Dr. Robert J. Morais, of the New York marketing firm Weinman Schnee Morais Inc., came to speak at Drexel on the afternoon of November 8th, 2007, trailing with him a topic of hot contention. His lecture, "Image, Commerce and Happiness: How Advertisers Open Your Heart and Your Wallet," sparked heated questions before our speaker was even finished with the body of the lecture. He wanted to share with us the power of advertising, but he also wanted his audience to realize that advertising is worth praising as well as criticizing—yet midway through the lecture, members of the audience were still not convinced that advertising deserves any praise.
Morais began by showing us some ads for companies such as Hummer, Kraft, Stop & Shop, and Mastercard. His aim was to show us how "advertisers spin their webs" in order to get their audiences to choose their products. The overarching strategy of advertisers is to make their audiences happy, which lead Morais to the question, "Does advertising make us happy or unhappy?" According to Morais, it can do both.
The secret of advertising is for ads to make an emotional connection with viewers, and, once a connection is made, promise happiness or give the viewer something to aspire for, which, once attained, will create happiness. For example, one ad showed a young, skinny woman wearing the company's ballet clothing. Young girls aspiring to be ballet stars would connect with the ad and see themselves in the ballet clothing. They might think that by wearing these clothes, they will become ballet stars and attain that which would make them happy. Ads seek to get into the hearts of the intended audience so that that audience will open its wallets for these products. They try for the emotional connection because pure logic is simply not attractive—ads must also show that they understand the audience's needs.
However, ads can also have adverse effects on viewers. Some viewers might see the same ballet clothing ad and feel dissatisfaction or disappointment, realizing that they can never be as attractive as the model in the ad. Advertising has received some heavy criticism for the creation of this dissatisfaction, and it's not the only fire that ads have received.
Because of the sneaky ways in which ads get into people's heads, they have also been accused of creating needs when no need originally existed. They have been accused of creating aspirations that would never have existed if the ad hadn't been circulated. Morais argued, however, that "advertisers base their product development on discovered consumer needs."
Other ads, Morais said, don't even try to get people to purchase a product. For example, eBay ads are a "not that you would, that you could" technique, which encourages people to explore, fantasize, and get involved without an actual price. Ads do not actually create needs—they attract the people who want to want. Dreams and wishes are part of the human psyche. When ads claim to fulfill those wants and dreams, the people who are sensitive or predisposed to those ads will pay attention to them.
Morais further argued that brand names come to represent "home" to many people. Familiar brands and thus familiar quality puts people at ease and can even offer a sense of nostalgia. What harm, he asked, was there with brands offering such a feeling? He acknowledged that ads can sometimes create dissatisfaction, but his answer for this criticism was that people are different; not all ads will connect with every person in a positive way. They might be damaging to some people, but they might also help others, especially if the product really does improve someone's quality of life. In the end, if a product can improve a person's life, is advertising really 100% negative? Morais's lecture sparked some heated debate about its impact on viewers, but people still remain divided on the issue.
Robert Morais has a Ph.D. in Anthropology and has worked with pharmaceuticals as well as consumer products in advertising.
