If you think that advertisers are there to persuade you, you may want to think again. In another excellent documentary by Douglas Rushkoff titled The Persuaders, published in 2004 by FRONTILINE, Rushkoff dives into the advertising world to explore “how the cultures of marketing and advertising have come to influence not only what Americans buy, but also how they view themselves and the world around them.”
The more messages advertisers create, the more resistant we, as consumers, become. It’s a paradox that at some point must crumble. There is only so much room on the planet to place an advertisement and I would say that advertisers will be maxed out on space within five years if they don’t change their ways or we don’t change our minds. Out of the hundreds of years of advertising, it’s unlikely they will change their minds. In The Persuaders, we learn that advertisers aren’t necessarily trying to get us to consume their product, they are trying to get us to change our minds; about life, about conformity, about individuality, about power, and anything meaningful.
Advertisers realize that once they are in the game, they can’t stop; they must continue to bombard possible consumers with reminders, not to buy their product, but to buy their brand. Take Tide for example, it’s not about getting clothes clean anymore. You can buy any laundry detergent and it will do the job. What they advertise for is that you buy your way into their brand, into the tribe of Tide users, into the idea that “Tide Knows Fabric Best,” so you know best.
By now you may be thinking that none of what has been said offers support to the assumption that advertisers aren’t here to persuade you. That is exactly what advertisers want; they want you to know less about yourself and more about what you can be, feel, and think by buying what they offer. What it comes down to is that we see the advertisements that we want to associate ourselves with. We don’t want to have just a Mac computer; we want to have the feeling of luxury and the title of “early innovator” as all Mac users have. Advertisements aren’t here to persuade us, they are there for us to persuade ourselves. We convince ourselves that this is the image we want of ourselves – Mac user – or maybe you want to feel like an upper-class badass, so you buy a BMW. We see the advertisements we want, we persuade ourselves.
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