5 Main Advertising Theories

The 5 Advertising theories help us understand how advertising can influence consumer behavior and make potential customers adopt specific products, thereby developing a preference that leads to repeated purchases. As explored on Marketing91, various theories of advertising propose that the effectiveness of advertising hinges on exposure towards the brand and repetitive advertising leading to heightened emotions and expectations.

Advertising has numerous objectives which includes communicating with potential customers as well as pursuading them to adopt a particular product or develop a preference towards the product for repeat purchase which ultimately results in brand loyalty. 

There are numerous theories on advertising. Most theories of advertising generally propose that the effectiveness of advertising is dependent on the main practices being carried out including more exposure towards the brand or repetitive advertising.

In other words, most theories sugest that if you want a consumer to like a product or a brand continously then simply expost the consumer to a product or brands advertising such that there are certain feelings and expectations attached towards the rand itself. Advertising theories also make use of content specification, Specific message and media characteristics, consumer characteristics, product/service characteristics, and competitive actions.

Here are 5 Advertising theories explained

1) The mediation of reality

Ads are effective when steered with other media and setting which they are entrenched. Apparently, what makes the ads persuasive is how they utilize the media to elicit world of fictions and that of actions together and not necessarily the content. What the media do in regards to advertising is describing the excitement and addiction by extending and heightening our neural responses.

For instance, you may realize that people like reading stories that they have already witnessed in the press merely because the media has a way of repeating the excitement that we have using our wits.

2) Shifting loyalties

Ads know how to play upon and replicate clashed loyalties that keep on changing. Mainly, the ads always try to cultivate a strong sense of loyalty to an individual brand, but they also have a way of urging consumers to alter their loyalties and make an attempt to a rather new thing and primarily renounce old loyalty for a relatively new brand in the market.

Ads are effective in making consumers to shift their allegiance to a particular brand given that they can use messages packaged in such a way that it psychologically implicates such a product to negativity.

3) The magic of meaning

This explains how ads are used in infusing the meaning of the products to the users in addition to selling. It shows how advertisements influence the values and other fundamental beliefs of the consumers. It essentially describes how and why ads have gone beyond the frontier of selling products and services and are increasingly becoming involved with the shaping of individual and social values.

Ads are regarded as a form of organized magic that conceals the real nature of consumerism hence affecting social goals and public attitudes. This is demonstrated through the ability of advertisement to keep away the public from dissatisfied questions.

4) The hidden message

Ads are used in manipulating and unconsciously misleading the public. Psychologists argue that advertising is treacherous since it uses psychology to create hidden messages that are emotionally-loaded. What happens is that since the message is hidden, there is a tendency of viewers’ critical resistance being deluded and reduced.

For instance, a doctor can be used in advertising a product and encouraging people to use it because he uses the same. The notion here is that people will use the product since the doctor is also using it hence it must be healthy. It is this approach that shows precisely how critical thinking of consumers can be compromised with the ads.

5) Imitative desire

Ads have a way of playing upon consumer’s tendency to want what other people also wish. Many theorists have always argued that it is human nature to the desire of becoming what other people are especially when the other person is powerful, good-looking or famous. But the truth of the matter is that it’s hard to become another person, and it is this castle in the air that keeps the desire alive.

On the same note, then you need to understand that ads operate like collaborative rituals and not necessarily as one-way messages. In this case, rituals make it possible for people to put themselves in societies through visionary prognosis toward others.

It is always important if possible to critique ads as a way of revealing hidden messages and ideologies. Nevertheless, we should all be in agreement that ads are essential tools in shaping beliefs and loyalty that ultimately help in winning loyalty.

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