Jib Fowles’ essay “Mass Advertising as Social Forecast” looked at how advertisements work by examining the emotional appeals that they use to sell their products. The point being we see so many ads daily (well into the hundreds depending on your routine) that only a few ever get through and engage us. These select ads usually do so, according to Fowles, by touching on an emotion, something so “primary and primitive” that it is able to get us to pay attention and consume the message. According to the psychological analysis advertisers best chance to reach us is to bypass the conscious, skeptical powers we’ve developed as consumers. By targeting the “unfulfilled urges and motives swirling in the bottom half of [our] minds” their message can take hold. (I’ve yet to have an ad sink that low with me, but I may not have that much depth to begin with… at least according to more than one ex.)
The article describes fifteen emotional appeals that advertisements exploit.
The need for sex
The need for affiliation
The need to nurture
The need for guidance
The need to aggress
The need to achieve
The need to dominate
The need for prominence
The need for attention
The need for autonomy
The need to escape
The need to feel safe
The need for aesthetic sensations
The need to satisfy curiosity
Physiological needs: food, drink, sleep, etc.
I believe Fowles is on the right track, but that he has failed to identify an even more powerful set of goals and desires. It is probably better off that advertisers have not tuned into these in an attempt to sell to us, as we may well be putty in their hands. I present the next, most powerful set of appeals.
The need for night out with the boys/girls
The need for the return of the REAL Iron Chef, not this American imposter
The need for reality TV
The need for top shelf tequila
The need to be able to get a reservation at your favorite restaurant
The need to be spared the likes of every talking head on CNBC
The need to be over the election fiasco
The need to take half of Capitol Hill out for a little ‘discipline’
The need for revenge
The need for a well poured pint Guinness
The need to see movies in letterbox format with NO DUBBING
The need for a good cup of coffee in the morning
The need for the person behind the counter to not be an jerk today
The need for someone you can hang out with and not have to say a word
The need for a good looking, comfortable suit (and the shoes to go with it)
The need for Pinball
The need for travel every now and then
The need to read a decent book even more often
The need for swampy Delta blues
The need for the dog/cat to let you sleep in on the weekends
The need to be left alone by phone solicitations
The need to feel safe on the road in a normal sized car when everyone else on the road is driving some urban assault vehicle that only further masks the fact that the person behind the wheel can barely drive in the first place when all their attention is on the road let alone their cell-phone, coffee cup or whining, petulant wastes of skin children in the backseats.
I think that about covers it.
