Advertising - Mind Control

Advertising - Mind Control?IntroductionAccording to The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), (The body which represents advertising agencies) advertising is defined as the means of providing the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects at the lowest possible cost.The expression mind control refers to any technique that influences the thinking process of an individual, without the individuals awareness.This essay will establish that advertising is definitely a form of mind control and advertisements are carefully choreographed to appeal to the subconscious mind of human beings, a concept popularly known as subliminal advertising, by examining five successful advertisement campaigns undertaken by Nike, McDonalds, Apple, De Beers and Pepsi. All five advertisements have a clever combination of unique logos and slogans that have gained a mantra-like quality over the years. Additionally, they employ various principles of consumer psychology such as celebrity endorsements, instant identification and recreation of reality.Nike - Just Do It!In the 1980s Nike, the sports shoe manufacturer faced stiff competition from Reebok and had to come up with a strong campaign to outdo its rival. With the Just Do It campaign and strong product, Nike was able to increase its share of the sport-shoe business in the United States from 18 percent to 43 percent, from $877 million in worldwide sales to $9.2 billion in the ten years between 1988 and 1998. Nike spent $300 million on overseas advertising alone; most of it centered around the Just Do It campaign.

Researchers believe that the reason for the runaway success of the campaign was the clever use of brand management technique by Nike.

The slogan Just Do It has a universal appeal and can be equally persuasive to a fitness enthusiast and a couch potato contemplating an investment in running shoes.

The swoosh logo is symbolic of a carefree and positive attitude that would definitely have a subliminal appeal.

Several sporting celebrities such as Bo Jackson (baseball, American football), John McEnroe (tennis) and in later years, Michael Jordan (basketball) endorsed the product, assuring the consumer of its durability.

The Nike campaign took on a new religion of brand consciousness and broke advertising sound barriers with its indelible Swoosh, Just Do It slogan and deified sports figures. Nike managed the deftest of marketing tricks: to be both anti-establishment and mass market, to the tune of $9.2 billion dollars in sales in 1997.[Jolie Soloman When Nike Goes Cold Newsweek, March 30, 1998]

The success of the campaign was largely due to Nike cashing in on the mid 80s craze for fitness in United States retains and making the consumer feel that he must take charge of his fitness with the compelling Just Do It slogan. Till date, Nike has retained its ability to modify consumer behavior with its advertisement strategies such as Nike+ applications and its tie up with Apple iPod, proving that the company is willing to just do it.

Macdonalds - im lovin it

The campaign, launched on September 2, 2003 has the distinction of being McDonalds first worldwide campaign, launched outside the United States in Germany, with a single message to customers in over 100 countries.

The campaign featured five new cutting-edge, high energy television commercials that reflected current lifestyles and culture. The five new im lovin it launch commercials were shot in 12 languages and a variety oflocations including the Czech Republic, Brazil, South Africa and Malaysia. They depicted how consumers from around the world feel about the brand and the way McDonalds fits into their lives.

McDonalds had the advantage of possessing an iconic golden arches logo since 1962 and the campaigns simple slogan coined in 2003 made its way into the everyday lingo of people all over the world. Celebrity singer Justin Timberlake endorsed the campaign by providing the vocals and appearing in a few of the TV commercials.

This campaign was intended to convey McDonalds commitment to finding fresh and new ways to ensure customer satisfaction. A decade later, the campaign is still going strong with the company using the common slogan and customizing their promotions for different countries.

Since January 2011, McDonalds restaurants started doubling as a catering hall in Hong Kong, as couples could throw their wedding reception under the Golden Arches. Hong Kong has the distinction of being the first city in the world to roll out this fast-food nuptial package.The latest customization by McDonalds is the plan to introduce of vegetarian-only outlets in India. McDonalds has already removed pork and beef from the menus in the Indian outlets and introduced the Maharaja Mac and McAloo Tikki to cater to local dietary preferences. A 2006 poll found that about 40 per cent of Indians do not eat meat, and McDonald's is eager to tap that 500-million-strong market.(AP Published: 12:06 September 5, 2012)From being known as the fast food chain that brought the hamburger to the world to the perception of being a vegetarian outlet at pilgrimage towns in India, McDonalds advertisement campaigns have certainly utilized subliminal advertising techniques to their advantage.

