The effects of advertising on our fragile minds

Advertising is a discipline that thrives on the knowledge of the social psychology applied to marketing and tries to guide every purchasing decision we make. Very linked to the studies of influence and persuasion, it manages to modify our habits, becoming a phenomenon that transcends the mere act of buying and selling.

The language it uses and the reality it shows us seek to respond to the desires, needs and motivations of an audience, which is not usually recognized as such.

Advertising is ubiquitous

Guérin is forceful in stating that "the air we breathe is made up of oxygen, nitrogen and advertising." Advertising is ubiquitous.

It invades all spaces, it is installed in our homes, it sneaks into our electronic devices, fills up social networks and the mass media. He manages to lead our conversations and our thoughts, we reproduce his slogansand we hum their melodies. It is a leading part of our outer reality and our inner world.

Advertising as a social modeling agent

Sociology states that advertising is a social modeling agent because, in addition to influencing purchasing habits,

accelerates the transmission of attitudes and values ​​and can even transform them. It transmits a hegemonic discourse, it makes us a certain reality, a perception that will end up shaping our symbolic thinking and also our desires (Romero, 2011).

However, the vast majority of us will hardly admit to being influenced by advertising. "There are so few people who admit the influence of advertising on their buying habits, as crazy people who admit their madness" (Pérez and San Martín, 1995). Psychology repeatedly shows us that we are wrong if we believe that we are free from its influence.

Advertising illusionism

In the game of seduction, the publicist starts with an advantage. He knows the frustrations, prejudices and intimate longings of his target and makes them the perfect packaging for a product that is supposed to solve any weakness of his client. In this way, advertising not only informs about the qualities that the product possesses, but also endows it with additional values ​​that are not even part of it. It is a kind of illusionistic art, capable of covering the product with a black light that hides or reveals what the advertiser wants to show, not what really exists.

Advertising plays a substitute role when it exchanges symbol and product, getting the consumer to want the symbol with greater impetus than the product itself that he thinks he needs. It is a fetishistic behavior associated with the need for distinction, status and recognition that all humans have. Cosmetics manufacturer Charles Revlon defined this substitution effect perfectly when stated: "in our factory we make lipsticks, in our advertisements we sell hope" (Ibid).

Advertising is class

Advertising appeals to class consciousness with its strategies. Each ad is aimed at a specific target audience or sector of society. Each object is endowed with a symbolic value that serves to create in the consumer an illusion of social advancement if he owns it. At the same time, advertising tries to avoid in its stories scenes that show class division or social conflicts, while forcing a fictional social equality creating products for any purchasing power (Romero, 2011), categorizes types of consumers and satisfies them with products adapted to each target.

Advertising also has a problem-eliminating function, or "happy world" effect. Always try to present a beautiful, playful and fascinating world, in which consumption is related to leisure, beauty and well-being, that is, it presents us with a "side beautiful of life "ignoring any other less appealing reality, de-dramatizing our life everyday.

Know it to prevent its effects

In addition to its economic value, we observe how advertising has a remarkable social value. It is good to learn to recognize your various values ​​to avoid possible harmful effects. For example, learning to detect when it may be being used as a means of ideological pressure, or to recognize its class capacity when it categorizes us according to different types of consumption. Many researchers argue that advertising is alienating because it alienates us by creating new needs, or when we are digested by a certain vision of the world.

Advertising stereotypes and unifies us by proposing models and fashions that we will massively follow, matching our criteria., ideals and tastes. It is the depersonalizing effect of advertising, which homogenizes a society that pretends to be plural but, paradoxically, will take advantage of this unification to try, again, to locate products that seek to provide the buyer with distinction and uniqueness, since we all like to be special (Carnegie, 1936). In this way, it makes us enter a spiral of depersonalization-distinction from which it is difficult to get out in the consumer market in which we live.

“To advertise is to delve into open wounds (...). You mention the defects and we act on each of them. We play with all the emotions and with all the problems, from not being able to stay in the lead, to the desire to be one of the crowd. Each one has a special desire "(Della Femina, cited in Pérez and San Martín, 1995).

Bibliographic references:

• Carnegie, D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people. USA: Simon & Schuster

• Pérez, J.M., San Martín, J. (1995). Sell ​​more than just jeans. Advertising and education in values. Communicate (5) 21-28.

• Romero, M.V. (2011). The advertising language. The permanent seduction. Spain: Ariel.