Mixed Signals is Erin Straza’s weekly musing about marketing miscellany in advertising, branding, and messaging.

I’m a sucker for fancy packaging. Add witty messaging to that, and I have a hard time resisting the pull to purchase. That’s because product messaging and packaging is designed to speak to our strongest desires and needs—things like love, acceptance, pleasure, and safety. A well-crafted message beckons the audience to try Product XYZ to get one or more of those needs met.

Most of us believe the messaging may warm our hearts and minds toward a product, but few believe that advertising influences us specifically. We all want to believe that we wouldn’t be manipulated by messaging. But really, would companies spend all that money if it didn’t make a dent on consumer behavior? As consumers, we must come to grips with the influence of advertising upon our thought processes and purchase decisions.

Research has revealed how the brain responds when people view advertising. In an  NPR report,  Maya Cueva explains what she learned from Ben Hayden, a neuroscientist who studies decision-making.

“You can literally witness this battle going on,” says Hayden. He told [Cueva] about researchers at Caltech who scanned the brains of people on diets while offering them junk food. A certain region of the brain lit up when the dieters resisted junk food. Hayden says that self-control region is in a tug of war with the parts of the brain affected by ads. “When advertising comes into the picture, it kind of is the opposite of self-control,” Hayden says. “It encourages you to just go out and buy it, just do it.”

So it’s true: Advertising has a strong, subconscious influence. Perhaps instead of blaming our behaviors on the devil we can now say, “The ad made me do it.” But does that mean we have no power to override the messages that encourage us to indulge or shop or drink or collect?

Hayden disputes that notion, stating that when you think critically about how ads work, you “create new patterns in [your] brain that strengthen the self-control regions.” Sounds a lot like Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

There’s no way to avoid the intake of the world’s messaging in regard to products, values, and priorities without completely disengaging and becoming an eremite. But each time we take those messages and run them through the filter of God’s Word, we strengthen our brain to stand firm in what is really true.

After all that, we may still choose to purchase, but the choice is still ours to bear.

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Erin Straza

Erin Straza (CAPC partnerships manager and Persuasion podcast host) is a donor communications strategist for nonprofits. Her first book is titled Comfort Detox: Finding Freedom from Habits That Bind You (InterVarsity Press, 2017); she writes from the Illinois flatlands where she lives with her husband, Mike.
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2 Comments

  1. In the early ’90s it was discovered that twenty-somethings, those in the generation called X, seemed jaded and rather immune to the advertising formulae that worked well in the Cosby decade, the boisterous big-hair and yuppie-driven ’80s. After growing up with commercial after commercial fraught with promises that could not be delivered upon, my generation grew to resent marketing and saw through the lie of most of it. At least on the surface of it anyway.

    So advertising changed. It became more obscure. More self-deprecating. Harder to understand. Not that there hadn’t been this kind of advertising all along (cf. Volkswagon ads in the late-’60s), but it seemed to take on a renewed vigour in the face of a cynical market—exactly the kind of disillusioned consumers to whom such advertising flourishes. Gen-Xers supposedly found joy and accomplishment from deconstructing smart ads. That joy transformed into interest in a company that cared enough about them to market directly at their obscure, self-referential, and devastatingly witty needs. Or something like that.

    And so advertisers duped Generation X into becoming consumers and supporting the hegemony just like advertisers tricked their parents and uncles into doing the same. Only this time they did it by preying upon the very thing that could set them apart from the generation of twenty-somethings that preceded them: their discontent and resistance to a society that wronged them.

    Personally, I’ll say that I am not largely affected by advertising (which strikes within expectation, as I sit in the very tail end of Generation X). Now certainly I will purchase things I see advertised, but generally they are the kinds of things that I already have desire for but just did not know the product was available. Like when I see that Brian K. Vaughan is releasing a new series or that Valve is releasing a new episode of Half-Life content. But then, it doesn’t even need to be any sort of flashy ad or anything for stuff like that to sell me. Just seeing the words “Haruki Murakami is releasing a new book” is enough to sell me on the upcoming novel. I “fall” to advertising that hocks what I would buy anyway; so I don’t really consider that a loss.

