Persuaders Qs
Name:
1. What’s the hype about “branding” rather than just advertising? What does
it mean to create a brand? How is this done? (Song airlines was the
example, so what did they do?) Why is it so important? Details people.
2. What do cults and consumers have in common?
3. We all know that methods of advertising have to shift as the way that we
engage with our surroundings and media shift. What are some new
techniques?
4. According to Douglas Atkin, “television tries to ‘yell and sell,’ as I call it.
That era is over. The era of word-of-mouth is much more important, and
it has arrived. Advertising should be used to get people to tell others
about the brand, not necessarily to have a one-way relationship with the
consumer” (Persuaders). Use your creativity and insight to tell me: What
are some things that companies can do to create discussion about their
product without a traditional advertisement?
Below are two responses to the following question:
What are the common elements in the persuasion/selling strategies of advertising and marketin
And how can we move about in this world with a degree of self-awareness as to what's happenin
especially since all these messages are increasingly trying to move us to act and make choices on
emotional level?
5. Read both of the responses and then respond to one.
(In your response: Reflect on the meaning. Elaborate on it. Give an
example perhaps. Discuss how this is important to understand.)
The common element, as I see it, is to induce what psychologists would call
'regression and transference.' Make us feel small and disoriented, and then
step in as the parent to tell us how to feel better. In the old days, it may have
worked by frightening us about dandruff, and then having a nice deep-voiced
narrator tell us to buy a certain shampoo. Now, it might simply be to show us
the body of a beautiful athlete - so that we feel bad about our own physique.
Then we buy the sneakers, as if to purchase a bit of that strength. When it's
really only a shoe.
These days, most advertisers are into one form or the other of experiential
marketing. One place might call it "cult branding," another might call it
"lovemarks," and another might call it "brand experience," but it's all really
part of the same trend towards connecting with consumers on a more
emotional or even spiritual level. Of course, it's much easier to look at brands
that may have accomplished this over the past twenty years, than to actually
do this for some new brand. Everyone can recognize when it's happened. No
one knows how to do it.
What it involves is getting the brand to mean something more than whatever
object it's stamped on. Apple means something to consumers more than the
computers or music players they've branded. It's that something that, in the
best of cases for advertisers, can become a kind of substitute for culture or
religion.
…The second question there is crucial. How do we live our lives amid the endless
hype? Rational awareness is of course essential, but, as I've said above, it's not
enough. One must not only be conscious of the various misleading tactics, etc. One
must understand the falseness of advertising on a much deeper level. The problem
isn't so much that they use all kinds of clever tricks to take us in, as it is that they
extol an empty and inhuman way of life and vision of the world. One needs a
philosophical and/or spiritual grounding to remain immune to these illusory
temptations.
"The Marketers' Challenge." The Persuaders. PBS, 9 Nov. 2004. Web. 29 Aug.
2013. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders >.