GRAPHS

WHAT DOES ADVERTISING DO?- PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

We live in a world of advertising. It is a world of our making, of course. We don't like to pay the full price of things, so we allow other people to pay part of that price in exchange for letting them pass a message to us. So, we open up the pages of our favorite magazine, and there are glossy ads for clothes, shoes, cars, or beer. We turn on the television, and smiling faces on television try to sell us soup, toothpaste, candy, and politicians.

The reason that we accept all this advertising is that we assume that we can tune most of it out. If we don't pay attention to the ads, then they won't have that much of an affect on our behavior. Sure, the makers of commercials can try to jack up the volume, but at least we have the right to look away.

Right?

A paper slated to appear in the December, 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research by Melanie Dempsey and Andrew Mitchell suggests that the picture might not be so rosy. These researchers did two clever studies that ought to make us think twice about how much advertising we allow ourselves to be exposed to.

We usually assume that advertising functions mostly to tell us about the properties of a product. A particular detergent might advertise that it gets stains out better than competitors, that it smells good, and that it leaves clothes feeling fresh. We believe that these properties are ones that will help us to choose the detergent we want to buy.

However, ads also do other things. One thing they do is to take a product and to put it next to lots of other things that we already feel positively about. For example, an ad for detergent may have fresh flowers, cute babies, and sunshine in it. All of these things are ones that we probably feel pretty good about already. And repeatedly showing the detergent along with other things that we feel good about can make us feel good about the detergent, too. This transfer of our feelings from one set of items to another is called affective conditioning (the word affect means feelings).

In these studies, Dempsey and Mitchell told people about two brands of pens. One brand had better properties than the other. So, objectively, that better brand is the one people should have picked. Before making a choice about the pens, though, some people did what they thought was an unrelated experiment in which they watched pictures on a screen that flashed quickly. Some of these pictures paired the brand name of the pen that had the worse set of properties with a lot of positive items. This procedure is known to create affective conditioning.

So, this experiment put two sources of information in opposition. People had a set of properties about the pens that suggested one brand was better than the other. And the group that did not go through the affective conditioning procedure picked this brand most of the time when asked to choose a pen.

The people who went through the affective conditioning procedure picked the pen that was paired with positive items 70-80% of the time. They chose this pen, even though they had information that the other pen was better. Over the two studies in this paper, the authors found that people chose the pen that was paired with positive objects even when people were given as much time as they wanted to make a choice, and even when the instructions specifically encouraged them to pick the best choice and to say why they were choosing a particular pen.

These results suggest that the most powerful effect of advertising is just to create a good feeling about a product by surrounding it with other things that you like. It is also important to point out that affective conditioning is most effective when you don't realize that it is happening. That is, trying to pay less attention to the ads you see on TV and in magazines may actually make this type of advertising more effective.

So, why do we choose things just because we feel good about them? The world is a busy place. It is hard for us to feel confident that we have all of the objective facts about anything, whether it is products, people, or choices of things to do. The feelings we have are often a good marker of what is safe to do and what is likely to turn out well. If we have to make a choice, and one of the options just feels good to us, then we are likely to go with the one that feels good.

Most of the time, of course, that is a good idea. Often, we feel good about something because we have had positive experiences with it in the past. The problem is that we allow advertisers to have access to our mental world. They have paid for the opportunity to slip information to us about what feels good. That information ultimately affects the way we make choices, whether we know it or not.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201008/what-does-advertising-do

THINKING

When thinking about advertising in general I started to think about how advertising is a a really big part of every humans life. During the day we are bombarded with adverts trying to get us to buy, watch for click on things.
From the point when we wake up we are listening to adverts on the radio about cheap car insurance or free double glazing. The on the way to school the radios blaring telling you that when you sign up to a certain website you get something free or at a cheaper price.
When at school there are posters up advertising different university choices, and as the posters are from the University's themselves they are trying to make you attend their open days or consider them as a choice. This posters are carefully chosen and thought about as they need to make sure they choose the right colours, fonts and font size to attract the attention of students. 
On the way home from school there might be signs on the side of the road telling you that there is a burger van down the road with a half price deal on. That also advertising
Once you are home and watching television the many programsare interspred with adverts, even childrens television such as CITV have adverts on their program, however they advertise the latest toys and even though they might not be able to by my their selves they would be able to ask their parents whether they could have it or not.

WORK IN PROGRESS

NEW PAPER ARTICLE

This article was out of the Daily Telegraph.
The article explains that as technology in increasing and peoples needs for bigger and better things increases, bookshops for example are feeling the brunt of this. The 'growing popularity or e-readers such as the Kindle have forced nearly 2,000 bookshops to close since 2005'. People don't feel the need to buy or borrow books from the library, if they can read books while they are on the move, or on a portable system that they already use anyway, an example of this is the i-Phone. On the i-Phone the user can read books, play games, look at the weather, read the news and still have all the qualities of a regular mobile phone. It comes down to the convenience of the system, as carrying around a Kindle or an i-Phone is more practical than carrying around 5 different books.
Its not just the independent bookshops that this is having an effect on its also the well known bookshops such as 
Waterstones are having to close branches. 
The article then goes on to explain what effect closing bookshops and libraries will have on the public. 'In the UK today one person in six struggles with their literacy. As this can negatively affect all areas of an individual's life, from employment to health, any decline in institutions that encourage reading is a potential concern.'
' The volume of books being bought is in decline. In 2010 a total of 229.3 million books were sold in Britain, a 1.7 percent decrease on 2009, according to a research company Nielsen Bookscan.'


IMPORTANT FACTS AND FIGURES
'The number of bookshops in Britain has halved in the past six years and nearly 600 towns have none at all'
'growing popularity or e-readers such as the Kindle have forced nearly 2,000 bookshops to close since 2005'
' There were 2,178 high street bookshops left in Britain in July, according to research carried out by Experian, the data company, compares with 4,000 in 2005.'
'A total of 580 towns do not have a single bookshop'
' The volume of books being bought is in decline. In 2010 a total of 229.3 million books were sold in Britain, a 1.7 percent decrease on 2009, according to a research company Nielsen Bookscan.'




This facts and figures can then be used as the advertisement on the side of the webpage's as they usually appear, however I could created by own graphs using these figures to make the advertisements look real.

THE MILLION DOLLAR HOMEPAGE

http://milliondollarhomepage.com/

'The Million Dollar Homepage is a website conceived in 2005 by Alex Tew, a student from Wiltshire, England, to raise money for his university education. The home page consists of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid; the image-based links on it were sold for $1 per pixel in10 × 10 blocks. The purchasers of these pixel blocks provided tiny images to be displayed on them, a URL to which the images were linked, and a slogan to be displayed when hovering a cursor over the link. The aim of the website was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating a million dollars of income for the creator.'  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage


The 'Million Dollar Homepage' is created as a base for advertising. Advertising on the 'Million Dollar Homepage' then leads to advertising in books, newspapers and on other websites, the website is also famous around the world making an appearence in New Zealand and Florida. 

'By November the website was becoming popular around the world, receiving attention from Financial Times Deutschland in Germany, TVNZ in New Zealand, Terra Networks in Latin America, the China Daily, and especially in the United States where it was covered in Adweek, Florida Today, and Wall Street Journal. Tew hired a US-based publicist to help with the attention from the American media and made a week-long trip to the US, where he was interviewed on ABC News Radio, the Fox News Channel, Attack of the Show!,and local news programmes.'


'"It is brilliant in its simplicity ... advertisers have been attracted to it by its novelty ... the site has become a phenomenon." Popular Mechanics said.'

PSYCHOLOGY AND ADVERTISING

When researching psychology and advertising on Youtube, I came across this video that explains the science behind the way we think when looking at adverts and how we process them in our brain.

The main points at are of importance from the video

• Advertising's main functions are to INFORM, PERSUADE and INFLUENCE.
• Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)- A theory identifying two ways a communications can be persuasive- The central route of the peripheral route.
• Using the central route, you will look at the facts and use logic to make your decision.
• The peripheral route is where the receiver does not think carefully about a communication and is influence by superficial cues. (bright colours, emotional story, music or an attractive speaker)
• The results of the peripheral route are more temporary and are subject to change.
• Psychologists report that colours can report for 60-70% of consumer reaction.
• Adverts usually contain positively charge emotional images and slogans as well as the basic factually information- this then affects the central and peripheral routes.

What colours connote: 

Red= Increases blood pressure and heart rate, grabs attention, and stimulates quick decision making

Pink= Sweetness, used in the sales of sweets and pastries 

Orange= Causes people to feel energetic, is often found in fast food restaurants, long exposure to orange can have the effect of becoming more aggressive 

Yellow= First colour processed by the human eye often used to draw attention

Green= Relaxing, often found in hospitals, represents things that are environmentally friendly

Blue= Favorite colour amongst adults, used to sell jewelry 

Purple= Royal, rich and luxurious 

Brown= Favored by men, strength, represents the ground

Black= Power and formality, used to make other colour pop, normally used for text

White= Purity, simplicty, high technology