    The other way advertising affects me is that it alerts me to new products that will be made available to my discerning mind. This, in itself, can never sell me on a product. It can, however, induce me to research a product. When I heard someone mention BioShock, I thought, Great. Another mediocre games that everyone’s getting crazy excited about. Still, there was enough buzz that I thought I’d check it out for myself. I watched demos, production trailers, read about the game—and only after all that did it seem like a game I wouldn’t mind purchasing. It was the same with World of Warcraft. I saw an ad and heard some hype. I wasn’t interested in purchasing but was intrigued enough to check it out. Videos, reviews, analyses. A lot of stuff went into my decision to purchase a game that initially sounded utterly unappetizing. So, while the advertisement did have some influence (i.e., it alerted me to the product’s existence), it certainly didn’t sell me on the product.

    Advertising, I guess, just rings hollow for me. I don’t purchase image. I don’t buy into what is being sold. I don’t buy into either image or need. Even though I can really appreciate the work and ingenuity that goes into many advertising campaigns, my appreciation of irony or cynicism or wit doesn’t make a repped company’s product any more enticing to me. I might buy [Clothing Company]’s jeans if their models look comfortable in the clothes and when I see them in the store the clothes still look comfortable. And if I appreciate the aesthetic vibe I get from the clothing (this is only image in the mundane sense, not the identity sense). At best, traditional advertising can alert me to something for further inspection. At worst, it can make a product look entirely unappetizing.

    Funny that. Advertising can’t win me over but it can alienate me.

    I will say this, however, there is a kind of advertising that when properly achieved, swims so seamlessly into the conscious mind that it cannot be detected or reacted against. They sometimes call it viral marketing (probably when its a direct and definable operation by a campaign), but in reality, it’s just word of mouth. In this way, I may actually be more affected by advertising than I think. For instance, if a number of people are sucked into a product via common advertising (the commodification of image and need), then it’s entirely likely that they will talk about the product with friends and acquaintances. The more people are talking favourably about a product, the more likely it is that the person non plussed by the advertising will actually be willing to give the product a shot. While I can’t note any purchases that I have recently made that could have been introduced through a concerted effort by companies to virally market, I can point to at least one example by which a specific product became known to me as the one I wanted (almost wholly upon reputation of the product as conveyed by others).

    My Vespa. This was the biggest purchase I’d made in recent years. Nearing six thousand dollars. And while I’m happy with the purchase, it’s rather curious why I didn’t research other company’s scooters at the time of purchase. I wanted a Vespa, plain and simple. Someone told me I could get a Honda for a couple thousand less and I simply responded with, “That’s okay. I want an Italian job.” Why exactly was that?

    If I look back, my (along with many Americans’) first experience of the Italian motorscooter involved Gregory Peck as he raced around in Roman Holiday. For some, that was enough (just like the explosion of Mini Coopers in recent years rests solely on the shoulders of The Bourne Identity—supplemented by the more flashy but less memorable Italian Job). For me, it was merely one among many sparks. Then there was a good friend a few years back who was dying for a Vespa. I think her interest was infectious. And I really can’t guess what influenced her, though I’d hazard that the slick European image the vehicle conveys wouldn’t be wholly excluded from the formula. One more seed. After that, I started seeing them zipping around my beach community. They looked fun and convenient. One more step. Then I read the works of Chynna Clugston, Blue Monday and Scooter Girl and I was sold (even though in Scooter Girl, one of the top bikes was a Lambretta and not a Vespa—I had mistakenly imagined that Lambretta was just a model of Vespa).

    A few months later, my car blew up (nearly blew up for reals—I am lucky to not be crisped) and I was in the market for new transportation. So I did research. I read all about Vespas and their gas mileage, power, and reliability. I went down to the showroom a few times. I checked forums and websites. I read up on the history of the company. I made an informed choice. And yet…

    I still hadn’t checked into any other brand of motorscooter. For some reason, in my head, there was only one worthy brand—if scooters were worthy at all (and they are!). The Wasp. The Vespa. The Italian lines and style. It had to be the Excalibur grey LX150 that I’ve driven nearly every day for the last six years. And while I can’t attribute that purchase to traditional advertising in any immediate sense (as I’ve never actually seen a Vespa advertisement), word of mouth and a general cultural aura about the thing* infiltrated me and opened my wallet.
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    *note: It’s fascinating how often I get comments along the lines of “Oh wow! Is that a Vespa? I’ve wanted one of those since I was a teenager!” and “Man, those are some of the coolest looking things on the road today.” I have to admit that while I don’t know what kind of image (identity) a Vespa betrays, I do admit to enjoying the feeling of riding around on one.

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