Kasia
The affect that marketing campaigns have on us has always been a big topic of discussion for consumers and marketers everywhere. The influential content in advertisements and marketing campaigns is made to persuade and change our opinions of the brands presented, but other than that how do these campaigns really affect us? Do they have some sort of hold over our later purchasing habits? Will they make us more brand aware? All will be discussed today in looking at how marketing campaigns affect us in 5 ways, in the eyes of the consumer but also the brand.
As mentioned above, the first way in which marketing affects us would be by changing our habits. Campaigns are developed in a way to make you think of the product in question and see how useful it would be in your life, when decided it subconsciously pushes you to the idea of buying it through the concept of persuasion. Once purchased the product or when you have absorbed all the information given from the campaign, it makes you question if this could be a substitute to what you are already buying. For example, if you are used to purchasing chocolate from Cadbury and you see an advertisement or promotional material for Galaxy, Galaxy’s aim will be to give you all the benefits of their chocolate to make you question if you should continue to buy from Cadbury or your usual brand. This is the exact job of these kind of campaigns, to push you to step away from the brands you always use, so then they can make profit from your changed habits continually as now this new product would now be your “go to” product.
The video below gives more context as to how this persuasion is used to change your habits:
Secondly, campaigns make us weight the benefits and drawbacks of the product presented. This means that they will make you take time out of your day to think about their products to see if it is good for you and what sets them apart from a competitor you might consider buying from or one you already purchase from. This is something that can impact impulse purchases as it gives the straight forward reasoning of “this looks like it’s good for me, I should buy it” which can be good for you as a business, but then can become an unhappy customer as they come to the realisation this product is not needed.
Following from this would be that campaigns allows you to grow brand image. When constantly pushing your content to your target audience, it allows them to keep your brand in mind when purchasing which then leads them to purchase from you and grow your brand image as they recommend it to others or use social platforms to speak out about the products they have purchased from you. This growing image then helps the consumers decide which company to buy from as if they are memorable, they must be good and it allows you to grow as a business. Both sides win!
For my fourth point, campaigns can also affect us in negative ways too through misinterpretation and false images. When we see marketing content, we expect it to be a true representation of the company, so we know that where we are buying from is exactly what they have presented to us in the promotional material, but this is not always the case. When mislead, it can lead us to purchase products that are of no use to us or not what they seemed to be, which makes us question most brands integrity and creates more questions in our mind when buying from someone new or a smaller upcoming brand.
Lastly, campaigns create a bubble of perfection around the product, which can lead to false expectations. It may make us think that the product in question will do more for us than actually advertised because we are so interested in it. Also, it can be portrayed in a way to make us think it has more features or benefits to us than it actually has, or vice versa, that it does not have the basic features we would expect for this type of product to have. This is mainly through false statements or images in the campaigns, as touched on in the previous point. Before purchasing make sure to fully understand the campaign and research more before you make an informed purchase.
As always, thank you for reading this post on how marketing campaigns affects us, and I hope you have enjoyed it and took something away from it. Give all suggestions, ideas and comments down below and my social media sites as always are linked at the top of my blog.
I will see you next Friday for my video-based post on how advertising has developed over the years.
Visuals And Credits:
Feature Image: Cristina Dina From Pexels
Video: SciShow Psych From YouTube
Information Sources: