Can you remember the last product you purchased that wasn’t the result of an advertisement, or from a brand you’ve long trusted? Anytime we step outside, open our phones, browse a store, or simply open our fridge, we encounter countless marketing tactics.
In our severe digital age, marketing moves faster and brands have easier access to consumers than they ever have. Advertising tends to emphasize to consumers what they need, should have and what can make their lives better.
But if we peel back layers of marketing, we’re met with the question of, “What has advertising actually taught us to want?”
A brief history
Marketing has not always been what we know it to be today. Across history, advertising has evolved from what used to be helpful and informational to influencing human behavior and decisions.
During the Merchant Era (1770s–1850s), natural resources fueled economic opportunities. Merchants used their ledgers as a way to advertise what goods were available and what might be in stock soon. The message focused on inventory rather than “this is why you need this.”
Shops began selling products at a fixed cost during the Corporate Era (1860s–1930s), and shopping became a leisure practice and social event. Merchants began reorganizing their stores to target consumers, and industrialization increased the amount of advertising produced geographically.
It was around this time that Edward Bernays became a driving force in public relations and propaganda.
The Austrian-American was often referred to as the “Father of Public Relations.” Bernays took a different approach to marketing than previous generations of marketers had used.
By combining crowd psychology with psychoanalytical theories, he influenced public opinion, shaped consumer habits, and managed corporate and political messaging. A few of his notable campaigns include:
Torches of Freedom — A campaign to break the social taboo that was against women smoking by having debutantes publicly smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes in an Easter parade.
Bacon & Breakfast — A campaign to boost pork sales by conducting a survey to get doctors to endorse bacon and eggs as an ideal breakfast in the morning.
Bernays paved the way for marketing tactics to shift into emotional and impulsive methods. This shift of messaging bled seamlessly into the next era.
In the Consumer Era (1940s–1970s), marketing was at an all time high. Television and radio advertising provided new avenues and persuasions for consumerism. Advertising went beyond the product and became part of consumer identity. The core messaging of ads shifted to “belonging.”
Where does our history leave us?
When advertising shifted to tailoring ads for human behaviors, desires, and presenting emotional needs, products began selling more. Additionally, the first celebrity endorsements supported desirability of certain products and emerging brand loyalty.
During the 1950s, the biggest demographics for marketers became adolescents. With television introduced in homes, magazines, the impressionable behavior of children, and teens with money to spend, many industries’ marketing tactics thrived. Music, beauty and clothing industries profited well along with various magazine publications. Teens spent money on products that would increase their sense of belonging and children could pester their parents for a product they saw.
Our history has proven that marketing strategies only continue to improve as marketers find new ways on which to persuade an audience. It is not by accident or luck that effective strategies continue to evolve and skyrocket consumption.
It starts with our identity
Since the golden age of advertising in the 1920s, marketing strategies have focused on learning about consumers and who they are. One can’t sell a product without first understanding why someone needs it. A consumer might not purchase a product without being shown why it’s useful or why they need it.
This era brought strategies that focused on targeting demographics, brand image building, humor and wit, sex appeal, vibrancy and memorability. Effective marketing gets a consumer to look at a product, see how one lacks without and persuade the consumer to purchase on emotion and impulse.
The beauty and skin industry is a master at this practice with slogans such as, “Love the skin you’re in,” from Olay, “Every woman can be beautiful,” from Estee Lauder and “The best a man can get,” from Gillette.
These slogans provide a sense of self-love, acceptance and enhanced natural beauty through the use of their products.
Its messaging is shaped as “something about you could be better, and we have what you need,” or “this product represents the kind of person you want to be.” Tactics like these keep consumers coming back.
And now marketing strategies reach consumers in a way that advertising has never known before.
The implications of social media
Marketers have more direct access to their consumers than ever. Previously, advertising was about how to push a brand or product to a large group of individuals. Now, advertising can directly tailor advertising to one specific individual without much effort.
Recall a time when you searched for a product or service, only to find your entire Instagram feed flooded with advertisements related to that search hours later. This is due to algorithmic data collection from your search engine and digital interactions.
Social media algorithms are built to keep app consumers engaged. It collects users’ interests through their posts, likes and what they’re engaging with. From data collection, platforms push content based on consumers’ interests and searches.
Similarly, an “echo chamber” is an informational environment that exposes consumers to content from like-minded individuals. Marketers don’t have to try hard to reach their targeted consumers because the algorithm is filtering for them. The algorithm exposes consumers to products and brands they would have otherwise missed by not being online.
Further, with the rise of UGC (user generated content) and celebrity and influencer endorsements, brands and products are marketed more efficiently. Brands pay individuals with an established social following to promote their products. Influencers might share a testimonial of why a product worked for them or highlight how it can be used.
It appears advertising is constantly reflecting our desires back to us and giving us products to fulfill them. But, how many of the products we desire to have are a genuine desire to begin with?
What advertising has taught us to want
Somewhere along the history and evolution of marketing, advertising has taught us to want more than a tangible product. It’s taught us to chase improvement. That we should be prettier, thinner, healthier, more successful, more productive. It’s taught us to desire belonging. To wear the right clothing brands, use the right name brand products, that off-brand products make us fit in less.
We become what we buy. The products we purchase communicate who we are and circle a portion of our identity.
At its modern core, advertising has shown us that ordinary dissatisfaction is an opportunity for improvement and capitalization. Often, consumers don’t think they’re missing something until an ad tells them they are.
Modern advertising can make it increasingly difficult to allow one to be comfortable and content with oneself. There is unrest and insatiability as we not only come to believe we’re missing something, but also as we tend to compare ourselves to what others have and what we don’t.
We can’t stop marketing from telling us what we should want and it will only continue to amplify desires. However, we can become more perceptive to the difference between a desire we genuinely have and one someone else placed in front of us. We can differentiate our identity away from the products and brands we wear and use and focus more on who someone is when all that is stripped away.
Since marketing has become accustomed to telling us what we lack, perhaps the question isn’t what we should be buying next, but whether we wanted it before something told us we should.
Featured image: Photo by Tânia Mousinho on Unsplash
Edited by Abbigail Earl
