Thread: Advertising - How effective is it?

If you've been around even a day, you'd notice that there are ads everywhere; from bus stops and billboards, to the internet, and even ear-rings or tattooes. Companies pump out billions towards advertising every single year, even on the most minute details like effectively contrasting colours or perfecting jingles. Some companies can have whole offices dedicated to just one particular advertisement, which can't be extremely productive.

Does advertising work, and if so, to what extent? Is it worth the phenomonal expenses? Does it give companies the edge it needs, or have minimal impact? What makes a product's particular ad memorable? Hell, do people even notice any more?

Hmmm, I think the results of advertising depends on how much impact they've got on people - how many people actually bother to take a look at it, and how many people think of it positively. I know what I'm saying is cliche, but it's the truth.

Take the Super Bowl ads for instance. Pretty much every company existing and breathing is DYING to get their ads on TV that day and in most cases they go through all the trouble to make catchy new ads just for the Super Bowl broadcasting. It's because they KNOW people are going to watch TV that particular day and since it became such a well-known phenomenon, people actually look up the Internet to check on new ads especially made. It's already shown to have a huge effect.

But that's one special day every year. I don't really know about the same old ads that appear here and there everyday... unless they make people crack up or bring out "WHOA!!" responses.

Take this everyday ad for example.



As you can see, they attached special skins on the subway and made it look like part of a DS. It's pretty creative and people would definitely notice that. In this case, I'd say it's worth all the money for ads.

Generally, I think there is a difference between a company that doesn't advertise a product/service and one that does.
At least the latter would have more people knowing about it, which is a start.

Catchy designs or words can make advertisements effective. They try to do that especially for public service announcements.

Advertisement is how companies let people know about what they are selling. If they didnt advertise, how would people know the product existed? Yes,advertisement works and a good advertisement makes the product appealing to consumers and makes them want to buy it, therefore making the compony that sells it a profit, which is the whole point.

Well, look at companies with huge competitors; Let's say Puma and Nike. No matter how much advertising Puma do, or how little Nike do, Nike will get the most sales out of the "loyalty customers" and the fact that it's become a house-brand product, where just about every house in the western world has its products. Not to mention the fact "Nikes" has become a daily expression to describe football boots.

In that case, Puma is actually wasting money on advertising and probably isn't making anywhere near as much net profit. I'm not sure how much this example can be applied nowadays, but think 5 years back.

Oh, yes. Advertising works. Especially eye-catching advertising such as that picture in the OP. A movie with an eye-catching trailer campaign is probably going to have a better opening weekend than a film that doesn't. But as time passes, word of mouth can become more powerful than advertising. Advertising very much helps out a product or movie or whatever in the beginning, which can help in the long run, but there are many other factors that come into play as well.

(Publicist IQ / Consumer IQ) * 0,183

If the publicity is good, then yes, it is. Good publicity will know who to strike, when to strike and how to strike, which makes it effective. It's not by chance that we see lots of advertisement for kids, for example; they are easy to manipulate and usually score on buying the products they crave for, because, unfortunately, parents nowadays just want their children to stop their "BUY ME THIS" show-off. Not to say that adults themselves aren't also good targets, of course. If a product gets publicity, it's obvious people are more likely to look at it and think "Mmm, maybe I do need this..." when they obviously don't - usually, we know what we need without having to be reminded of it. It's a wonderful world of manipulation and money, and which is definitively healthy enough to increase/improve with the years.

I'm going to agree with what Ghaskan said. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry, and people in some countries don't realize or don't care. They honestly don't mind that they're being manipulated by sumbliminal messaging, and somehow don't really care that they're letting big-time corporations dictate their lives. Believe it or not, “advertising” originally was a bazaar trader yelling at the market square for people to get some of whatever his product was—a simple transfer from the mouth—the direction advertising should've stayed on.