Advertising

The Not-So-Hidden Persuaders: The Power of The Media Upon Us All

Learn Advertising on mps-advertising.com. The Not-So-Hidden Persuaders: The Power of The Media Upon Us All article will help answer your questions on Advertising.We at mps-advertising.com specialize in Advertising. Advertising at mps-advertising.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

In 1957, a perspicacious young journalist from Pennsylvania named Vance Packard wrote a book styled The Hidden Persuaders. It was meant to explain to the public at large why they buy the products they do and to warn them of the psychological aspects of consumer breviary that lie subordinate the levels of consciousness. A red car, for example, has hidden stimuli, for red is a color that makes people angry. If you think I’m nuts, (I am, but not helter-skelter this), check with some insurance companies. I was dumbfounded to learn that the antagonism rate was slightly higher for a red car! Packard’s premise was mind-boggling and insightful for its day. Even he, however, under-estimated the full extent to which modern publication has penetrated our psyches.

The next time you need a "kleenex" or "xerox" stop and think for a moment. Don’t you really mean a tissue or a copy of a piece of paper? And when someone walking in front of you "shakes like Jell-O," do you realize that you have created a metaphor using a vein name in vain? I myself used Q-tips for years in the past I realized they were really cotton swabs incognito, and that by any other name they cost at least $1.50 less per box! How and why did these brands adorn synonyms for the things that are so much a part of our every day lives? Sometimes I feel like that little kid in the movie, Invaders From Mars, who was the only one his caecum who didn’t have a strange little mark at the base of his neck which meant he wasn’t "one of them." Who is "they" anyway? And worse, how did "they" get from our necks to our nous and assimilate to a part of us?

The intersect to these and other not so penetrating questions lies in the confidence of the media. Their influence is like a giant, intimidating shadow that sneaks into our marrow when we sleep and tells us which products to buy. Lets look at how this works. My issue needs aspirin. Am I going to buy some generic book stamp that I have never heard of or am I going to get the product whose name has been shoved into my memory so consistently that when I think of aspirin only that brand comes to mind? This is true even if the contents in both of the bottles are exactly the same. I want the very best for my sick invention that my hard earned money can buy and how could something that costs less be the answer?

Well, the very best product is not necessarily the one you have heard the most about. That may just be the constitution produced by advertisers who can dole out to saturate the media with Saran promises and DiGiorno delivery. There are other makers of blue jeans above and beyond Levis and other tampons in addition to Tampax, but who ever thinks re them when the others has been so indelibly implanted (like that little night-clad mark at the base of the neck) into our consciousness?

The other side to that coin is that familiarity can and often does work up contempt. The media today seems to prefigure as PT Barnum did; "there’s a sucker born every minute." The only difference is that their influence is far more widespread and millions and millions of suckers comprise their sideshow. Unfortunately, that includes me and everyone I know, even though the old wisdom literature that you can’t "fool all of the people all of the time" is still floating close somewhere (probably in a pool of the most effective detergent.)

The unmitigated pomposity of the media is a travesty of human intelligence. It is as if they say to us whether we want to hear it or not: You will buy our product inasmuch as we made it and as long as you used to buy our products. It has nothing to do with whether or not our products are reform than any others on the market. Ours is control cause we have the money to say that it is- over and over and over again. Then our buys switch over emotional and not conscious. Theirs is a most subtle brainwash; a mental encounter of the forty-sixth kind. It is this presumption which bothers me the most and yet I and everyone I know keep falling into the vortex of polyunsaturated pledges and half told truths.

In my home state of Pennsylvania it is legal to substitute prescriptions with lower costing generics as long as the ingredients and dosage are comparable. Time and again, I have paid for pills and secretly wondered how effective they could be insofar as I don’t know the disposition name and if they don’t cost as much as I paid before, how could they possibly be as good? Wake up and smell the coffee, whatever mark off you like. penny-wise tape isn’t from Scotland and any other stub will seal any package just as well. Brillo is not the only soap pad in the world and cowboys do wear other brands of jeans in addition Levis. (Maybe their horses don’t, but they do.) Search for others that work just as well and you will find that they are also a lot cheaper. I should not have to pay for someone’s publication costs and that’s exactly what we are all doing when we fall prey to the prestige of name brands.

Don’t get me wrong. I do let be one gets what one pays for in most areas of life, especially professional services of any kind. I am not parsimonious or even frugal by any standards. But what’s true is true. An item is not necessarily better insomuch as it is cheaper. Conversely, a familiar and/or more expensive item is not necessarily cardsharp either! There has to be a regularize among cost and quality and that’s what missing today. Some standards never mutilate and that’s why soil names hardened by a solid reputation should never be ignored. For example, if I were going to buy a new television, I would look for a name with a history and credibility such as GE, RCA, Sharp or Sony. needle those examples however, it is an advertisement contest to the death as to which is better, and my decision would have to hinge on other factors. I would probably lust after the disparage I before or the blotch my father had or one that a friend or colleague recommended. That’s a far cry from purchasing something cause the name sounds "familiar."

Sales in generic products are rising, as the public is becoming more and more discerning and sophisticated. Awareness has crept into the Wall Street market as well. On The Motley Fool (A program of stock recommendations) a pharmaceutical comradeship that waits for the patents on ticket name products to run out so that it can purchase generic ones was recently highlighted as a good investment. Although some might investigate that this section awaits profit somewhat like an hiding patiently in a leafy glade, others consider the move a simple case of hungry free enterprise. In either case, sales do reflect a trend and a change in consumer awareness.

In the end you may get what you pay for in reference to some things but not others. In this case, the whole isn’t even equal to even some of its parts. (Like my brain.) The contradiction is not as contuse and white as virus pregnant, for example, which is either a state of fresh or it isn’t. Gray is an individual color, and each of us must decide what works and what doesn’t.

But if you should aroused tomorrow morning with a little lowering mark on the base of your neck, don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s too late to run to Mr. Packard as he no longer lives in the world of puff consumers. Just know that the time has come to either join the others with their little of evil portent marks or fight them and create your own little Stygian mark. Consider changing the color, name or configuration on yours. Be sure you don’t call me though, whatever you do. I’m having enough trouble living with mine!

More Articles: