line drawings
• Emotionally
• Usually not about the product’s function
• Usually copy is light with high connotative content
• Uses photographs or video

• Advertising aims at consumers’ subconscious minds much more than their conscious minds
• It’s all about getting the consumer to react on a basic, instinctive level, and not think at all
• It’s about “act now” on your basic desires – think only of yourself
• It’s usually selfish and anti-social

Psychological Appeals

• Self-preservation
• Sex
• Greed
• Self-esteem
• Personal enjoyment

• Constructiveness
• Destructiveness
• Curiosity
• Imitation
• Altruism

Self-preservation

• “Listen to me, I’ll keep you alive”
• Because humans are so social, we extend the appeal to others, like family, friends, and social group