Analyzing Advertising Impact Through Psychological Techniques

The British University in Egypt

Duracell Ad

Nowadays, there is no way of escaping from all the advertising messages and techniques. Almost every year, huge amounts of money are paid on advertisements in hope of attracting the consumer's attention, and to drive them into buying the product which was advertised. CITATION Jan10 l 1033 (Jansson-Boyd, 2010) One of the most used techniques is psychological techniques. For instances, perception, emotions, attention, arousal, etc. This essay includes the analysis of two advertisement ads from the perspective of psychological effects.

The first one is an advertisement for batteries called "Duracell" and the other one is for selling jewelry called "I'm the cash man".

The ad is about a girl whose father is in the military. He sends her a bear with a voice recorder that works with a button saying "I love baby girl" with his own voice using Duracell batteries. So the aim of this ad is that the batteries are as trusting as the people close to us; moreover, the slogan is "the ones you trust are always there" which refers to the batteries.

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One of the main psychological effects which was used is the emotional effect. Advertisers use the emotions to grab the consumer's attention; for instance, the music in this ad is compatible to it because it is gentle and soft, which helps a lot in making the ad more emotional than it already is and this is also because of the content; The use of a relationship between a father and a daughter and the long distance between them which makes it relatable to most people who get separated from their families.

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A theory called Maslow's hierarchy of needs was developed to measure basic need satisfaction CITATION Sha15 l 1033 (Shaun Saunders, 2015); Maslow arranged the needs into 5 stages. First, physiological needs, after that is safety needs then belongings and love needs, then esteem needs, and, self actualization. The Duracell ad fits in the safety needs as the batteries are basic needs. Moving on to another thing which is how persuasive the ad is, persuasion has some factors that affect the people; the source, and the message and the audience. Starting with the source, the source is similar to a lot of families as mentioned above which one thing that will make the ad persuasive. Another thing is the duration of the ad itself; the ad is almost 2 minutes which will make the consumer finish the ad till the end and see the message or the product behind it.

The target audience is almost everybody as all the people use batteries; from teenagers and their video games to old people and radios and TVs; finally, the message which is that these batteries are as trusting as the close people to us as mentioned above as well. Another thing related to persuasion is the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), it is a theory that was developed to understand more about persuasion literature CITATION Fat17 l 1033 (Moghaddam, 2017), it suggested that there are two routes to be taken; the first is the central route and the second is the peripheral route. This ad encourages the audience to use the central route, because is that higher perceived DS tools quality will positively influence consumer's attitude towards purchasing products. CITATION Mar15 l 1033 (Hassanein, 2015). Something else is that there are two persuasive emotional theories; one is Mandler's theory of emotion which suggests that positive emotions can be produced through divergences between an expectation of a stimulus and another stimulus. CITATION Sab11 l 1033 (Chowdhry, 2011) The other one is Zillman's theory of emotion which predicts an enhancement of emotional reactions to immediately present emotion?arousing situations by portions of excitation that are left over from preceding related or unrelated emotion?arousing situations. CITATION Zil08 l 1033 (Zillmann, 2008) This ad satisfies the first theory which is Mandler's theory of emotion because the prior knowledge of this product plays an important role in generating positive feelings about it. Moving on to attention, attention is the contents of the short-term memory and the short-term memory is a system that has a limited capacity for information available for short periods of time CITATION Sid13 l 1033 (Simon, 2013) which means that anything that would grab a consumers attention must be a vivid stimuli this means it should stand out from other advertisements by being emotionally concerned, solid and image-provoking and relating to time, space and feelings. There are some factors that help in grabbing the consumer's attention; for example, high quality content as it supplies significant information, surprising the audience; for instance, at the end of this ad the father surprises his daughter by returning home to her which was a surprise, the ad must have a story so that it grabs the consumers attention of wanting to know what will happen and this was applied in this advertisement, body language plays a role in this ad as it was visible the facial expressions of the three of them, etc. All the previous factors prove that the advertisement grabbed the consumer's attention. By knowing how to grab a consumer's attention and to persuade them as well, the only thing left is how to motivate consumer.

Motivation is the reason people behave in a specific behavior, motivation has a lot of factors; the most common thing is the need to reduce the unlikable condition of certain feelings, this motivates any human being in doing what will fill this void, spreading positive vibes helps in motivating a consumer, something else that helps is brand loyalty; a recent study proved that Duracell is the highest selling batteries in the US which means that a lot of people are loyal to Duracell batteries. There are a lot of theories that explain why people are motivated but the one that fits this ad is the drive reduction theory, the drive reduction theory explains why people are motivated to employ in particular behavior CITATION Ken18 l 1033 (Cherry, 2018) which is because of the generation of unpleasant states of arousal which makes people motivated to reduce these feelings this leads to goal-oriented behavior. CITATION Jan10 l 1033 (Jansson-Boyd, 2010) A lot of things help in influencing the consumer's behavior; for illustration, repetition as when the consumer gets exposed constantly to marketing stimuli it can increase the possibility of evoking the ad, another thing is focusing on trends, trends helps a lot in motivating a consumer to buy something. The ad would have been better if there was a celebrity in it because they are perceived as being trustworthy. Keeping in mind people's economic conditions goes a long way and in addition to the culture as in choice the culture of the target audience as well.

