"The Persuaders": a Reflection as a Marketing Major Essay

Every day, companies present the people with advertisements everywhere they go. Advertisements have become very prevalent in today’s society nowadays focusing in on a negative connotation. Advertisement has become an effective way for producers to display their new products. In present day, they come in forms of billboards, flyers, e-mails, and even text messages. It is widely known that companies create advertisements to persuade people to buy specific products or goods; however, it is not widely known that advertisements can make a negative impact on today’s society. The companies manipulate people’s mind and emotions, swaying people by new promotions and therefore generating a strong desire to fit into the society, that causes them to make inessential expenditures. Advertisements pose a critical impact on the American culture.

Every minute of every day, millions of people are exposed to advertisements. They plague televisions, streets, radio waves, and all means of communication. These advertisements employ many methods of persuasion and their influence is irresistible. Just like prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are told every day to invest our time and interest into the subject of these advertisements, and to accept the forms of reality they serve us. Whether it be a commercial for a must-have new car, to a spot featuring desirable fast food, or to magazines with photoshopped models; we are seduced to accept these false

The most interesting part of the video is hearing how multi-million/large corporations view their audience/consumers. In the video The Persuaders, Douglas Atkin makes a compelling analogy, comparing individuals in cults to buying/joining a “brand” like Apple or Nike. These consumers feel the need to belong and have the company of others. Emotional branding has become part of American culture, they allow people to join a lifestyle. For example, Coca-Cola and Hallmark, both of these are multi million corporations that are directly associated with holidays like Christmas. They release commercials that appeal to individual’s emotions and makes them empathize

The average United States Citizen views about 5000 advertisements a day (Johnson). Advertising is everywhere. Billboards on the way to work, ads on the internet, and paper products such as magazines or newspapers display a sale or a promotion of a good or service. Usually, the ad will give a brand or company name, and uses the product’s merits to draw the consumer closer. This has grown exponentially as advertisements in media in 1970 were estimated to be 500 a day, a ten percent increase in the last 48 years. (Johnson). This is due to the rise of technology, as the computer has become a household gadget within the new millenium. These advertisements are meant to give a synopsis of the product or service’s purpose, quality, and efficiency. If a consumer views 5000 advertisements in a single day and assuming the commercials do not repeat, 5000 goods or services are introduced. With more options to choose from in such little time, the consumer has a harder time differentiating the quality and perhaps necessity of the product. The marketers rely on the quick, impulsive decision making of consumers. With the misleading nature of many infomercials or radio broadcasts, the people of American society are bombarded with constant propaganda, thus making seemingly harmless promotions more potent to filling industries’ pockets and lessening the common population’s

Over the last few decades, American culture has been forever changed by the huge amount of advertisement the people are subjected to. Advertising has become such an integral part of society, many people will choose whether or not they want to buy a product based only on their familiarity with it rather than the product’s price or effectiveness. Do to that fact, companies must provide the very best and most convincing advertisements as possible. Those companies have, in fact, done

The Persuaders vie for the attention of a gorgeous soap heiress who has fallen for the slippery charms of a deceiving con man, but in the end, who can really say that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow isn’t an illusion after all?

The naked brand documentary highlights the fact that advertising can be more than a company selling its product to the consumer, but a way to connect with the consumer to deliver exactly what they want while still making profits.

The New York Times stated that in 2016, “American adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day”. In five hours one could, make $50 working a minimum wage job, or drive to the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York, or even work on a paper! Instead, in between that five hours of television watching, flashes of advertisements imbedded with hidden messages are hurled at the viewer. The advertisements are lodged with persuasive techniques. Secret’s deodorant commercial can best be dissected, and attempted to figure out the persuasive techniques, by applying the critical process that is used in media. This process involves description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation. After the breakdown of the Secret deodorant

The Persuaders is a documentary that delves into the business of marketing and advertising. The PBS documentary explores the depths at which corporations will go and how much they will spend to have effective marketing campaigns. What stood out to me was how these corporations targeted their audiences for the purchase of their product. The amount of research done by these companies, and corporations to target the needs of their customer base is impressive. Not only is the research impressive, the way a company/business is able to adapt their pricing based on the data of their research is jaw-dropping. Song, an airline company, has an interesting scheme of advertising their product without the customer feeling like they are watching just

