+ Advertising Tapping into desire

+ What brands do you use? Write down a list of the products you tend to use on your body in a typical week and explain why you choose to use it. E.G. I use Colgate Total toothpaste because I want to avoid cavities and keep my gums healthy at the same time. How many products can you list? What is the class average? Now add other products that you don’t use each day to your list but would use at least once in a week. How does the average change? Has anybody lied or missed out a product because they were too embarrassed to share?

+ Beauty is only a product away… As a group, you have five minutes to list as many products as possible that a woman could use to maintain or improve her appearance in an average week. You must also list the problem that the product is addressing e.g. “lip balm- dry, flaky lips) A product can only appear once, regardless of how many times it is used within a week e.g. people will hopefully brush their teeth 14 times in a week but toothpaste can only appear once on the list. Who has the biggest list? Which items on the list would also apply to men? Which items would you add to the list for men?

+ Needs and Wants Look back at your list and identify: How many products on the list would you consider a need? How many products are more of an added bonus or a want? How many products are more of a desire for most people? Discuss: What does this tell you about an advertising company's job?

+ How do you convince somebody to want something they don’t need? Answer: Make the product provide them with something that the target audience feels they need, want or, even better, desire. E.G. I really don’t need less oily skin but as a shy teen I do need more self confidence Humans have a whole list of physical and emotional needs. Most products claim to understand and fulfill at least one of these needs E.G. the paternal need to provide safety for their children is often used to sell cleaning products. Brainstorm: What are some of the physical, social, emotional and psychological needs or desires of humans that advertising often appeals to?

+ Emotive Appeals Advertisements that achieve their purpose by stimulating one's emotions, rather than one's sense of the practical or impractical.Emotional appeals attempt to appeal to the consumer's psychological, social, or emotional needs. The copy and images can arouse fear, love, hate, greed, sexual desire, or humor, or otherwise create psychological tension that can best be resolved by purchase of the product or service.

+ Who is the target audience? What emotional appeals are being used to sell the product in this advert?

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+ Television Advertisements Watch, then discuss: The following advertisements for New Zealand Telecom all appeal to our need to connect with other humans. They all follow the same formula. What is this formula? Create a formula or a recipe for this type of advertisement. Can you think of other companies that use a formula for their advertisements? What are these ‘formulas?

+ Emotive appeal Here is an excerpt from a Frontline video called ‘The Persuaders’. In this segment, the idea of appealing to a target audience with a specific set of emotional values is discussed. Watch the first segment from about the 6 minute mark and then watch the first 7 minutes of the second segment called ‘Emotional Branding’

+ What cult do you belong to? Discuss: In The Persuaders video the experts compare loyal consumers to cult* members. Are you a cult member of any brand? What rival brand ‘cults’ do you know about? (E.G. Mac vs. PC) Activity: Imagine that you are now 30 years old and ISM is having a reunion. You haven’t seen anybody from school in at least ten years. Write down the brand of car will you arrive in and explain the message you hope to give about your lifestyle when you arrive at the reunion. Now let the other people in your group write down the presumptions they make about your personality and lifestyle, based solely on their fist sighting of you emerging from your car. * Cult: A usually small group of people with great devotion to an idea, person, object, etc.

+ Emotive Appeal Activity Activity: Choose a brand you know well and think about its latest advertising campaigns. Who do you think their ideal consumer is. Company/ product name: Consumer name: Age: Interests: Likely employment: Aspirations: Values in Life: Reason for using the product: Income:

+ Warm up Discuss the following questions at your table: How does something become popular? Why does something that was popular suddenly become unpopular?

+ Merchants of Cool What is cool today?