The problem with advertising & my proposed solution

The Problem

Advertisements are something we're exposed to each and everyday, and for the most part are usually there to serve one purpose, to sell you something. Being exposed to these on such a regular basis coupled with the marketing techniques each company uses, these ads ultimately have an influence on us and our decisions when it comes to buying a product.

Ads create needs and desires amongst us as consumers, with their deceptive ways that are supposed to improve our self worth and happiness. So it comes as no surprise that these have such a big impact on our physical and psychological well being, considering that on average we’re exposed to around 5000 adverts a day (Sheree, 2014). We’re led to believe that buying this or that new product will make us happier (Abdallah, 2009) when in actual fact studies have proven that in some cases it can have almost the opposite effect with degrading people’s value of self worth. In one of Kasser’s (2002) studies for example he documented that ‘strong materialistic values are associated with a pervasive undermining of people’s well being’. He mentions that there have been links with low life satisfaction and happiness also included was depression, anxiety, headaches, narcissism and antisocial behaviour, all of which supposedly fuel even more consumption with consumers thinking that shopping more will improve their mood.

Often ads that typically sell makeup, clothing, shoes, perfume etc. are there to make customers want to be like the model or actor in the advertisement. According to an April 2011 study by The Journal of Consumer Research one of the ways that these types of ads work on the subconscious level is they make average people feel insecure. Within the study, people who view these ads tend to feel worse about themselves after they view the advertisement. This creates false needs that people feel they have but are instead only created from the advertisements themselves. I think that ads should be there to show us what's available as opposed creating a need for us to buy something we typically don't need or want. But sometimes this can be done more subtly by playing on our actual needs, the need for companionship, spirituality, intellectual development etc. Brands do this by linking their product to a need of ours. Take for example a Dorito's ad from 2003, they labelled it Friendchips. The whole ad is based around friends having a good time, bonding, eating Dorito's. Now on the surface this may appear typical of an ad, but it subtly creates a link between friends, friendship, having a good time with friends and their product. Something that will likely create an impression on us of their product that may in the future influence our decision when it comes to buying a packet of crisps for example.

The Solution

My proposed solution is to create a universal way to advertise products, one that doesn't involve any celebrities, slogans, marketing techniques etc. that would typically be used within advertising to sell the product. Instead it would be a consistent layout and typeface to display the products, to show what's available to the customer as opposed to selling it. This will hopefully remove the influence and impact that advertisements have on us as the consumer and will instead allow the consumer to consciously make their own decisions when it comes to buying a product.

Sources:

Abdallah, S. et al (2009) ‘The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why good lives don’t have to cost the Earth’. London: nef (the new economics foundation). Available at: http://roar.uel.ac.uk/604/1/Abdallah%2C%20S%20et%20al%20%282009%29%20nef.pdf

Sheree, J. 2014. ‘New Research Sheds Light on Daily Ad Exposures’. Available at: https://sjinsights.net/2014/09/29/new-research-sheds-light-on-daily-ad-exposures/

Kasser, T. 2002. ‘The High Price of Materialism’. London: The MIT Press. 5-26.

The Journal of Consumer Research, April 2011. - https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/37/6/1030/1867819/The-Self-Activation-Effect-of-Advertisements-Ads?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Dorito's Friendchips, 2003. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U_mm5wSMYQ

Study Task 08: Developments

Study Task 07: Idea generation / prototypes

Blank Advertising

Brands and their advertisements have a big influence on our decisions on what we choose to consume and I think it's their selling techniques for the products that are a big reason why we're so susceptible to these. As proven by Chovanová, Korshunov and Babčanová, suitable forms of marketing activities as a whole can create a positive brand associations and start a purchase action of positively seen brands (2015).

