Poll: Ads - do they affect you?

[Strazdas]

No, not at all. Ads have never affected my decisions, excuse me *taking a bite from a bar of Snickers* - I never pay attention to them, at all. *thoughtful stare at the Sony television set while trying to word the post properly.* *Looking back at the LG monitor and typing on the Logitech keyboard* I honestly think that people who *reaching for some Doritos. Wiping the hand in the Calvin Klein shirt before resuming* follow ads are fucking idiots. We should seriously just euthanase them - it would jump the average IQ by 50 or so.

*received a text, pausing for a minute to text back using an iPhone*

Ads only fool total suckers, and I'm better than any one of them. Why, just yesterday *reaching for some more Doritos, washing them down with Montain Dew* me and a friend were hungry but couldn't be arsed to go to McDonalds or KFC, so we went to the store to grab something to bite - they had like a deal, where you get a sandwich plus either a Coke or a Pepsi for a lower price than the two individually. All the sheeple probably went with Coke because of those obnoxious ads and it's Christmas and stuff, so there is lots of red around but I just laughed and got a Pepsi.

*grabbing some more Doritos and downing the remaining Montain Dew*

while your irony is amsuing it is not fitting. i use neither of the products you mentioned. not one.

Ads work for me in only one way: i need a certain product (i actually need it and not just to sit in the corner and do nothing) and am chosing between, say, 5 brands. in which case im more likely to go with a brand that i sad a reasonable advertisement of than a no-name brand. but thatsp retty much all. it does not make me go and buy something because i saw it in the ad. sometimes even laugh like "Why would anyone even want a thing like that to begin with". then again, my mom once went to buy butter and came back with a whole bag of plastic bowls because "it was a sale". i jut facepalmed.....

 

[Baron_Rouge]

I'd like to think I just tune them out, but I probably don't. I think everyone can be affected by ads, even if we try hard to block them out. Sometimes it can translate into a purchase, other times it can just be a bit of brand recognition, but I think a good ad can get to everyone.

 

[Kekkonen1]

The thing is, ads DO effect me, but not in the way intended. I actually have a mental list in my head of companies whos products I will never buy again in my life due to their commercials being exceptionally bad or patronising (the keyword here is exceptionally, there are alot of bad commercials, but there arent that many that actually make me actively angry at how stupid they seem to think I am).

So yeah, I dont really think I buy too much stuff because of commercials, but I do know that there are alot of stuff I will NEVER buy again because of commercials.

 

[aba1]

Everyone thinks they are immune but as someone who designs them I will just say that nobody truly is.

Exactly. It's a massive industry for a reason, no matter how any individual is going to claim it doesn't affect them.

Eh...

The Korean F2P market is massive, but most of them have no idea what they are doing.

I imagine the same is true for marketing.

You do realize that advertising spans several fields all them requiring a college graduate level of studying to understand properly right?

That doesn't really mean much in itself... in my tech college the marketing program was known as the easy classes for dumb blondes. The program was easy enough that they had to set the passing grade bar at 70%. Really though my bad impression from it came from one of my dorm roommates who was a total drunk redneck and the complete antithesis to myself.

Anyways, for this argument you really have to clearly define where the goalposts are and how you're keeping score. At it's most basic level the purpose of marketing is to create awareness of a product. So for example, personally I have a sweet tooth and a love for variety. I very rarely go to Dairy Queen but if a commercial gets flashed in front of me with an enticing new blizzard flavour and/or a good promotional deal then it's like going to be a successful advert. But, if it's a company I lost faith in like say Subway then it doesn't matter what kind of new sub or deal they flash at me I'm sticking with my Vietnamese sub places. Also, where Dairy Queen may have spent millions of dollars on that commercial, Starbucks can accomplish the same thing by sticking a sign in the window. New flavour this summer is a cookie crumble mocha frappuccino? Sold!