De Beers

A young copywriter working forN. W. Ayer & Son, Frances Gerety, coined the famous advertising line "A Diamond is Forever" in 1947. Through its bold advertising, diamond giant DeBeers did something extraordinary - it managed to convince generations of men and women that the only acceptable symbol of an engagement was a diamond ring.Prior to the "A Diamond is Forever" campaign - which launched in 1948 and was named by Advertising Age as the most effective campaign of the 20th Century - diamond rings weren't synonymous with marriage or engagement. 19th Century literature does not have any reference to diamond engagement rings.But DeBeers changed that.De Beers launched the multi-million dollar "A Diamond is For Ever" advertising campaign to rekindle the demand. Diamonds aren't particularly rare, but they are the hardest substance on earth - a quality that lends itself to notions of eternity. In pointing that out, and infusing it with notions of romance, DeBeers literally changed Western culture. It's now said that over 80% of American marriages are formalized with a diamond engagement ring. The DeBeers campaign is a classic illustration of subliminal advertising whereby a cultural phenomenon was created through advertising.

Apple Think DifferentIn August 1997, Jobs the controversial cofounder of Apple Computers returned to take charge of a company that was floundering in a combination of financial woes, loss of consumer confidence and incoherent advertisement campaigns. Its share of the computer market had plummeted from a peak of 14 percent in 1993 to below 3 percent four years later.

Apples core consumers were designers and desktop publishers, educators and students, and home users whose undivided loyalty had seen the company through its worst years. But with the publicized record of Apples financial troubles, many of them were not purchasing new Apple systems for fear that the company would soon fold, leaving them with obsolete machines.

In his article, Tom Hormby notes, As Steve Jobs slowlyconsolidated control of the company, one of his top priorities was a rejuvenation of Apple's image. This ultimately took the form of the immensely successful (and long lived)Think Differentcampaign.

The Think Different phrase provided an opportunity to celebrate the creativity of core Apple uses but also the distinctiveness of Apple in the computing world, responding to IBMs historic campaign motto, Think. The commercial consisted of the black and-white images of the 12 visionary thinkers including (in order) Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr.,Richard Branson, John Lennon (with Yoko Ono), R. Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picassoand the reading of a manifesto written in free verse and read by actor Richard Dreyfuss.The commercial ends with an image of a young girl opening her closed eyes, as if to see the possibilities before her.

The people who were selected to appear in the Think Different campaign were bold thinkers, men and women who had changed the worlds in which they moved. Think Different celebrates the soul of the Apple brandthat creative people with passion can change the world for the better,Jobs told the Wall Street Journal Europe in April 1998.

The choice of the grammatically debatable tagline Think Different rather than Think Differently was deliberate, underlining the philosophy of thinking outside the box.

The campaign had a positive effect on Apples bottom line. In April 1998 Apple reported its second straight profitable quarter after nearly two years and $2 billion in losses. Apple attributed the increasing sales to the Think Different campaign. Apples market share rose to 4.1 percent.

Apples Think Different campaign is arguably the most influential advertisement campaign ever. Ironically it was a campaign that as Brandweek noted, was not targeting its message to everyone, yet has captured the imagination of the entire world in the fifteen years since its inception.

Pepsi Live for Now

Pepsi has cultivated the image of being the younger generations choice of coke since its Pepsi Generation advertisement campaign in the 1960s.The "Pepsi Generation" was one of the first and best known instances of what came to be known as "lifestyle marketing". It focused on portraying Pepsi drinkers as possessing desirable qualities such as youth, rather than on the characteristics of the product itself. Its current advertisement campaigns cater to the aspirations of the Millennials and the current tag line Live for now captures the sentiment of its audience.Over the years, Pepsi has used and continues to use a number of celebrities for general market and targeted advertising. Pepsiis running Crowd Surfing, a television commercial set in a San Sebastian beach party. Footballers Lionel Messi, Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres, Frank Lampard, Sergio Agero and Jack Wilshere join in a game of football supported by thousands of partygoers, with music provided by DJ Calvin Harris. Music is Lets Go, by Calvin Harris, featuring Ne-yo. Pepsi also caters to the female teen demographic by featuring Nikki Minaj in another commercial. As Robert Klara, a journalist remarks in his article Perspective: Generation Appreciation, in Adweek (Oct 13, 2011), sometimes selling the demo profile of a product rather than the product itself sparks connection and the true genius behind Pepsi generation was that its membership was a state of mind more than a date of birth.ConclusionThe five advertisement campaigns chosen for discussion were for different products, with widely different core markets and range from the 1940s to 2012 in terms of conception. Despite the obvious differences, the shared philosophy behind these advertisements is the extremely successful persuasion techniques adopted, sometimes with unimagined reach. Undoubtedly, they have created a mind shift in the target audience but impacted society in general by highlighting new ways of thinking or creating a desire to adopt a certain way of thinking. Is this not mind-control?