One thought of mine was to strip advertisements down to their core components; the brand and their product, no slogans or catchphrases, catchy jingles or anything along those lines. At it's most basic level, an advertisement is for a company to showcase a new or already existing product to the audience. It would be interesting to see if ads had the same effect on people wanting to buy a product, if they didn't have a lot of the techniques they use today. Those being things such as bright attractive colours, a big logo being displayed or high impact photography/illustrations etc.

An example of this most recently would be the new law for smoking packaging to be consistent across the board with none of the company's branding at all. The reason behind this was to cut the number of people taking up smoking by making it less appealing to children and young people. According to Cancer Research, two-thirds of smokers start before the age of 18 – the beginning of an addiction which will kill up to two in three long-term smokers. So by removing the attractive packaging it becomes more of a deterrent when the packages now only contain dull consistent branding with only health warnings displayed.

Before

After new law

Young people smoking is an issue and after speaking to a couple of friends who have been smoking since mid-teens it's obvious that a lot of the reason for smoking was down to wanting to look cool through the act of smoking itself but also the cigarette packages. These packages were considered something physical to appreciate because of their style, and functionality, a friend of mine said he used to buy the Benson & Hedges cigarette packets purely because of how cool it would look to push the cigarettes out from the side and drop one into your hand.

All of this ultimately sparked off an idea for me to potentially try and create some form of universally consistent 'branding' for all products of any brand within the advertisements. This would create more of a level playing field for the brands in the hope of deterring people from buying a product purely down to it's enticing advertisement. The idea at this point is to use a consistent layout and typeface for all products, whether it was food, clothes, cosmetics etc. Having maybe the product(s) isolated in the centre on show with the name of the company in the bottom right hand corner could be an structure for the ads.

Sources:

Chovanová, Korshunov, Babčanová 2015. 'Impact of Brand on Consumer Behaviour'. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567115016767

New Ideas

Whilst discussing potential ideas with Simon for my practical, he made a good point of that some of my ideas were very much anti-consumerism, which is good and would work for getting a point across but maybe it's not the best way of addressing an issue. Instead he proposed that I look at ways of changing the way products are advertised, taking a more ethical approach to it, maybe this way it would be better received by the public and also the companies themselves.

So a potential idea I had was to create a series of adverts in the style of popular brands such as Nike, McDonalds, Chanel etc. but that are advertising a much deeper message than just their product or their ideologies. Instead I would advertise thought provoking messages that may challenge this idea that we have to consume to be happy, or that money is the be all and end all to life because ultimately that's what can buy us material things. Maybe not quite as obvious as 'More money =/ More Happiness' but along those lines. I think this is something that could work because people are receptive to popular/common brand's branding so much so that a certain combination of colours and a typeface would instantly bring to mind a certain brand. This in turn would hopefully embed the message of the ad deeper within their mind because they are more used to seeing this branding and taking the message/product of the ad in.

Another idea I had was to take your average material products that most like to indulge in such as perfume and clothes and change the way they're promoted. By this I mean to take away the majority of their branding and to have the packaging as simple as can be, such as just the brand name and the product name itself. For example maybe for Chanel:

- Here's our perfume.

- It'll make you smell nice.

- Buy it if you want it.

Something along these lines would take away the need for people to aspire to be like a certain celebrity by buying the product simply because their face is advertised with the perfume. Because ultimately people should be buying products solely for the use of the product itself, not because of the ad or the celebrity associated with it.

First Essay Draft Feedback

The first point of feedback that Simon gave was that some of my essay feels informal which was mainly down to me using first person a lot of the time. A couple of sentences/paragraphs were also unsupported with a subjective tone so he suggested a couple of books to help find more content to support my points.

Consumer Psychology - Kathryn Janson Boyd

Hidden Persuaders - Vance Packard

The main issue with my essay was that the title and certain sections of the essay itself is that it was too broad. I talked mainly about the brands, their packaging and their advertising methods but Simon suggested narrowing down to one specific area of design so that my essay would be stronger and more precise. Considering that advertising is an interest of mine and that most of my points were based around that, I will aim to focus my essay entirely on that.