The Role Of Persuasion In Advertising

Effective advertising is, almost always, persuasive advertising; and advertising that does not seek to persuade is really missing an opportunity. In a competitive environment those who persuade best are those most likely to win. Persuasion is always important, even where the competition is inept. Persuasion is the most neglected area in advertising texts.

The extant literature of advertising seems to focus almost exclusively on the functional areas, such as the construction of a campaign, media buying, budgeting, testing and measurement, analysis of famous campaigns and the ideas of eminent copywriters. It is, abundantly, a technical-professional literature, possibly discussing some psychological concepts at the margin –but remaining at the

Persuasion is becoming more important in advertising. A major reason is that competitors are finding it easier to destroy any functional or price advantage of a product. A firm may continue to have an advantage of a well-established system of distribution that cannot be easily imitated but the goodwill developed with the distributors can be foiled by changes in their buying policies or a decline in consumer preference for the product. As a result companies are pushing to reactivate long-neglected methods of reaching the consumer, like sports sponsorship, videos ,billboards ,whether at airports or in doctors’ waiting rooms. According to The
Economist, product placement has been taken to a whole new level in the James Bond movie Die Another Day, promoting everything from ‘Heineken beer to Omega watches and (invisible) Aston Martin cars. BMW cars are even starring in Internet mini-movies.

However, it is not a sufficient condition since much depends on the persuasiveness of what is conveyed. Yet, achieving visibility is crucial and much creativity is being exercised on doing so. Medtronic in the United States has promoted its device for relieving incontinence by prominently displaying its slogan in restrooms ‘Bladder control problems shouldn’t control your life. You should.’
For many advertisers, attention getting has become the focus of importance, so persuasive content is hardly considered, on the assumption that visibility via repeated exposure effect is all that is needed. While it is true that with repeated exposure comes familiarity, and with familiarity usually comes increased liking, this level of advertising expenditure assumes deep pockets, and also that the increased liking is sufficient in itself to trigger a preference. On occasion the need to get attention leads to the adoption of ‘shock’