Friday, 11 September 2015

Joy or Fear ? What works in Advertising ?

We go through a lot of advertisements on our television which invoke us to use the product out of the fear that something bad will happen to us if we do not . Like a shampoo company would sell its shampoo by saying use our shampoo to prevent dandruff . And this really works well in this case . A classic Indian example where a lot of priests would say that you need to get a certain ritual done or you have to make a certain charity else something wrong will happen to your or your business .

On the other hand we look at advertisements which evoke the positive sentiment in us and hence compels us to use the product . Looking at chocolates , which deliver the message of the joy of having that candy , the pleasure you receive from this bar of chocolate is unmatched . The way condoms are sold , the focus on the joy of using a condom , rather than saying what happens if you do not use one .

One very successful campaign in India is the Polio campaign , which say ' Do Boond Zindagi Ki ( 2 drops of life ) ' it is marketing a heavily negative feature , that is they are spreading the message about the disease , but rather than focusing on what will happen if you do not get the vaccination it rather focuses on the Freedom from fear . They focus on how just 2 drops of medication can help you live a healthy life.

So what is it that causes a positive message to work in a few cases , but in some cases a negative message ? Is it totally subjective a call , or does it come with experience only ? The worst , is it trial and error ?

So what happens when we try to communicate through a fear psychosis , I believe it works to a certain extent but it stops being effective when it is overdone . For example there a graphic images on packs of cigarettes which are supposed to serve as a deterrent , but till date i have not come across anyone who has stopped smoking looking at those images . Maybe these images serve as a deterrent to the entry level smokers , which I would not deny and hence would want the images to still be there.  

So what happens in case of those regular smokers ?
What happens is when the message gets to extreme there occurs a break down in the communication , i.e the communication is not processed by them . They would willingly look at the image but just would not want to process it. They know that if they start processing the image , looking at it will make them uncomfortable and hence they would shy away from it at times physically at times mentally. To explain it further lets take a personal example , how many people you know who would be comfortable looking at a cut ? compared to the number of people who would be comfortable looking at a chopped leg ?

So this is what I have learnt , fear psychosis does work , and works effectively but only when taken to a certain extent beyond which it fails to work at all. It like how a teenager would react to a little caution and fear , but when he starts feeling that his freedom is curbed , he would start revolting and go in the totally opposite direction.

Thank You.

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