On why understanding crowd psychology and the psychological processes of cognition is important to any successful advertising effort…
Advertising has been a way of glorifying or publicizing goods and merchandise since ancient times. In fact, advertising has been around as an informal concept since the beginning of civilizations and the previous methods were oral advertising or verbally claiming the benefits of products when merchants sold goods to people directly on the streets. However, with the advent of paper and writing, advertising took on a more formal form.
Egyptians and ancient Greeks used papyrus for advertising and cave painting was also used. English magazine advertising as we know it today dates back to the late 17th century and newspaper advertising in America began during the early part of the 18th century with property advertisements. With the growth of the media and the different forms and channels of communication such as radio, television, newspapers, magazines and, of course, the Internet in the 20th century, advertising began to become an important aspect of advertising. Product commercialization. People began to understand the potential of advertisements and it became a business with the establishment of advertising agencies with the opening of the first advertising agency in the US in 1841.
With advertising becoming a business in itself, the methods of using advertisements became even more formalized, controlled and systematic and product advertisements began to appear as newspaper ads, billboards, billboards, brochures, flyers, etc. magazines, newspapers, television and radio as a commercial and more recently on the internet. Web advertising is now a very powerful medium to get the message out to customers. However, to really attract customers, advertising must work according to the principles of psychology and sociology. Therefore, a publicist or an advertising professional will also have to be a sociologist and a psychologist to have a real impact on the minds of consumers.
Advertising principles rely heavily on cognitive psychology and the psychological processes of attention, perception, association and memory to highlight the full impact or uses of a product or ‘brand’. Any advertisement will have to focus first on the attention it is capable of capturing from consumers. Strong messages, strong images, and dazzling colors are sometimes used on billboards and billboards. For commercials, flashy clothes and attractive models are sometimes used.
Once attention is drawn with colors and sounds or words, the focus is on retaining the consumer’s interests through the use of “association.” Themes or products that a particular customer segment might associate with are thus used for baby food, mothers and babies are featured, so the association would have more to do with ad relevance or context. 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 the standard color for all advertising. The logo or symbol of the company is also part of the development of a brand and helps to give identity to a brand and has a strong associative value.
The association must be such that it not only serves the purpose of quick understanding and perception of consumers, but also remains in their memory for a long time. Therefore, memory or retention is an important aspect of the psychology of advertising, since only an advertisement that can be easily remembered by consumers for a long time due to its novelty or use of words, colors and figures will be the most effective.
Developing a ‘brand’ is just as effective because a brand helps draw attention, develop associations (for example, we associate Coca-Cola or Pepsi with youth, celebration and a popular soft drink for all occasions) and memory or retention of any image associated with a service or product. Therefore, branding is vital in advertisements as brands help to give a name and a distinct identity to 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 that highlight the uniqueness of brands. For example, recent HSBC advertisements in airports around the world focus on the different points of view and the different tastes and preferences of people in all cultures. So when you see those ads that show two different perspectives of the same thing, you know this is HSBC. Certain brands develop slogans or slogans that distinguish the brand and give it a distinctive character.
You may have wondered why models look lifeless at fashion shows. Fashion shows are usually organized for designer brands that sell clothes and accessories and usually these fashion shows try to accentuate the clothes and that is why the models tend to be quite “deadpan”. Although these fashion shows project the clothes without emotions, in the case of commercials, expressions are used a lot because through the visual medium, emotions must be conveyed through the screen to the consumers to create an effect. Conveying a message across a medium is challenging, and emotions are widely used by advertisers to help people retain the message that describes the product.
Whatever it is, the mantra is to make an impact and have a lasting effect on the minds of consumers. The product message, the brand slogan and the consumer’s mind, these are the three M’s that are important in advertising.
However, it is important to understand that advertising will need to be different for different mediums. Radio ads should focus on the power of sounds and words; Internet ads will focus on images and colors; newspaper ads will focus on space and theme; and television commercials would focus more on emotions and the context used. The use of movement, capital letters, contrasting colors, etc. they are all important and to draw attention to the product, some kind of product highlighting is also done.
How does all this affect the masses, the consumers who will actually buy the product? Apart from the process of attracting attention, the retention that produces sounds and words that help memory and the associative value of products and advertisements, there is another factor that is the consumer’s need. Advertising is not enough, as a customer is driven to buy a product largely considering the need, quality, features and price of the product.
If a company focuses solely on the physical aspects of any product—for example, an Apple iPhone looks good on the table—then it’s probably not the best method of making an impact in the market. Features are just as important as price. Then of course the ‘hype’ that triggers a certain mob psychology in a certain way, whereby people sometimes line up to buy newly launched products. But trying to harness crowd psychology or some sort of hype or hysteria for a product is just a short-term advertising ploy. The long-term establishment of a product is through real quality, ease of use and price, and all companies should ultimately emphasize this.
Competition can have a lot to do with the type of advertising that companies use, so the weaknesses of similar products from other companies are subtly highlighted even if this does not always have a positive impact on the customer’s mind. In general, most products that are advertised as unique and not even remotely similar to other products can have a positive effect and can generate excitement and curiosity in the consumer. Focusing on the unique and highlighting the difference and novelty of a product in a way that attracts curiosity is a certain method of improving the popularity of a product, so this gives consumers the reason to know more and they will enter. stores to inquire about the product. . Although celebrities are heavily used in advertisements to endorse products or promote a brand, celebrity culture hits only young people hard, so the full value of celebrity advertising may be a bit overrated. This will require a separate discussion of celebrity culture.
The ultimate goal of all advertisers and promoters is to ensure that products and services are sold and to increase sales and potential consumer interest. Creating curiosity is a short-term first step when introducing a new product to the market. Retaining customer interest is a different ball game and requires brand reputation, product quality, the right price, and ongoing high-quality advertising to ultimately ensure product success.