Tapping into a new zeitgeist
The advertisement of the Red Magazine adopted three successful television ads creating the story lines of ‘defining moments’, ‘the strip’, and the ‘me-time’. Reflectively, these advertisements target the women in the age bracket between 30 to 40 years. Adopting an experimental advertisement approach, the marketing of the red magazine created the aura and feeling of personal touch and fantasy in reading the magazine.
The advertisement is very effective in terms of attention since it is decorated with simple to understand scenes besides the warm red colour. The strategically placed background red colour is an eye catcher associated with pomp and sophistication. In addition, the targeted viewer would immediately develop curiosity to understand the symbolic importance of the redmagazine for a woman alone in a house.
As a result, it creates an intrinsic motivation response that triggers the mind to activate affiliation, self acceptance, and feign community feeling. In the end, this advertisement succeeds in appealing to emotions through capitalization on biases and prejudices of the women population between the age of 30 and 40 years.
Experimental Appeals in Advertising
Immediately after viewing the Virgin Atlantic Airways advertisement, a vivid person would develop a desire to associate with the advertisement since the setting of the scene is that of a relaxing environment that every potential traveler would want to associate with. This advertisement appeals to a balance between rational and emotional desire to respond to the message (Hackley 2010).
In terms of action, this advertisement creates a picture of the reality of the effects of climatic change in nature. Notably, the balance of colours and use of a common surrounding is likely to motivate action as the subconscious mind of a viewer would be activated to give a second thought to the message. Therefore, response to the advertisement will emaciate from the bandwagon technique which heaps pressure on the mind to follow the perceive message (Cook 2001).
The Switzerland as a tourism destination advertisement is very manipulative and use tactics that directly and involuntarily appeal to the mind of the target person. Despite ignorance of the same and disbelief of their effects, this advertisement remains complex and significant in the choice of products owned by an individual planning to go on a holiday.
The advertisement appeals to memory or emotional response to the beautiful scenery being enjoyed by the male traveler in the motion pictures (McClintock 1998). In this sense, such a person is lured into accepting the floating idea tourism service by the mind that always assumes comfort in trial in the belief that it will have the same feeling.
Perception of the mind is often ignited through a series of propaganda initiatives aimed at awakening involuntary desire to possess or associate with a product or service. Advertising involves building friendly partnership and working relationship with a market segment without necessarily having physical contact with it (Leiss, Kline, Jhally and Botterill 2005).
Therefore, through timely appeal to emotions and self prejudice, advertising agencies have realized that the human mind is often skewed towards embracing the ‘perceived goodness’ and need to identify with ‘the ideal’(Spurgeon, 2008). Interestingly, these aspects are clearly painted as perfect in the Dettol Cool advertisement that presents a visible difference with other soaps.
Several advertisement criteria have succeeded in influencing the human mind into buying products, especially after the same have triggered their minds through experimental appeals (Hale 2011). Often, an average mind would easily be influenced by the brightness and attractive presentation. In the process of decoding this message, mind is actually tuned towards accepting the rather imperfect product as perfect and very attractive.
As a result, the customer would purchase such as product based on the influence of the glittery on the mind of the user in the advertisement (McFall 2004). Through the envisioning creation of a simultaneous but independently functioning need to identify with attractiveness, a customer is easily swayed into buying the advertiser’s appeal when purchasing (Belch and Belch 2008).
Often, the attractiveness is displayed in tonal variation and language affirmativeness that directly appeal to positives emotions among the target audience of the pitched idea. In the end, the target audience will “accept the product without thinking very much about what the glittering generalities mean-or whether they even apply to the product” (McClintock, 1998, p. 159).
Interestingly, advertisers would capitalize on endorsements through testimonials from such figures to promote sales. For instance, in subtle difference makes image stereotyping a perfect situation in the minds of target persons (Percy and Elliott 2009).
Therefore, when the image of the user as projected in such an advertisement resembles the perceived satisfaction of a customer, such a party would aspire to access the same benefits from use as indicated in the image shown. Therefore, the image of user displayed functions “as a feather on one side of the beam balance” (McClintock, 1998, p. 160).
Factually, situational image use in advertisement lowers rationality as it raises heavyweight reasoning that is associated with a perceived perfectness sense in human mind. For instance, in the advertisement of ‘Nivea for Men’ the man in the advertisement facilitates the ‘agenda-setting theory’ which interprets a client’s mental agenda through displaying a perfect odorless body gleaming against the sun.
The mental agenda is heavily influenced by sound and sight of an object (Pickton and Broderick 2005). When the stimulus of mental response is evoked, the mind is swayed towards accepting the choice among present alternatives.
Reference List
Belch, G., and Belch, M 2008, Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, McGraw Hill, New York.
Cook, G 2001, The Discourse of Advertising, Routledge, London.
Hackley, C 2010, Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Approach, Sage, London.
Hale, C 2011, “Umberto Eco Takes Semiotics to the Masses,” Review of General Semantics, vol. 68, p. 9
Leiss, W., Kline, S., Jhally, S., and Botterill, J 2005, Social Communication in Advertising: consumption in the mediated marketplace, Routledge, London.
McClintock, A 1998, Propaganda techniques in today’s advertising, Cambridge University Press, New York
McFall, L 2004, Advertising: a Cultural Economy, Sage, London.
Percy, L., and Elliott, R 2009, Strategic Advertising Management, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Pickton, D., and Broderick, A 2005, Integrated Marketing Communications, Pearson Education, London.
Spurgeon, C 2008, Advertising and New Media, Routledge, London.