There are two or three days in each cycle of the moon when I may have to work at maintaining my usual demeanor of sweetness and light and this particular day was one of them! It had not been helped by a news item on a one day strike by teachers (of which I am one), in support of our pay, pensions and conditions and a comment from the Government (otherwise known as the bosses) that the strike did not have the support of “most ordinary teachers” as 6 of the 7 teachers’ unions had continued in negotiations with the Government – although my union represents about three quarters of the total UK teaching force – and only 40% of our membership had taken part in the strike ballot without mentioning that 92 % had voted to strike.
I was therefore “tuned in” to statistical trickery when I stopped at my local corner shop.
I only wanted a packet of mints as my stomach was a little unsettled, not bad, just a little unsettled and I felt my breath might not be nice. As they are mainly sugar, I rarely buy sweets and declined when he produced a pack of 4 tubes and announced it was a “special offer”. When I declined and said I just wanted 1 tube he persisted saying “these are cheaper!” I closed my eyes and mentally counted to 10; took a deep breath, fixed him with a steady, unwavering gaze and said firmly “Just one tube, please!” he produced the mints, I paid and left.
We face this situation repeatedly almost each and every day (the sales situation not my delicate state) and many of us are totally unaware that advertisers push the English Language, math and statistics into a state of dishonesty that beggars belief. Others, seeing the more blatant aspects of advertising, think that this imbues their own consumer choices with rationality and financial intelligence.
Advertisers know better. Few people admit to being greatly influenced by advertising but surveys and sales figures show that a well-designed advertising campaign has dramatic effects. The mind blowing sums of money spent by the broad spectrum of industry and retailers promoting themselves and an enormous range of consumer goods and services also suggests that they believe in the efficacy of advertising and it is not just the world of consumer goods – how much money is spent on advertising politicians and political parties? Here you get a product as misleading and flawed as the advertising. I also have a theory that the poorest product usually has the biggest advertising budget.
Words can be very subtle and when supported by the right imagery are enormously attractive often causing a physical reaction in people viewing the advertisement (I was thinking more burger than women and did you know that beautiful women are usually added to appeal to we girls?). There is much evidence that advertising works below the level of conscious awareness and it works even on those who claim immunity to its message even while being laughed at, belittled, and all but ignored. A person unaware of advertising's claim on him or her is precisely the one most defenseless against the ad writer’s attack. Advertisers delight in an audience which believes ads to be harmless nonsense, for such an audience is rendered defenseless by its belief that there is no attack taking place.
It is possible to examine advertising and raise the level of awareness about the persuasive techniques used in ads. One can scrutinize them in microscopic detail; studied to detect their psychological hooks; even to gauge values and hidden desires of the common person. Their use of symbols, color, and imagery may also be important in understanding their impact on us but perhaps the simplest and most direct way to study ads is through an analysis of the language of advertisements.
Advertisements will usually assert one or more factors concerning the product advertised which establishes superiority over rival products. It often takes careful examination of the words, including those in small print, to reveal claims that are misleading or to identify as possibly useful, information claims that are true.
In a few cases the advertisement may promote a genuinely superior product but consumers should be far more aware that while many claims are downright lies others, a very large proportion, use factual statements which are neither bold lies nor helpful consumer information. They balance on the narrow line between truth and falsehood by a careful choice of words.
Think of “Good” - In English grammar, the word “good” can be applied to goods and services as having the right or desired qualities. The comparative, “Better”, means a higher level of such qualities while the superlative “Best” means “of the most excellent or outstanding or desirable kind”.
In advertising, the word “Best” is routinely applied across product or service brands with no real attempt to establish a difference in the qualities of the product or service. “Better”, in terms of how a product or service compares with a rival is avoided as companies may be challenged in court to prove any superiority and often questionable mathematics come to the fore. Advertising is used to create the illusion of superiority. The largest advertising budgets are devoted to parity products such as gasoline, cigarettes, beer and soft drinks, soaps, and various headache and cold remedies.
To create the necessary illusion of superiority, advertisers usually resort to one or more of the following basic techniques. Each is common and easy to identify.
By LilMo