The Psychology of Advertising

Egyptians and Ancient Greeks used the papyrus for advertising and rock painting was also used. Advertising in English in magazines as we know today dates back to the end of the 17th century and newspaper advertising in America began during the first part of the 18th century with advertisements for estates. With the growth of mass media and different forms and avenues of communication like radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and of course the internet in the 20th century, advertising started becoming an important aspect for commercialization of products. People started understanding the potential of advertisements and it became a business with the establishment of advertising agencies with the first advertising agency in US opened in 1841.Web advertising is now a very powerful means to take the message across to the customers. However to actually appeal to customers, advertising will have to work in accordance with the principles of psychology and sociology. The principles of advertising are largely based on cognitive psychology and the psychological processes of attention, perception, association and memory to bring out the complete impact or uses of a product or 'brand'. Any advertisement will have to first focus on the attention that it is able to capture of the consumers. Strong messages, strong visuals and glaring colors are sometimes used on hoardings and billboards. For commercials, attention catching clothes and attractive models are sometimes used.Certain colors also have associative value and certain brands and companies use a specific color to promote their products. For example easygroup uses orange and Vodafone uses red as standard color for all advertising. So branding is vital in advertisements as brands help in giving a name and distinct identity of a product. So a Gucci bag or a Sony camera is known for the brand rather than the product.A brand is recognized in terms of its name, its quality and its reputation with advertisements these days highlighting the uniqueness of brands. Putting across a message through a medium is a challenge and advertisers use emotions widely to help people retain the message that describes the product.The message of the product, the motto of the brand and the mind of the consumer, these are the three Ms that are important in advertising.Radio ads should focus on the strength of sounds and words; internet ads will focus on visuals and colors; newspaper ads will focus on space and the theme; and TV ads would focus more on the emotions and the context used. Using motion, capitalized letters, contrasting colors etc are all important and in order to draw attention to the product, some form of highlighting of the product is also done.How does all this affect the masses, the consumers who will actually buy the product? Apart from the attention drawing process, the retention producing sounds and words that help memory and the associative value of the products and the advertisements, there is another factor namely necessity of the consumer. Advertising is not just enough, as a customer is driven to buy a product largely considering the necessity, quality, features and price of the product.Usually most products advertised as unique and not even remotely similar to other products can have a positive effect and can effectively generate hype and consumer curiosity. Focusing on the unique and highlighting the dissimilarity and novelty of a product in a way that attracts curiosity is a certain method to improve popularity of a product, so this gives consumers the reason to know more and they will enter the shops to enquire about the product. Although celebrities are largely used in advertisements to endorse products or promote a brand, the celebrity culture affects only the youth strongly so the entire value of celebrity advertising may be a bit overrated. The final goal of all advertisers and promoters is to ensure that products and services sell and to increase sales and potential consumer interest creating curiosity is a first short term step while introducing a new product into the market. Retaining customer interest is a different ballgame and requires reputation of the brand, product quality, right pricing and continued high quality advertising to ultimately ensure success of the product.
Source by ezinearticles.com