In the older days, advertising was nothing but introducing and selling products. It was mostly informational. As technology improves, images began to appear on advertising instead of just text. Advertisers realize that human brain process words and images differently. People are more easily influenced by images than words. This is the period when advertising changes from text-based to image-based form. Advertising began to change from simply selling products to provoking human imaginations.
Advertising attracts attention from the consumers by creating an idealized dream life. It shapes an image of perfection that links ideally with people’s “desires”. Their desires are also created by the advertising. The repetitive advertising intends to brainwash its potential consumers that those products that they are selling are needs to them. As their desires intensify, lots of luxuries become necessities to them.
Some people that have a clear mind may realise that advertisements are just tricks that companies use to make us buy their products. However, there are some people that really believe in it. For instance, international brands like Louis Vuitton or Gucci. The products of these brands are actually more or less the same as those from the streets that only cost less than a hundred dollars. It just that these are big brands that spend expensive investments of advertising on magazines, buses or billboards. They use supermodels in their advertisements in order to give people an image of beauty. They want the customers to believe that buying their products will help them turn as beautiful as the models. These big brands may also invite some celebrities as their spokesperson and help them advertising their products. People will then follow their idols and buy the products. Advertisers know that people wants to be like their idols and will listen to what they tell them to do. Therefore, they made use of this and create more and more advertising to attract more people to believe it. These are all the tricks that companies use to make consumers buy their products. It is just because people are easily affected by the images that these advertising create and increase their desires.
Some brands make use of advertising propaganda, such as Nike. In the advertisements, Nike uses a simple but effective phrase, “Just Do It”. It also invites some famous sportsman to advertise their products. In such way, people may think that using their products, for example, running shoes, can help them run faster. Some people, especially youngsters, will believe in these advertising and buy their products. This is exactly what these companies want to get in return of spending such an expensive investment on advertising.