I'm the cash man ad

This ad is about a man whose name is Russell Oliver who people sell their jewelry to. In the ad, Russell says to the camera "if you have diamonds bring them to me" then he sings about it as well. So the aim of this ad is to let people come to his shop and sell their jewelry to him so he can buy them. A good ad should have psychological effects so that it grabs the consumer's attention, and in this ad, there were no psychological effects; this made the ad not attractive or persuasive to the consumer because of also the background music which was irritating as for the content itself; actually, psychological affects help in grabbing the consumer's attention or sometimes it might trigger an emotion which also helps. This ad failed in these because of the absence of psychological effects. Another thing is that ads that grab the consumer's attention, and this is shown in a recent research shows entertainment presented after the first coverage of the brand always improves purchases while entertainment presented before the brand always weaken it. CITATION Tei15 l 1033 (Teixeira, 2015) This ad failed in doing was said earlier. Moving on to the persuasive emotional theories which are Mandler's and Zillman's, the ad doesn't apply to both of these 0theories but if one has to be chosen, it will be Zillman's emotional theory. Zillman's emotional theory which suggested that emotional stimulation can be transformed to another stimulus.

For example a consumer might hear very pleasant news which will make them excited and after they watch the video, this might result in them liking the advertisement because of the transfer of feelings. One of the few things that this ad succeeded is capturing the attention of the consumer but in an irritating which results in negative emotions, there are some factors in the role of attention which are the vivid stimuli and the silent stimuli. This ad is an example of silent stimuli as it captures the consumer's attention unwillingly this is shown the video because of the use of volume and the music, the use of bright shapes that are asymmetrical and it shifts the brightness between two scenes. CITATION Jan10 l 1033 (Jansson-Boyd, 2010) This brings us to the central route and the peripheral route. It encourages using the peripheral route because it is an indirect way of shaping perception and outlooks. CITATION Nug13 l 1033 (Nugent, 2013) In other words, people use this route when they are not encouraged to involve in the lead message. Getting back to Maslow, Maslow has classified the needs into 5 stages and this ad satisfies the safety needs as the other advertisement. It is listed under the safety needs because safety needs include financial security as jewelry is counted as money. Most of our decisions and actions are based on sustaining or improving our circumstances which are driven by the need for safety for us and our loved ones. CITATION And17 l 1033 (Komninos, 2017)The ad doesn't apply to any motivation theories as it does not motivate consumers at all; it grabs the consumer's attention but doesn't motivate them in taking what the presenter "Russell" is offering. Lot of techniques should have been used for a better influence, for example bringing a celebrity in the ad as this helps sometimes because people take celebrities as trustworthy or bringing an attractive person as it was found that people tend to please the attractive. Another thing that could have helped the advertisement a little bit more was the use of humor as it was silly enough to make consumers switch of the advertisement. "Humorous advertising is more likely to secure audience attention, increase memory, overcome sales resistance, and enhance message persuasiveness". CITATION Dan18 l 1033 (Karell, 2018) Something else unusual but sometimes works which the sleeper effect, the sleeper effect is convincing messages that are not originally supposed to be believed can alter people's opinions later on. CITATION Jan10 l 1033 (Jansson-Boyd, 2010)

Music should have been better and more soothing than what was in the advertisement ass music helps in boosting the power of persuasion and motivation. Creating a story could have worked as well as it grabs the consumer's attention and makes them want to complete the story of the advertisement. Another idea is that the presenter has a shop called "Loans", he could have shared the location of his shop and used some atmospheric stimuli; for illustration, in the external of the shop sighs, colors, smell and music could have been used with some of the layout design. The pervious content was examples of things that would have made the ad a lot better. To sum up, this ad is infective ad as proven as shown, it failed to attract consumers in the perspective of emotionally and also in being motivational and persuasive. It failed to include theories that could help in improving it and it was not professional as well. The other advertisement is very effective as it used a lot psychological theories and effects which helped in capturing the consumer's interest.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Cherry, K. (2018, October 10). Drive-Reduction Theory and Human Behavior . Retrieved December 02, 2018, from Verywell Mind:

Chowdhry, S. (2011). Critique Of Mandler's Thoery Of Perceptual Anaylsis . Cleveland: Indiana University Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science .

Hassanein, M. G. (2015). Impact of Persuasion Processes on Consumer Attitude. Puerto Rico: Twenty-first Americas Conference on Infromation systems.

Jansson-Boyd, C. V. (2010). Consumer Psychology . New York: Maidenhead .

Karell, D. (2018, April 09). Is Humor in Advertising Effective? Retrieved December 03, 2018, from Point Park University :

Komninos, A. (2017, December 03). Safety: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved December 03, 2018, from Interaction Design Foundations :

Moghaddam, F. M. (2017). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Nugent, P. M. (2013, April 7). PERIPHERAL ROUTE TO PERSUASION. Retrieved December 03, 2018, from Psychology Dictionary:

Shaun Saunders, D. M. (2015, May 01). Maslow's hierarchy of needs and its relationship with psychological health and materialism. Retrieved December 01, 2018, from cambridge.org:

Simon, S. A. (2013, April 16). Holding Multiple Items in Short Term Memory: A Neural Mechanism. Retrieved December 02, 2018, from Plos One:

Teixeira, T. S. (2015, October 14). When People Pay Attention to Video Ads and Why. Retrieved December 03, 2018, from HBR:

Zillmann, D. (2008, June 05). Wiley Online Library. Retrieved December 02, 2018, from onlinelibrary.wiley:

Updated: Nov 30, 2023
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Analyzing Advertising Impact Through Psychological Techniques. (2019, Dec 18). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/ad-analysis-autosaved-example-essay

Analyzing Advertising Impact Through Psychological Techniques essay
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