So obviously you can't outright say that advertising doesn't work, but where I draw the line here is the concept that a cunning marketer can make me choose Coke over Pepsi or to grab a Snickers bar or whatever through a slick marketing campaign. That I strongly disagree with. My taste driven curiosity has lead me away from these big name brands to favour ones like Jones Soda or Lindt Chocolate. While I'm sure marketers have plenty of graphs and charts that show their marketing has worked, by this day and age everyone knows about other successful companies that have never done any marketing. Google being the most obvious one, services like Steam or Facebook, and I don't believe I've ever seen a Starbucks commercial. A better/unique product combined with the right word of mouth can equal great success without spending billions in marketing.

That's all I really wanted to say, but here's another thing for outlier study. I'm always amazed at how nearly everybody I know can look at a vehicle and almost immediately know the year/make/model. Is this a result of the general populations interest in motor vehicles or because we're always being bombarded with commercials about them? As someone who has no real interest in them and generally good at tuning out commercials the best you'd get out of me is something like "blue truck" or "red car", I'm not even going to recognize half the logo's, and never the brand let alone the year. So do I have a +5 will save bonus to car commercials here?

You bring up lots of interesting points that definitely are valid and hold value. Advertising or marketing generally isn't sought after as something you would want a degree in all in of itself. Most of the skills and traits of advertising are taught in most media fields especially with print and web design as well as the fine arts and a few other media fields. So it doesn't actually surprise me the bad rep that course had. For example I am a multimedia designer so I learn everything a advertising student would as well as a large amount of what a print and web designer as well plus a fair amount about film and photography. However my course has a huge fallout rate with only about 1 in every 10 people actually finishing. So yup advertising is still very valid just the skills can be picked up in other more applicable courses as well.

It is good that you are actually expanding your horizons with more obscure branding well at least less popular brands. Though I will say that the average person doesn't concern themselves much this way. A lot of people tend to sheep that's why you see fan boys/girls and line ups for products that are not even that much better. Commercials and advertising mostly revolve around brand awareness cause the idea is that the more you are aware of a brand the more likely you are to get it over the competitor. It works too you see it all the time it is the same reason people will pay 3 dollars for name brand soda over the 1 dollar soda that tastes the same. People will buy what they recognize because they trust whats familiar.

I have to say though google facebook and steam all had their ways of taking off. Facebook advertised to a insane degree just they did it through your email rather than the traditional ad. One person would join email all his friends to join and then they would join and do the same and it spread like wildfire this way. It gets a little more complicated than that but it was the gist of how it worked. Google on the other hand won out because of how it effected the industry. Google offered good search results that couldn't be bought up like yahoo and msn before it. This attracted a lot of people working in the industry and with a huge push it gained popularity through word of mouth. So google more advertised in a less traditional method by offering search results based on popularity rather than payments and it was the better results that won people over. Now steam is a interesting one the reason steam was able to work is community's like this. Since games and the internet sorta grew up together gamers are known to socialize over the net to begin with. Steam sorta worked on the old quote "build it and they will come". The made the service to be so readily available to their clientele that it would be hard to ignore. That strategy wouldn't really work for any other business it was really half luck. If gaming and the internet had blossomed at any other time they would not have taken. Gamers were always on the computer they just didn't have a way to play games on the computer all that much so steam essentially filled a niche and because gamers tend to form community's online like this it didn't take a lot for word to spread.

 

[zehydra]

I avoid them when I can. Truth is, many people don't realize exactly how much they are actually affected by all the subtle advertising that they "tune out".

Whenever you don't pay attention to something, but can still see/hear it, your mind still picks it up and stores it

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Depends of the ad.

Most I ignore, but if it's in a position that makes it unable to be easily dismissed ie part of Captcha, front of a youtube video etc I will remember the product.

With a note to never buy said product if I ever see it for sale anywhere ever again.

So far Dominoes Pizza, Pizza Hut, Air New Zealand, ANZ, Chrysler, American Red Cross, Doritos, Halo 4, Black Ops 2, MOH, any number of movies have entered the list.

 

[loc978]

I chose the trained ninja mind option, though a more accurate portrayal of my reaction to advertising is how

Spoiler: the Oatmeal has described his reaction to salesmen

It just so happens he's... talkin' 'bout my generation.

So yeah... advertisement has always resulted in either indifference or hatred with me. I've never been talked into a product I didn't intentionally go out looking for.

 

[Vegosiux]

Of course ads affect me. They whip me up into a frenzy and make me want to punch people. And working in TV, you have no idea just how much of that garbage I have to go through every single day.

Oh and don't even get me started on infomercials, that's where things start to get really obnoxious.

 

[Not Matt]

actually. if i wanna buy a product and i see an ad for it i wanna buy it less. and this has nothing to do with the ad being good or bad it's just how my mind work. if your ad is great it might help a little. but a bad one. watch the f out.
we actually had a cleaning product in my country. after an ad where some kids rap about soap (WORST THING EVER TO HIT MY EYES! AND EARS!) most the country boycott the products from that company. so the ads can actually break the product if not done right.

 

[Olas]

Lol, so many people don't think the ads they see are affecting them. Ya, sure they aren't, you're all just immune. Personally, I try to avoid ads as much as possible. I became a pubclub member so I don't see ads on this site

 

[Something Amyss]

Good job! So now instead of product X you're getting product Y which relied on being the competition of X by virtue of appealing to the X haters. Don't like Coca-Cola, well, here is some Pepsi - same thing (pretty much) and it's usually seen as the alternative - can't buy one, get the other.

Or there are store brands, generic brands, etc. I know I'm talking crazy and such, but apparently I'm some sort of freak of nature.

I know what you're thinking: "Well, DUH!"

But snark aside...I buy what's cheapest for soda. You'd be amazed how often that isn't Coke or Pepsi. I don't buy cola because of ads, unless you count a price tag on a bottle or shelf advertising, and then we're getting silly. When I want something, I research it. I know some reviews can be considered adverts, but again, you have to go to some extreme lengths to argue that's advert influence.

Doritos don't really appeal to me, though I've had them occasionally at friends' houses. I tend to prefer kettle chips, and buy a store brand. I wasn't told to, and I don't think they've ever actually advertised the brand. A lot of my stuff is off-brand, and the things that aren't are generally due to research or experience. My headphones are brand name, but were purchased not because they're Motorolla but because I did meticulous research trying to find a good set of headphones in terms of bang for my buck.

I have trouble believing people are that influenced by ads in more than a trivial sense, and not because I think I'm a special snowflake. I don't tend to care and I tend to buy what I want. I didn't think this was revolutionary, as it is something I learned from my parents, who tend to not buy things because of commercials, either. Or maybe it's because I grew up poor and therefore am cheap. I don't know.

Nothing short of inattentional blindness (also known as perceptual blindness) can render an ad useless. Even if you consciously try to block it out, if you so much as see or hear an ad, you are going to think about it on some level.

While that may be true, I have trouble seeing that alone being enough to actually influence people in any meaningful sense. Remembering a jingle is something I do more easily than most product-related deals, but I still haven't gone to free credit report dot com any more than I've bought Nickelback's new album because they're on the radio all the time. At that point, what good has it done? The intent is to do more than simply enter my head, right? I can't even fill in the slogans on the captchas here, which makes me seriously doubt their efficacy in my case.

I'm certainly aware of ads, but to what end?

 

[Mister K]

Well, I like some of the commercials, but they don't affect me. I am, however, influenced by availability of a product in store, i.e. "Hey, new candy that I didn't try."

 

[Steeveeo]

Most ads I can just tune out, but there are some out there that just get on my nerves or outright make me mad. For example, those freaking "877-Cash-Now" opera ads that have caused the stupid jingle to get stuck in my head at the very THOUGHT of them.

That, and what I find really, REALLY dickish, would be what I can only describe as a DELIBERATE corporate brainwashing attempt. Or in other words, those new AdCaptchas (or whatever you want to call them) that tell you to write a specific statement in the field about product X, a slogan for a company, or a damned URL printed on the ad.

Look, advertisers using this, if for some very unlikely chance that you're reading this: Stop that, I was not thinking of buying your product, but after being force-fed this nonsense, I am steering really damned clear of your products and any bit of your company until you stop shoveling this crap onto us. Even if your company sells something that I desperately need, I will go to your competitors, even if they are more expensive.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

While that may be true, I have trouble seeing that alone being enough to actually influence people in any meaningful sense. Remembering a jingle is something I do more easily than most product-related deals, but I still haven't gone to free credit report dot com any more than I've bought Nickelback's new album because they're on the radio all the time. At that point, what good has it done? The intent is to do more than simply enter my head, right? I can't even fill in the slogans on the captchas here, which makes me seriously doubt their efficacy in my case.

I'm certainly aware of ads, but to what end?

How aware you are of an ad really depends on the person and ad in question. Just so I'm clear when I said we talked about the efficacy of adds in industrial psych. class my prof. was talking about how well it could grab a person's attention, not necessarily how effective it is in convincing people to do something.

As to what kind of effect ads have on you is something I know next to nothing about. In fact, I find that certain ads actually deter me from getting whatever it is they are endorsing. Most ad people know this, which is why they offset the inability to convince by trying to get the attention of a massive population.

You are right though, the purpose of ads is to convince people to do something, but before they can do that people need to be made aware of the message you are trying to get across. My industrial psych. prof. once told me that ads are intended to be attention grabbing first, convincing second. The more people pay attention to your ads the more chances your ad will have an effect on a person. In a way, the success of the ad doesn't just rely on its ability to convince through content because its also relying on the probability of the ad catching the attention of a large number of people and hoping that some of them will acknowledge what the ad has to say or show.

The same thing can be said about a butt load of different advertising or marketing techniques. Like whenever I go to a mall I get to see these people handing out fliers for condos or new restaurants. Some people take them some don't. Some actually read the stuff and get interested while others just throw em into the garbage bin.

Sexy booth babes are often in conventions just so can they can attract the male (or female) gaze towards their own booth, whether or not the people who look at them actually care about the logo on the shirt that conveniently covers one of the most prominent assets of a woman is an entirely different matter.

 

[chadachada123]

The answer to everyone here is "yes."

If advertising didn't work, companies wouldn't spend billions on it annually, nor would it be the main source of revenue for most forms of media. It's incredibly pervasive, even if you don't always perceive it as such.

I've spent most of my college life studying precisely that impact.

Oh, that's a relief, I was beginning to think that the US's war on drugs was a complete and utter waste of money, but obviously we wouldn't be squandering money if it didn't make us safer. Oh yeah, definitely.

"It works because they wouldn't use it if it didn't work" is as close to a circle as it gets. Not saying that you aren't right (for the average person at least, most ads turn me off to the point where I make a point to avoid them and, if possible, their competitors too).

That is, except for food. I am pretty likely to get Taco Bell when I see a Taco Bell commercial, and Oreos when I see an Oreo commercial.

 

[Reaper195]

Most of the time, I view ads as entertainment themselves. While I stopped buying into all the hype about Halo when I was seventeen, the trailers are awesome. While the Saints trailer for Hitman gave nothing to what the game was about (And stirred up an utterly unneeded sexism hurricane for a few months), it looked beautiful, as well as showed 47 beating the shit out of people (Come on...he's awesome irrelevant of the gender of the people he is killing).

 

[Astoria]

The only time an add will effect me is if it's advertising a phone deal or something when I need a new phone. Other than that I ignore them unless they're funny but even then it doesn't make me want to buy the product.

 

[IamQ]

Thought you first said AIDS, and I was a bit confused. I never knew that someone could have aids AT you.

OT: Ads I think are good looking or funny, I usually remember, and occasionally they make want to buy the product just for the sake of it. For instance, Old Spice. I've never been to the U.S, but if I ever go there, I'll probably buy some Old Spice if I can find it.

 

[Murais]

Oh, that's a relief, I was beginning to think that the US's war on drugs was a complete and utter waste of money, but obviously we wouldn't be squandering money if it didn't make us safer. Oh yeah, definitely.

"It works because they wouldn't use it if it didn't work" is as close to a circle as it gets. Not saying that you aren't right (for the average person at least, most ads turn me off to the point where I make a point to avoid them and, if possible, their competitors too).

That is, except for food. I am pretty likely to get Taco Bell when I see a Taco Bell commercial, and Oreos when I see an Oreo commercial.

I wasn't aiming to establish circular logic, just to the degree of faith in advertising. Degrees of separation are still important. There is a massive difference between investing $5 annually in advertising and investing $5,000,000,000 dollars annually in advertising. Companies don't invest in things that don't give them their money back, plain and simple.

Snarkiness aside, you did just prove me right. Advertisements, especially commercials, don't run just one type of advertisement. Whether it be food, jewelry, toys, or music, everyone has a different hook and a different threshold for taking the purchase plunge. All it takes is a craving, or a lingering image to make you buy something that you may not have otherwise. You admit to succumbing to food advertising, but how many times have you bought something just because out of all the products in that category, it was the one that you had "heard of" or "heard was good" from a friend? Many companies, especially those targeting uninformed first-time buyers (Like say, razors for young men or any beauty product), use this strategy because even if you've only bought it once to try it, they've already made their money back.

That's advertising. We've all done it. We all will do it. And we will all continue to do it because advertising plays on some borderline sinister elements of psychology. Even when you're aware of it, sometimes you don't realize until the glaze lifts from yours eyes and the money is already deducted from your account.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

Oh, that's a relief, I was beginning to think that the US's war on drugs was a complete and utter waste of money, but obviously we wouldn't be squandering money if it didn't make us safer. Oh yeah, definitely.

"It works because they wouldn't use it if it didn't work" is as close to a circle as it gets. Not saying that you aren't right (for the average person at least, most ads turn me off to the point where I make a point to avoid them and, if possible, their competitors too).

That is, except for food. I am pretty likely to get Taco Bell when I see a Taco Bell commercial, and Oreos when I see an Oreo commercial.

I wasn't aiming to establish circular logic, just to the degree of faith in advertising. Degrees of separation are still important. There is a massive difference between investing $5 annually in advertising and investing $5,000,000,000 dollars annually in advertising. Companies don't invest in things that don't give them their money back, plain and simple.

Snarkiness aside, you did just prove me right. Advertisements, especially commercials, don't run just one type of advertisement. Whether it be food, jewelry, toys, or music, everyone has a different hook and a different threshold for taking the purchase plunge. All it takes is a craving, or a lingering image to make you buy something that you may not have otherwise. You admit to succumbing to food advertising, but how many times have you bought something just because out of all the products in that category, it was the one that you had "heard of" or "heard was good" from a friend? Many companies, especially those targeting uninformed first-time buyers (Like say, razors for young men or any beauty product), use this strategy because even if you've only bought it once to try it, they've already made their money back.

That's advertising. We've all done it. We all will do it. And we will all continue to do it because advertising plays on some borderline sinister elements of psychology. Even when you're aware of it, sometimes you don't realize until the glaze lifts from yours eyes and the money is already deducted from your account.

I'd like to disagree on the part where you said companies don't invest in things that don't give them their money back, ideally that's what they do. It's like saying that everything that companies invest their money in definitely succeeds and gives them there money back all the time. Risk always exists and sometimes ads don't perform the way companies want them to. Sometimes companies just make bad decisions even if its related to advertising.

Porsche undoubtedly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions on advertising the Posche Carrera GT back in the 2000's. It stopped production I think two or three years because there weren't enough buyers. People were more aware of it than most super cars especially because it was featured in a lot of racing games and other materials. In the end they failed to earn anything from that project and stopped it because of the losses.

Or what about movies that get advertised as being one thing and end up being another which leads to the movie bombing at the box office? Hudson Hawk is a campy movie that stars Bruce Willis when he was making the transition to the Die Hard action hero he is well known for. Hudson Hawk was advertised as another Die Hard movie. The movie bombed at the box office having a budget of $65 million and only earning $17 million. I can't pin the ad as being the only reason but we can't deny that the box office results suffered partly because of the switcheroo.

But you are right in a sense that all people get affected by ads by simply being aware of what they are advertising. As far as I know all ads have to really do is increase awareness first and convince people to do something second. The very first razor I bought was the cheapest thing I could find and I've seen more than enough ads to know that Gillette takes their product way more seriously than most other brands since I was a kid, in fact its the only razor brand that I know (Yes I don't know the brand of the razor that I'm using but I don't really care since it works and it's cheap).