Just look at the amount of people who hold psychological degrees in the field of marketing, the amount of psychological content in marketing syllabi and the use of these psychological techniques in the day to day conceptualisation of adverts - doesn't that seem weird to you?
Marketing is the practice of punting a product better than the next, using choice words, celebrity faces and good ol' marketing tricks to come across that it's product is the best.
Most of the accepted psychology theories at the moment rely heavily on the role of learning in the development of the individual, particularly observational learning.
Observational learning (also known as vicarious learning, social learning, modelling, or monkey see, monkey do) is a type of learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating new behaviour executed by others.
Advertising companies make use of this knowledge of human behaviour everyday, that's why we see celebrities in almost every advert, that's why we see ads relating to society (the more similar the modeller of the behaviour to you, or who you want to be - the more likely you are to accept the behaviour they display and further reproduce those behaviours).
Yes, we all have choice, we are all free to make those choices but, what about those people that don't or can't care about choice? Who only choose to conform (as is evident in our school going children and those individuals with low self esteems), or the individuals who can't make informed decisions (like kids).
I don't know about anyone else but it disturbs me to think that we have a society today that behaves (on the basis of what they know, what they have learnt) to the standards set by the box in their living room, to the lines in a newspaper and to the sexy lingerie model punting water on a billboard. Heck, even our eating speed is regulated by these nuts - think about the music restaurants play, faster the music the faster you eat, we are not impervious to manipulation!
The use of children in ads is also becoming virulent. Children, here forth known as the "teen market" or "developing adult niche", have become the new unexplored terrain of the opinion makers/marketers/advertisers. Next time you watch TV, count the amount of ads with kids - it's scary.
Kids can't make informed choices, not just yet, and the same goes for the majority of the population whose mind is not so much on how much it costs or what benefits it has but rather, what impetus it adds to their social standing and self esteem.
Point is, if we truly want a society that is free, it should be based on a culture of complete knowledge to all, (kind of like what is happening with that HIPPO insurance quote system).
Only then can we really discern what the best product in its niche is and what merely enculturation of society towards conformism is.
If we all use Neutrogena like Vannessa Hudgens maybe we can also look pretty too mummy.
Mummy doesn't know where she went wrong... Do you?
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Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.