Advertising and Sensory Adaptation

Paper Summary:

Perhaps no other business understands how people perceive the world as much as the advertising industry. Advertisers tap into the way we react to stimuli, whether visual, auditory or tactile. Through their ads, advertisers are able to influence the way people react to a particular product. The most successful ads tap cause a memorable or emotional response and, most important, trigger purchase. However, advertising campaigns are themselves the products of current social tastes and trends. They are also shaped by the psychological processes of human perception. This paper looks at the perception phenomena of sensory adaptation and how it affects the advertising industry. The first part of the paper discusses the current research on sensory adaptation, how it works and the implications on human behavior. In the second part, the paper discusses examples of how sensory adaptation pushes the advertising industry to constantly create new ads and to generate new ways of selling a product.

From the Paper:

"Ad campaigns are not meant to last. Even the most successful campaigns " like the Snapple Lady and Alka Seltzer's Plop-Plop-Fizz-Fizz " are eventually retired. One reason why agencies and corporations spend so much on advertising is because an ad is only good for a limited period of time. After a while of seeing the same thing over and over, people simply tune out. This is the diminishing return effect caused by sensory adaptation. To keep up, companies will pull an ad and come out with a new one, hoping to once again hook the audience's attention.
In addition to new content, many agencies create ads that are designed to shock. In 1997, for example, The New York Times carried a full-page ad that featured "Children Made to Order." The ad maintained that the Gattaca Company could engineer a child based on their parents' preferences for traits like skin color, intelligence and athletic ability. In fact, the ad was not for a bioengineering firm, but for the movie Gattaca. The eye-catching ad succeeded in catching attention by provoking a strong emotional response."

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