How Ads Manipulate Us

Advertising is particularly good at attaching emotions to brands. A terrific example from years back is a car called the Renault Clio. Years ago they launched an advertising campaign featuring a couple of French people, Papa and Nicole. The whole idea of that ad was supposed to be that the Renault Clio is a terrifically easy car to drive. However, when you look at that ad what you're looking at is two people flirting, being terrifically intimating. And of course what that does, results in you thinking the Renault Clio is a surprisingly attractive little car, and lots of people want to be sexy. The result was it became the most successful car launch ever in the UK.

Getting Meta:

Meta-communication are all the twiddly bits - the music, the characters, setting, and the storyline. Anything that's not actually to do with what you're telling people. The interesting thing about meta-communication is that we are programmed not to be able to un-process it. Once it's exposed to us, we've got it.

Here's a good example:

The famous Apple 1984 ad was shown once at midnight in 1983, and once in the superbowl in 1984. And yet that ad is known practically all around the world. In the ad there is a girl running down the aisle with all the zombie-like people, and she hurls the mallet through the screen. And the message in that ad is very simple - the world is being dominated in that era by IBM and Apple is going to break out of that era. That idea of Apple being the defender of the people, and the defender of freedom reflected Steve Jobs, who became the epitome of the defender of the people. It means people who buy Apple computers and in most cases, astonishingly, even though that ad would never have actually been seen by them on air, they know about this ad. And they feel Apple is a terrific company. And in that respect, once you get a reputation like that established, it's there forever.

There is a company called Huawei who have recently launched an ad featuring a little creature called Gnu being photographed. And the guy who is photographing the Gnu looks at his photograph and he imagines what's going to happen to the little Gnu. It's going to be captured, it's going to be put in a zoo, it's going to have things thrown at it. So, he decides not to take the photograph.

And the message is, with Huawei you can be your own judge of morality. It doesn’t make any sense. As Huawei is a phone, it doesn't allow you to do anything. But emotionally very appealing.

How do we resist? How do you stop your emotions being influenced by advertising?

There are only two ways to do it.

One is just don't watch any advertising.

The other way, curiously enough, is to watch the ad very carefully, is to look at it and say:

“What are you trying to do?”

“What are you trying to influence?” 

“What's really behind this ad?”

“If you see this little furry animal in the woods, what's there for?”

“Is it there to make me feel good about this brand? Yes, of course it is.”

And by doing that, you can do something called counter-arguing. We are not used to counter-arguing the emotions in advertising, but if you look at the ads, and the emotive content in the ads, if you listen to the music you can say, "Ah! I know what you're trying to do." So emotionally you can counter-argue that ad.

Of course it probably won't work but at least you can feel you are slightly more in control of your life than the advertisers are.