Persuasion is something that many people would underestimate its importance in marketing. When companies must go out of their way to retain and get new customers, persuading to bring them in the brand’s ecosystem is important. We deal with brands every day. Brands are a thing many young people connect with nowadays. A study from Havas Worldwide showed that 45% of 16-34-year-olds agree that “Brands play an essential role in (their) life,” while it being 35% for 35-54-year-olds, and 25% for people ageing 55 and above (Hum, 2015). People in my age group like to feel exclusive, and a lot of brands nowadays go out of their way to offer to give back something to customers. Cialdini talks about six different principles of persuasion, and today I will

The rise and growth of political marketing in many western democracies is evidence of its major importance. The innovative Conservative party campaign effort in 1979 could be argued, paved the way for the improvement and transformation in the way political marketing worked. It was this era that gave Margaret Thatcher the title “The Marketing Pioneer” (Lees-Marshment) along with giving the Conservatives the name the “Market-Oriented Party”. In particular, documentaries such as ‘The Marketing of Thatcher’ by Michael Cockerell’s helped to provoke interest in the newly energised style of election campaigning. Political marketing has become more ubiquitous in recent years and has “become a fundamental part of political life” (Lees-Marshment) in the sense that politicians are no longer just seen as politicians but as ‘political actors’ (Ralph Negrine). While some people believe that political marketing is simply about ‘promoting their products and seeking votes’ (Kavanagh 1994). Maarek goes beyond this view suggesting that the idea that political marketing is a much broader concept that needs careful analysis. He emphasises’ this by stating that marketing “no longer means merely designing and printing a message on a poster with no consideration of whom they are addressed to, [in this sense] it embodies the whole marketing process, from the initial market study to testing and targeting (Maarek 1995). With this, Levy and Kotler (1969) has also introduced the idea that political

The most effective ads are ones that we don’t even recognize as advertisements. Like ads we see in television series, news, movies and even on clothing. We are manipulated quickly by common objects, characters, or ideas that are transformed into things that all Americans desire, hope for, fear, believe the most. (Jack Solomon).

Advertisements, in the 21st century, are an ever-present medium of influence in our day-to-day lives. This notoriously ubiquitous form of publicity has become so intricately woven into our cultural and societal presence that we have learned to absorb the messages put forth by advertisements, often without any question as to their credibility. We are constantly being exposed to manipulated images of reality within advertisements, which glorify popular ideologies and build upon cultural norms, simply for the purpose of creating desirability for their product. This process of creating desirability, however, often means constructing naturalised myths of the product to appeal to the commercial audience. Advertisers position viewers to accept the messages being conveyed, and in doing so, attain an unsettling degree of power over their viewers, with the ability to exploit feelings, emotions and desires through the use of clever discourses, images and symbols. In order to undermine the influential and pervasive nature of advertising, we as consumers, must learn to critique and analyse the techniques exercised by advertisers, and decide for ourselves whether the messages expressed are worth accepting.

According to Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, authors of Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture became Consumer Culture, advertising is seen as an “awareness institution” (Heath and Potter xix), a powerful organization in this country, even more powerful than some political establishments. Its repetition and ubiquity help impress its message upon the public. Hence advertising takes on a type of communication, replacing deep communication once found within communities. Authors Heath and Potter agree with earlier cited Kavanaugh, stating, “advertising is an omnipresent system of symbols, a persuasive and bold propaganda for consumer culture” (Heath and Potter 5). It deeply affects the way we connect and communicate with each other and lodges a large barrier into our communities. It makes forming communal bonds extremely difficult as many people are too caught up in the messages that advertising sells them instead of the people around them. American’s constant consumption leaves them “perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious and bored” (Heath and Potter 6), feelings that profoundly affect their personal lives. In turn, they become distanced from the

There are several different ways that marketers get their message across to potential customers(1), each marketing communications tool can have different effects on us. Marketing is intrusive, businesses are constantly trying to push their brands in our faces… we barely process one piece of information before the next one comes shooting our way. The pervasiveness marketing has undoubtedly influenced our mind-set and behaviour… a disposable culture creeps closer to becoming reality. It’s because