Design Principles in Advertisements (IV.)

This series analyzes the design principles often used in advertisements and discuss how these principles are used to attract attention, influence the opinion or convince the potential consumer for purchase. This is the final post in the series.

Bad advertising is still advertising. Or is it?

This part will show several anti-examples of advertisements.  The real advertisement is supposed to take advantage of the well known design principles and make people believe the communicated message. However, these several anti advertisements seriously violate these rules. The end effect is that people are not attracted, but on contrary are repulsed by these poorly designed advertisements.

Very first thing that will hit your eyes on the image above are those amateur photos. Author of the advertisement just googled some images of fat people, cropped their heads and directly used the images in the advertisement. The images are cropped really poorle, that there is even a part of a hand of a third person.
Comparison is something we are really good at. We can easily spot that the woman on the image lost some weight. But did she also change a color of her skin? It seems that product this advertisement tries to sell is not even working, because they used two different people to demonstrate the weight reduction.
Another issue is wrong is selection of color combinations. The red and green together does not make any good. It makes a kind of blur around the letters and it is quite difficult to read.
Some say that bad advertising is still advertising. But would you buy product this advertisement tries to sell? I would not!

Are you still going to be influenced by ads?

This series were aimed to show some basic tricks that are used by advertisers to influence the masses of people. These tricks are very little things but the final effect is huge.
Specific layout of the objects on advertisement can put emphasis on various object or ideas. It can be also used to hide some facts and manipulate the opinion of the advertisement viewer.
Advertisers can make you feel different just by selecting different colors and cause emotional response they desire. Dark colors communicates more elegance, strong saturated colors attracts your attention and desaturated colors are used to make you pay attention on the content itself rather then form of presentation.
We are people and that is what advertisers take advantage of. We use our first judgment to create the opinion about the things we come across during our daily life. When we get into conversation with attractive people we tend to believe them more. We also judge the appearance of the people we interact with. Mature faced individuals also tend to persuade us easier whereas the round-faced persons with baby-look appearance communicate more innocence and niceness.
Advertisers also use the brainwashing methods, but they are very hidden and subtle. They put the idea into our head which will get into conflict with our deeply rooted believes. We will try to solve the conflict most probably by the means the advertiser indented to. This is called cognitive dissonance. Advertiser can also train us for specific reaction to various stimuli. By extensive exposure to the advertisement our subconscious changes the way how it reacts and advertiser literally makes us do the things they want. This is used in the principle classical conditioning.

Design Principles in Advertisements (III.)

This series analyzes the design principles often used in advertisements and discuss how these principles are used to attract attention, influence the opinion or convince the potential consumer for purchase.

Personal and character attributes in advertisement

Attractiveness bias

Advertisements often use attractive, well-dressed people to communicate intelligence, competency and morality. This is closely tight to evolution process where good looking means healthy and healthy individual is better choice for mating. We tend to be more attracted to such messages and believe them more.

“Mature faced individuals are communicating authority and power”

Baby-face bias

For communicating authority and power, as in the Tag Heuer advertisements above, mature faced individuals with sharp face features are used. This evokes the message that when you have that watches you will also posses such attributes like individuals on the poster. On the other hand, people with baby faces tend to be seen as more naïve, helpless and honest and they should be used when communicating innocence.

Face-ism

The subconscious message can be also send by the means of how much face is shown on the picture. The big ratio of face to image attracts focus on person’s intellectual and personal attributes, which is particularly beneficial during political campaigns. Low ratio focus attention on physical and sensual attributes which can be exploited, for example by persuading people to buy diamonds.

 

Most average facial appearance effect

Advertisers also know our preference about the faces they put on their posters. We tend to prefer faces in which the eyes, nose, lips and other features are close to the average of a population. It is due to evolution filtering out the extremes, which usually means some disease or other problem. Therefore, average means healthy.

Cognitive dissonance

How do you react when you read the words “HEY, YOU’RE FUNNY AGAIN?” You probably got curious in what is going on. You just got interested in the advertisement without even reading all the text on it.  The highlighting of the advertisement has at-tracted your attention so that it can play dirty game with you. It tries to persuade you that if you buy some diamond necklace to your wife or girlfriend it will make you more interesting for her. But you are not stupid and you know it does not work like that.  You know they just want to manipulate you so you will not rush into first jewelry shop and buy the necklace. Not very successful advertising campaign you might think.  But after some time the Valentine’s Day is coming, your relationship is not doing very well and you want to save it by some thoughtful present. Now, your old memory will remind itself – hey, if I buy her that necklace she will think I am funny again. It might save your relationship but it will definitely save the success rate of the advertisement cam-paign. This is the concept similar to brainwashers that you eventually come to believe what you say. It is called cognitive dissonance and it is state when a person’s cognitions conflict. This is the state one does not want to be in, so we act to solve the conflict. Either we believe our initial attitudes and stick with them or we resolve the conflict by doing what they want us to do and get over with it.

Picture superiority effect

Everybody knows that a picture is worth a thousands words. And of course, pictures are better remembered than words. That’s why advertisements are composed mostly of images and only very little text. When right symbolic images are used and the accompanying text is reinforcing the presented idea it creates very strong message that we can easily recall when deciding between buying product A or B.

Von Restorff effect and threat detection

Our memory works in a very specific way. Sometimes we want to memorize specific thing but it just simply will not stick there even after multiple repetitions. But some things, we see only by the blink of the eye will stick there perfectly for a very long time. How is it possible? There are some rules that respect the physiology of our brain and makes memorization super efficient. One of such rules is von Restroff effect. It is a phenomenon of memory in which noticeably different things are more likely to be recalled than common things. Have you ever seen panda with a tuna fish body? Or a rhino mutated with tuna fish? These images are very distinct from what you see daily and they will probably stick in your head for a very long time.
This advertisement takes advantage of another ability we are especially good at – threat detection. We are able to detect threatening stimuli more efficient than non-threatening. This is again based on our evolution when our prehistoric ancestors had to be aware of predators. Now, it is great way how to rapidly attract attention.