Creativity, or Manipulation?
Our world is run by advertisements. Ads accompany us on all of our paths, whether real-life – in public places – or online – visiting websites. Considering their vast presence in our lives, it is only natural to assume that their influence on us is of no little importance. But why exactly should we care about ads, and how do they shape the ‘theme’ of our time?
First, let’s define what an advertisement is. Google defines it as ‘a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy.’ The principle that advertisements make use of is very simple – the more people know about a particular product, service, or event, the more people are going to know enough about that particular thing to buy it, use it, or attend it.
For an ad to be very effective, other than being shown to a lot of people, it should also be convincing. After all, the likelihood of a person wanting to jump over a cliff after they stumble many times upon an advertisement that says ‘jump over a cliff to win a million dollars’ would still be slim, if a person is sane of course. So to convince a customer to choose YOUR product over any other similar product is of great importance to the success of that advertisement campaign. To make their advertisement more convincing, companies make use of two universal principles – attractiveness bias and familiarity principle.
Attractiveness bias is based on an assumption that all people associate positive qualities with anything that looks beautiful, or attractive. In other words, ‘beauty’, in this case, becomes a synonym for ‘good’. This is one of the most heavily used principles in advertisement, and it is exactly why models exist. Familiarity principle, on the other hand, is how people tend to trust what they know or are familiar with. If a person received two different reviews – one from a close friend and the other from a stranger – on the same product, they would intuitively trust their friend more than the stranger. Similarly, the familiarity principle states that to win a person’s trust, an advertisement needs to include someone or something that the person is familiar with. In many cases, this familiarity is created by popular actors with good reputations. In other cases, it could be created by featuring some old ‘that is from my childhood’ memories. A gaming company could do this: since many former students have had this memory of hurrying home from school to play videogames, including this action in the advertisement would help boost the sales of that gaming product. I personally would love to see and get reminded of such warm memories!
However, the ethical implications of these principles is questionable. The whole idea of advertisement can be questioned in the first place – is it ethical to ‘guide’ people to buy and use your product over other companies’ products, since the product you have might not be the best one?
The idea of associating good qualities with attractiveness flips and empties the moral narrative of listening to what is inside and not to what is shown. In other words, the abuse of attractiveness bias leads to moral exhaustion. What is scary about this is that by frequently observing ‘beauty’ to be ‘good’, people might begin to expect ‘good’ to be ‘beautiful’, which is wrong. In the end, this can lead to the perpetuation of the vicious cycle that shouts ‘everything good is beautiful, and that which is not beautiful is not good’.
On the other hand, the familiarity principle leads to the abuse of trust of one’s audience. It is very common for celebrities to create their brands and use their fame to found profitable companies. For instance, a hip-hop artist 50 Cent, who revolutionized the industry with his record-breaking albums in the early 2000s, partnered with Glacéau company to create his own ‘Vitaminwater’ brand and profited an estimated amount of 100 million dollars, according to Forbes.
Of course, it is not right to call the natural drive to profit from sales an ‘abuse’. Many people might go as far as to say there is nothing wrong with a celebrity profiting from their fame. Yet I disagree. Advertisements should be much bigger and much more important than just following people. Advertisements should become agents of change and signals of the new things coming our way. Through advertising, people should explore new products that can revolutionize the world as we know it now. In this case, having a celebrity on your team is not a signal of change but rather ‘the old’ that clothes itself as ‘the new’.
We largely underestimate the impact of advertising on society. Through efficient advertising, a regular company can become a monopoly in an industry. Through efficient advertising, values of one company can become mainstream and shape the norms of modernity. As always with anything that tries to affect us, we should be wary and take things with a grain of salt.
“Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.”
Robert L. Peters
A really interesting explanation of how advertisements tricks us into doing what they want us to do! Regarding your question of if it is ethical to do so or not, In my opinion, I think it is ethical because there is still a room for one to know the reason why he/she wants to buy that product. He will know that the reason why he wants to do so is because it is associated with a celebrity’s name, or whatever any other reason he might have.
What I don’t find ethical, however, is the usage of subliminal messages in advertisements, because the conscious mind can’t perceive them but the subconscious does, so one won’t be able to know that he is under their effect.
Here is a very interesting article on the role of subliminal messages in advertisements and how Coca Cola, in the 1950s, was able to increase its sales by 57% by using them.
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/10/24/subliminal-advertising#:~:text=Subliminal%20messages%20are%20visual%20or,an%20altogether%20different%20message%20entirely.
Your blog reminds me of the Berlin map. I find the maps were “manipulating” people’s minds through design. In maps of east Berlin, west Berlin was ignored and shrunk, suggesting that west Berlin is not important and relevant to people’s lives at all. And after Berlin was unified, the circular lines educated people subtly and transmitted to people the idea that Berlin was now unified.