In this lecture, we looked primarily at why certain advertisments are memorable for certain types of people and why.
The task was to look at a number of different advertisments and try to remember as many as possible, stating our first recalled advert first.
One of the main differences found between who remembered what, was gender differences. It seemed that males repeatedly recalled the adverts that provided humour, and it seemed that most of the adverts with the funny twist were aimed at males promoting products and services for men. The females however tended to remember the adverts with celebrity endorsements, adverts for products such as perfumes. The advert for this Paco Rabanne fragrance, does not convey an extremely famous celebrity in their advert, (such as Beyonce beinf the face of Tommy Hilfiger's True Star) but it does draw your attention to the advert through other means.
Adverts that successfully use colour in their adverts can really catch your eye if contrasting is used effectively. The advert shown here has immediatly made the perfume stand out in the foreground by using the neon streaks of purple to intensify the name of the product. Because the rest of the advert is black and grey, this purple streak really amplifys the product being presented.
The senses are also used widely in advertising. Visual and touch are the two senses that most stand out in the paco rabanne advert, and this applies to many other adverts. It is strange however to notice that the sense of smell isn't addressed in perfume adverts, a sense that is vital to the success of perfumes and aftershaves.
A link was also found between the amount of analysis an advert required to understand the product being promoted. It seemed the more complicated the advert's underlying message, the less less likely the males remembered them.
There is also a theory on the primary and recency effect. This theory suggests that women would tend to remember the first advert they see whereas the men are more likely to remember the last advert they see. This theory is applicable to many other visual tests as well as the intake of words or knowledge etc.
"A persons unique make up which consistently influences the way the person responds to his or her environment."
"Those inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect how a person responds to his or her environment." Schiffman and Kanuk (2004)
...has an external aspect (how someone interacts with someone else), an internal aspect (a combination of the person's values and attitudes), a dynamic aspect (how someone behaves when facing a new situation; social adjustments etc) and a consistent aspect (the person's characteristic style). Hollander
...is made up of an Id, an Ego and a Superego. The Id is the selfish part of the person, it is the part of you that wants to maximise your pleasure. The Superego is the part of you that is conscious of the society and it's rules. and the Ego is the part that mediates between the Id and the Superego, it is the part that creates a balance between the two opposites. Freud.
...develops from the level of anxiety felt at being a depedent child. Horney came up with 3 personality types dependent on the level of anxiety, these are; Compliant, Aggressive and Detached.
This image comes from Aaker's brand personality framework, his belief is that by choosing the category that most suits you, you can determine your main personality traits.
"The beliefs a person holds about his or her own attributes and how he or she evaluates those qualities." Solomon (1999)
"People see themselves as they imagine others see them." Solomon (1999) This quote suggests the importance of people's personal belongings. The quote suggests that people can assess others through merely looking at their possessions. Therefore, when it comes to people buying a certain product, they may not only be thinking about whether they like it or not, they may also be thinking about what others may think of that product and what assumptions people may make about you from buying such a product.
"The individual as perceived by that individual in a socially determined frame of reference." Newcomb
...does not necessarily reflect reality. It may not matter what the actual facts about that person are, it is what the person believes that makes self concept. This can account for people that suffer with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia; the person may be morbidly skinny, but they see themselves as overweight.
The advert shown below is all about self concept.
...is derived from social comparisons with others. James (1980) This is why there has been such controversy in regards to the amount of extremely skinny models being advertised in magazines promoting beauty, leading to a rise in young women and more recently young men suffering from eating disorders. If you have nothing else to compare yourself to but an unrealistically beautiful model with no faults whatsoever, then your self concept and self esteem will be dramatically affected. This could be either in a positive or negative way, and this is why advertising is so important, not only for promoting a product, but also for shaping how its audience react.
The larger the gap between the ideal self and self image, the lower the self esteem. The further away you want to be from what you actually are, the unhappier you are likely to be, hence your self esteem being dramatically lower. Dove have created a campaign for real beauty. This is to try and boost women's self esteem that are dampened by the unrealistic airbrushed and digitally edited faces and bodies in the media used to advertise beauty.
The majority of participants compared themselves with models in advertisements; comparisons were both general and specific. Most participants mentioned that their first reaction, when looking at advertising images, was to study the size of the model's body. Different models were envied for a variety of reasons such as their weight or height, their beauty or their age. Some younger respondents (aged 25-29) envied the models for their very thin figures:
'You look at the models and think...yeah, I'd like to be that thin...you think yes, I'm going to start that diet next week. It's like...you'd like to look like that.
By looking at this article, you can see just how much of an impact advertising can have on their target audience.
