Marketing

     Recently, in class, I was watching a video about the role of advertising in our world today. It was called “The Persuaders.” I thought it was pretty shocking to see the methods used by the companies and the amount of thought that went into crafting advertisements and presenting various companies. It was even surprising to learn things that I had been aware of subconsciously, but never fully thought about. An example of this would be that most companies, rather than trying to give you all of the facts and benefits about their product or service, will focus and getting you to feel a certain way by watching the advertisements for their product. The focus on how good it will make you feel, or tell you how much it will improve your life by making it easier, or making you look cooler or smarter by simply using their product, even if it doesn’t really make sense. They want to create a cult-like devotion in consumers towards their product so that they are the only company that pops into people’s minds whenever there is a chance. Advertisers actually go to study cults to see how they can more effectively market their products to get a similar response. A good example of this devotion is Apple. People who own Apple products, usually their iPhones, typically are unwilling to switch to any other company, even though there is no real reason to feel so strongly about sticking with Apple. Most people have iPhones, so that is what they want. This apples to me, too. I can’t exactly explain why I feel such loyalty to Apple, but I would much rather own one of their products than something from a rival company like Samsung. People who work in marketing departments and in advertising all know that the heart can always beat the head. That is to say, emotion can always win out over logic. So they need to appeal to this emotion more than they need to appeal to logic.