It is known that, in the last decade, consumers have been bombed with aproximately 5000 daily advertising impacts, alguns d’ells carregats d’emocions. And yes, it would be sarcastic if we said it's few. With all those impacts, how can brands pretend to be in our head?
It might seem impossible that they can have an actual influence in us and in our purchase decision: but believe me, they do, and now I'll tell you how they make it: summing emotions to their personality. In order to be effectives, brands have to get as close to us as possible and, for this, they need to break a barrier. As humans, we're capable of saying someone's great while hating it from our guts; this can also happen with brands.
The strategy used for avoiding this biases consists in the market and target study: with the first one, the competence is studied so they can stand out or benefit; with the second one the subject of study is the personality, routines, attitudes, likes and more characteristics of the targets (this is applied either looking for the same target or for a new one).
Emotions: the Troy Horse
Once this data is gathered and solid, the aim is to generate a message to be remembered for our target. The ways of making this are diverse and can include stylistic resource combinations.: we can make a character that represents the target and put it in a product emotive plot, we can generate a comic and hyperbolic situation to remark product characteristics, we can put the product on a secondary role and make characters represent brand's values... We have as much examples as the ones on TV.
But, this said, why is it interesting to make this non-sense relations? Answer's simple, because it fills us with emotion and we will remember it. According to a 2012 study in Universitat Ramón Llull, la majoria de neurones encarregades de la memòria es troben a l’hipocamp, al córtex prefrontal i a la amígdala, zones també relacionades amb percepcions emotives.
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For long or short term, if an advertisments touches our heart, make us laugh, awaken curiosity or surprise us... it is very possible that our brain puts it in a little box in our sensorial memory. If we see it a few more times, it may get to the short-term memory. If it is one of those cult advertisements or brands, it may get even to our long-term memory (like, for example, One Million).
Conclusions: what are we buying?
With this said, if a big part of what is sold to us comes represented by emotions, why do we buy it in such a convinced way without taking this into account? Because we feel that, between all the options for one product, we will be choosing the one that represents us emotionally. When we buy a Suchard nougat thinking of the party or the family lunch we're making, we'll think that we are getting closer to those festive and fresh environments represented in their advertisements. When we buy a BMW, we'll be getting closer to the luxurious and sportive driving ideal, or maybe we'll prefer Seat and its more young and cheerful attitudes.
But, of course, majority of cases don't work like that. We'll simply enter the supermarket, buy whatever we need and we'll not think what represents us. But when our brain notices certain products, will unconciously label them with the already processed emotions from its advertisements. Then, the purchase decision will determine if those impacts and emotions where effective, or maybe weren't enough.
We've been several years impacted by advertisments and we know all the options we have when buying sodas, cars, online clothing, furniture... But now, we also know which brand is economic and familiar, which one is exclusive and high quality, which one is quality-price faced. And also, we know which has a young and dynamic spirit, which one is reserved for special moments with family, which one is the one to buy when we get a full-time job...
Brands and emotions come together, it's been a long time since we don't only buy products, we also buy the emotions those spread when they get into our lifes (at least what we believed is spreaded from the brand's comunication).
What do you think? Do you believe brands should abandon emotional messages and centre in utilty? Creieu que això pot esbiaixar el que les persones pensem de nosaltres mateixes? I await you at the comments!
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