Advertising: A Matter of Changing Your Mind

On the fight to unwire your brain

An Anthropomorphic tiger claims sugar-coated toasted corn is nutrition-packed. A young woman ends a social conflict by offering a soda. A geeky-looking man sprays himself with a fragrance and becomes irresistible to women…

Like anyone’s gonna fall for this stuff, right?

Advertisements are all around us, seemingly at every moment of every day if you live anywhere urbanized. But nowhere are they more in our face than when we turn on a screen. And, boy, don’t some of them seem utterly stupid when you really think about them?

Chance are though, you probably don’t think a whole lot about them. No one does. And that might just be the whole point.

Non-rational Influences

There are two main types of advertisements you are likely to come across:

• Logical Persuasion (LP) Adverts: These kinds of adverts tell you in generally quite simple terms what a product is, what it does, and why you might need or want it. They might contain a jingle or a slogan, and they might eschew the truth just a little, but they’re pretty upfront about what they’re offering.
• Non-rational Influence (NI) Adverts: NI adverts are the kind that features scantily clad ladies, muscular men, fast cars, mascots, catchphrases, and all sorts of bullshit that seemingly has nothing to do with the product or brand in question.

NI adverts are dumb. We know they’re dumb, and our brains quite literally pick up on their stupidity. But this is precisely why they work so well.

As research shows, when faced with all this nonsense, your mind doesn’t bother trying to rationally engage with the stimuli it’s experiencing (Can you blame it?). But, this actually inhibits your ability to respond rationally. And so you go out, and you buy a 50 inch TV screen, or you order junk food instead of cooking that evening, or you make any number of often poor financial decisions you wouldn’t otherwise make.

But, so what?

You already knew adverts were there to seduce you. That’s the whole point. We’re all adults. After all, we should probably just grow out of this. But we don’t. Why? Because there’s a second more disturbing element going against us.

See, brands aren’t just trying to seduce us, but they’ve been training us for this since we were young. And like space monkeys taught to pull levers for bananas, we’re doing a great job following their orders. And now they’re going to the same to the next generation too.

With your help, of course.

Discovering A World… Of Adverts

It’s well documented and understood that children are especially susceptible to advertising. Struggling to distinguish the difference between advert and programming and unable to grasp that people and groups have ulterior motives, they’re an easy target for marketing.

Of course, advertisers know this and have invested incredible amounts of money, time, and effort into targeting them. Because even though kids might not have money, their parents sure do…

Advertisers use the same tactics they use on adults; only logic is even less of a necessity. Fun and happiness are the most commonly deployed appeals, with mascots and cartoon characters often being used to sway their understandably gullible audience.

Of course, we could also get into how advertisers have targeted and continue to target junk food to younger audiences. What’s more is, as any parent knows, the disruptive effect adverts have on kids’ behavior.

But what about the long-term effects? Do we not just grow out of this once our brains develop a bit more?

Well, it might all be a case of exposure.

What is learned early on in life is learned well. And it just so happens that advertisement and marketing campaigns are some of the most common and consistent teachers early on in our lives. The average American child now spends a whopping 3 hours in front of the TV alone and another 2–4 hours looking at another screen every day.

And the long-term effects are just starting to be understood.

Evidence suggests that concepts acquired at an early age shape neural networks more efficiently than they do later in life, essentially meaning they’re more embedded into semantic memory than concepts we learn later. What’s more, is that these neural networks are resistant to reconfiguration. In short, our early years ground our understanding of the world later in life. It’s why things like childhood trauma are so damaging.

So, what better time for brands to mold our brains into loyal customers?

Studies conducted by the University of Chicago found that brand knowledge structures developed in childhood could cloud product evaluations in adulthood. This leads to people overestimating their favorite cereal’s health benefits or underestimating the damage caused by fast food. This bias went beyond just the original advertised products, though, but can be carried over to line extensions even if these “line extensions are introduced when the individual is an adult.” So, when cola releases its latest edition of liquid candy, you can bet that people are going to buy it.

This isn’t just some kind of nostalgia we’re talking about here. This is profoundly ingrained loyalty. And once brands are inside your head, they’re hard to get out. And the more entrenched they are, the worse the problem is.

As the study from Chicago puts it: “health intervention to de-bias consumers… would most likely have no effect among the population that is likely to need it most: those who experience very high levels of positive affect [from brand advertising]”.

…

Is Real Change Coming?

Tackling this problem at its source is more effective than intervention. And finally, some policymakers are beginning to take notice around the world. For example, from 2023, the UK will prohibit advertising foods high in fat, salt, and sugar (HFSS) on television and online before 9 pm.

But experts worry that this isn’t enough since this legislation doesn’t cover brand advertising, product placements in films and TV, podcasts, or user-generated and influencer content. So, while such legislation may seem like a significant blow to brands targeting children, it seems likely that brands will simply find other ways around this. And if children struggled to see the difference between advertising and programming before, the distinction will only be murkier for them going forward.

Advertising has changed our world, it’s changed our culture, it’s changed the way we eat, the way we drink, and even the way we think. But, that doesn’t mean we should let advertising rule our lives by default.

We have to remain mindful of our exposure to advertisements, especially now that the lines between advertising and user content become blurred, for the sake of our wallets and our minds.

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