The Age of Emotional Media Marketing

Most of the TV commercials nowadays mainly market the emotions benefitted from their products than the product itself and they usually lead us to insecured feelings.

Couples hugging and caressing each other because of their pleasing physical features brought by endorsed products, happy group of friends because of expensive digital gadgets, and even shampoo commercials depicting the joy of graduates and their parents (what's the connection?) can now be seen in billboards, television, and the internet.

I'm just disgusted because the advertisers are very good making us feel insecured.

Yup. The advertisers and sellers will do whatever it takes to earn every penny they can. Even when they seemingly do good things, like give to charities, they'll spend even more just to tell you about it, in hopes of gaining sales.

Women's magazines will have articles on healthier lifestyles on one page, with a thin model showing off the latest lipstick color on the next.

Fast-food commercials show thin people buying the latest worst-for-you food they're selling. Look at KFC's mashed potatoes, corn, chicken, covered in a three-cheese blend and gravy, all in one dish! And I think it's Burger King that has the cheesesteak on a burger sandwich, at around 970 calories. And Dairy Queen has Blizzards or whatever with cheesecake in it. Since when did cheesecake become an ingredient??? (And while I haven't had that, I admit, I love vanilla ice cream with brownies in it.)

Even the healthy salads at fast-food restaurants are loaded with calories and (with the dressing) fat!

Commercials showing men eating burgers, feeling MANLY! People taking medications with all kinds of side effects living normal lives (while if you take them, you won't have joint pain, but you won't have a normal life, either, because you're on the toilet with the diarrhea the drug causes all the time!). And if one drug causes you problems--like a low sex drive--take another drug--like Viagra--to fix it! And when that drug causes more symptoms, add on another drug or two!

Cellulite and wrinkle creams that don't really work, or don't work that well, but cost over a hundred dollars. Products that everyone flocks to use, but later are found to cause cancer, skin blemishes, headaches, or other problems. Products where they don't disclose problems they know or find out about. Over-hyping products.

Makeup that looks gorgeous--on the models, who are already gorgeous. And it amazes me how many men, and probably women, too, don't know models in men's magazines (and others) are airbrushed, and aren't that perfect in real life. Worse--boys and girls who think that's what they really look like, and what girls should look like.

Alcoholic drinks that make you popular and get you "hot chicks."

Sorry...sometimes, once I get going, I can't stop. But it's good to vent.

Your post really resonates with me. I am reading The Culture Code and i find it quite unsettling. It just underscores how much companies consciously play into our most subconscious templates about life. I wish i could invent "marketing goggles" that would filter everything out. Life is hard enough w/o being manipulated and assaulted by the constant bombardment of marketing/advertising directed at our deepest most intimate fears.

Boo Radley

Yeah, and don't forget product placement. Not only do companies get their products on shows (you might see a famous cereal on a TV character's food shelf, or she might drink a famous soft drink), they actually get TV show writers to write scripts to promote their products, perhaps mentioning them in jokes, or showing something good happening when a character uses the product, etc. Did you know that reality TV was originally created as a way to promote products, rather than a show being created and someone thinking, Hey! We can use this to sell our products!

rhetoric: an attempt to pursuade by evoking emotions rather than by appealing to reason.

advertising, the media, politicians... all tend to be masters at it.

i find it rather stomach churning...
and in the case of politics and the media i find it especially disconcerting.

what gets me the most with the adversising in the hypocracy. take your average womans magazine. you can find an article on how to diet in one section and a recipie for a terribly fattening meal in the next. a model in a swimsuit in the following section. the one after on developing healthy self esteem regardless of weight etc. then the next section on expensive cosmetics and hair care.

but it sells...

thats the greatest trouble i have. that people support the industry by buying accordingly. people buy the magazines and buy the products in the magazines. sure they ****** a bit about the magazines, but they continue to buy them regardless.

i was reading something the other day about how most people think that they will be happier with more choices. surveys found that more choices actually resulted in less happiness, however. if you have three brands of spagetti sause to pick from and you know you don't like two of them then you will tend to be very satisfied indeed with your chosen variety. if you have nineteen brands of spagetti sause to pick from then whichever you choose you are likely to feel less satisfied because you will wonder whether another choice would have been better than the choice you made.

they hypothesised that maybe that was why americans tend to rank high levels of dissatisfaction: too many choices.

but consumerism prevails and people believe that more choices is somehow better...

and we don't even need to think about the cost of that to people in developing nations...

sigh.

I don't disagree, we have too many choices in some things. I feel overwhelmed by them!

I think "marketing" has always been so... think back to the hawkers on the wagons as they travelled town to town with snake oil.

Hey, now wait a minute! That snake oil is really great on salad!