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Magazine Issue 4 - Summer 1997
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| What's Wrong With... Advertising "Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life.,"C. Lasch (1978) "The Culture of Narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations." A Brief History of Persuasion The industrial revolution brought with it many new inventions, from the steam engine to the assembly line, resulting in the production of more and more material goods for the mass market. Manufacturers were soon competing for a share of the consumer market. The family was now seen as a centre of consumption, not production. This was the birth of the great sales and marketing revolution. Consumers needed to be persuaded to keep on consuming. Psychologists have studied persuasion since Aristotle. One of the few proven effects of advertising is known as "brand salience" -exposure to a brand makes us familiar with it which, unless we think about it, tends to make us prefer that brand (see Obermiller, 1985). In defence of Advertising The advertising industry claims (without any hard evidence, Holton, Advertising Age, April 1980) that advertising stimulates commerce. It is the captains of industry that pay for, and apparently benefit from advertising although the true winners are the ad agencies. Today's cognitive psychologists favour a simple "levels of processing" model of persuasion. Peripheral processing is when you make snap decisions - using rules of thumb. We tend to favour this method of interpreting a message - it's fast and easy. This is the way advertisers want us to think - we can be more easily persuaded to buy something if we don't think about it much. Central processing is when we think about it longer - we evaluate a mesage by comparing it to counter-arguments, and prior information. The primary aim of most advertising is to encourage us to think peripherally, not centrally. Supermarket lighting and music are geared to numbing our brains. Catchy slogans and easy-to-read images patronise us into making snap decisions, impulse purchases and generallly over-consuming. How to Resist Advertising :
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