Something a bit different to chat about - Advertisements and how they manipulate us!

I quite like stuff like this, it gets you thinking.

Certainly worth a watch if you can spare about four minutes of your time, its simply explained and will change your views for ever on every advert you see from now on - and for the better.

A big claim from me - but am I right or is this just me doing an advert to get you to watch the clip below?

There's only one way to find out!

I learned many years ago to look at the backgrounds of adverts whilst they're running. Sometimes they can be very funny. The Meerkat ones used to be good for that, but not so much now. 
Also, I watch the women's hair make-up and hair adverts with interest. Are their customers really as small-minded and vain as they imply ?  Even better than this, how many stupid and meaningless new chemicals and ingredients can they use during the advert?

I can't remember how I became a suspicious person, always questioning what people meant rather than what they said, probably it was how I was brought up - but also I used to play a great deal of chess as a child and one of the golden rules I learned quickly was to ask myself why my opponent played the move they did rather than any other one - they had to have a reason, but what was it?

Whatever it was set me up for life to think around issues, than to take them at face value, and always to look before you leap.

Almost certainly why I now can never relate to those who love the instantaneous of social media and feel the need to accept what they read rather than think about it and check things out for themselves.

I enjoyed the clip above but find it hard to believe that people buy into 'ads' as described - but since the advertisers carry on making them and their products sell, then it most be true that many, many people do.  Certainly you only have to read some of the vast number of people on social media not comprehending how Companies work, yet screaming as to what should be done - is frankly unbelievable to me and completely shows how much ignorance of even basic facts or understanding people have on things - I'm thinking of course about the Administrators/FV in particular.

You only need a few well placed 'advertisements' such as Nixon's tweets to stir the emotions up and start the panic/lynch mobs off - irrespective that 90% (or more) of Nixon's being proved completely wrong when looking back in retrospect.

Moral of the story being don't believe everything you see in the ads - or read on social media!

You'll enjoy this one Sluffy.

Some people actually believe that Bolton Wanderers will play Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday.


Amazing!!!!

Never seen the Apple add or the Gnu but Nichol certainly cant forget her.

Angry Dad wrote:Never seen the Apple add or the Gnu but Nichol certainly cant forget her.

I AGREE.


Ah Papa!!!!

I would rather watch the old Timotei advert.

I dont watch the adverts, usually at program breaks I am ordering from Deliveroo.

sunlight wrote:I dont watch the adverts, usually at program breaks I am ordering from Deliveroo.

You must be the size of a beach whale then with all the adverts there are on tv these days!

Some of the ads are classics.

karlypants wrote:

sunlight wrote:I dont watch the adverts, usually at program breaks I am ordering from Deliveroo.

You must be the size of a beach whale then with all the adverts there are on tv these days!

I havent had a take away in over a decade. My post was paradoxical. The irony of claiming that I dont watch adverts yet  advertising a company inside the same post. Incidentally I dont watch adverts neither.

Advertising has fascinated me since I studied psychology and sociology in the 70s, especially the areas of behavioural impact of perception, psychological programming and psychological reactance.
Subliminal advertising was the first, but now widely illegal form of advertising (less illegal in the USA where it still crops up from time to time) that made me aware of how to manipulate audiences. Audiences are flashed messages for about 0.003 seconds on e.g. a TV or cinema screen that we can't pick up in our conscious mind but are picked up by our deeper subconscious mind which is why back in the fifties cinema audiences were all desperate to buy a burger, an ice cream or a drink without suspecting they'd been programmed to do it. Obviously they just assumed it was a natural desire.
Nowadays, advertising is regulated in most countries a number of areas including false advertising i.e. making false claims about a product which is actually untrue, puffery (not illegal to claim that you e.g. make a better pizza than the competition as it's subjective) editing photos of e.g. people in weight loss adverts to make them look thinner than they are in reality, omitting key information, hidden fees/costs, oversize packaging, misleading health claims, failure to point out risk etc etc but there are still huge problems that need to be addressed.
Two main issues for me are 1) that prosecutions for lying in advertising are few and far between. Usually the people behind them are so rich and powerful  (Murdoch for example) that prosecution is simply not affordable and 2) that in the absence of prosecution or penalty advertisers are increasingly publishing/screening outright lies as fact and as their worst possible outcome is being told to remove the ads they still win because the damage has been done and can't be undone.
I banged on about this in the B-word thread so I won't revisit that but given that advertisers now have greater consumer reach, greater ability to "push" adverts and more information about consumers than ever before in history thanks to the internet and especially social media I really hope that society can somehow find a way - and the balls - to get a grip of advertising before our ideas, opinions and lifestyles are completely controlled by the global corporations who employ these techniques to the greatest effect and nowadays to sell a lot more than products and services.

The problem is rooted in ourselves though due to psychological reactance. Reactance is the fear of having our behavioural freedoms limited or curtailed by external forces - effectively removing our freedom of choice - so in a way society tends to tolerate more than it should having our opinions and behaviours manipulated by others because fundamentally, nobody likes to admit they were manipulated even if they recognise it has happened.

And the entire raison d'etre of advertising is to do just that - manipulate us, ideally without us even knowing it has happened.