Ads are so common in our daily life that we don't take seriously.
Most people simply dismiss ads as being trivial annoyances
or interruptions. Although many
people have strong opinions about ads they like or dislike,
very few people (except for advertisers) really know much about this business
of effective persuasion. Most adults (about 70-75% every year), responding
to an annual survey, claim that "Advertising doesn't
affect me."
Most kids think they know a lot about ads because they can
recall so many surface details: the presenters,
the visuals, the words -- basically, those things the advertisers want us
to recall. But, most people don't think about ads, systematically or coherently.
Most people, young or old, really know very little about the underlying structure
and strategy of ads as "units of persuasion."
Here are 3 important ideas to begin an analysis of ads:
a1.
The purpose of an ad is persuasion.
The first step in analyzing ads is to recognize them as "units
of persuasion."
Persuasion seeks to get a target audience to
respond in some way: to do something or to believe something;
to respond now or to set up for a later response.
Persuasion is a two-way transaction
between the sender and the receiver, between benefit-promisers
and benefit-seekers. That's why some things in
these ABCs will focus on advertisers as benefit-promisers, and some will
focus on you and me as benefit-seekers.
All people persuade.
Persuasion techniques are neutral:
the same techniques can be used by good or bad people, with good or bad intentions,
and with good or bad consequences.
Imbalance is the key
factor: the inequality between senders and receivers. In this case, between
the sophisticated knowledge of the professional persuaders (advertisers
and politicians) and the relative ignorance of the receivers.
Persuasion is not coercion
by force. Those who have power (whether an individual or a government)
can force others to do their will -- by violence, or by threats of harm (including
torture, blackmail, extortion, shakedowns).
Persuaders do not force us. They lure us. They tempt us. They
flatter us.
In most ads, there are mutual
benefits: producers get a profit, consumers get a pleasure.
Most ads we see are for good and useful products which offer benefits we want
and seek. This website is primarily concerned with those ordinary ads we commonly
see. This website is not a "hatchet job" against advertising.
But, predators do exist, and some products, which may give
immediate pleasure, have hidden harms for us and society. So, these dangers
will also be discussed.
We live in a world of many sophisticated persuaders, commercial
and political. To protect ourselves, we must learn more about the techniques
used by all persuaders, and also more about our own role as benefit-seekers.
a2.
Nonrational persuasion is more common and more effective than rational
persuasion.
Don't expect ads to be the rational, logical arguments
needed in exposition, in the clear information transfer needed in science, law,
and ordinary business. Such arguments must follow the rules of formal
logic (the valid way of arranging the form of related statements so they
make sense); any errors in form are called formal fallacies.
Logic textbooks treat nonrational appeals as
informal fallacies. Students are warned
-- correctly -- not to use these nonrational appeals in exposition.
Most logic texts use many traditional Latin terms to identify
many various kinds of informal fallacies,
such as: ad hominem (personal attacks),
ad populum (emotional appeals to the audience's
greed or fear), ad misericordium (sympathy
pleas). Such arguments would be quickly rejected in legal, scientific, or informational
writing.
However, most ads use these techniques (such
as emotional associations, image-building, and simple repetition) as their main
ways to persuade.
Some people don't realize that exposition
often differs greatly from persuasion.
Exposition has the goal of accurate information-transfer:
thus, rationality, logic, and clarity are necessary virtues.
Persuasion has the goal of response:
thus, emotional appeals, image-building, constant repetition, and deliberate
vagueness may be more effective than anything logical or rational.
Maybe it shouldn't be that way. But, that's the way
it is.
a3.
Ads are the best compositions of our era.
Every word, every image, every presenter, every gesture, every
camera angle, every background scene, every sound, every nuance of a well-made
30 second spot is carefully chosen, well put together, well composed to influence
its intended audience.
Most ads are interesting, often entertaining, amusing, delightful,
with fine photography, good acting, and high quality computer graphics.
Perhaps some local ads can be poorly made (homemade
graphics, amateur actors, or poor "production values") and some
ads may seem offensive or vulgar to us. Some ads may even be ineffective: that
is, they don't work, they don't sell the product.
However, generally speaking, the national ads we see on TV and in print are
the best examples of well constructed things, the best compositions,
of our era. You can learn a lot about the composition process by careful analysis
of TV ads.
Composition is the putting-together
process. Analysis is the taking-apart process.
Ads
are units of persuasion.