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How ads manipulate our emotions - and how to resist

CAPTION: HOW ADS MANIPULATE US. CAPTION: ROBERT HEATH, UNIVERSITY OF BATH: Advertising is particularly good at attaching emotions to brands. A terrific example from years back is a car called the Renault Clio. Years ago they launched with an advertising campaign featuring a couple of daft French people, Papa and Nicole. The whole idea of that ad was supposed to be that the Renault Clio is a terrifically easy car to drive. CAPTION: Renault Clio, Papa and Nicole. Interesting, Publicis 1991. However, when you look at that ad what you're looking at is two people flirting, being terrifically sexy. And of course what that does, is result in you thinking the Renault Clio is a terrifically sexy little car, and lots of people want to be sexy. The result? The most successful car launch ever in the UK. CAPTION: GETTING META Meta-communication are all the twiddly bits - the music, the characters, the setting, the storyline... Anything that's not actually to do with what you're telling people. The interesting thing about meta-communication is that we are programmed not to be able to unprocess it. Once it’s exposed to us, we've got it. Here's a good example: the famous Apple 1984 ad was shown once on midnight in 1983, and once in the Superbowl in 1984. And yet that ad is known practically all around the world. The ad is the girl running down this aisle with all these zombie-like people, and she hurls the mallet through the screen. CAPTION: Apple 1984. Fairbanks Films, dir. Ridley Scott. And of course the message in that ad is very simple - the world is being dominated in that era by IBM and Apple is going to break out of that era. That idea of Apple being the defender of the people, and the defender of freedom of course reflected into Steve Jobs, who became the epitome of the defender of the people. Which means people who buy Apple computers and in most cases, astonishingly, even though that ad would never have actually been seen by them on air, they know about this ad. And they feel Apple is a terrific company. And in that respect, once you get a reputation like that established, it's there forever. There's a company called Huawei who've recently launched an ad featuring a little creature called a Gnu being photographed. CAPTION: Huawei Gnu gnu. Jung von Matt/Next Alster, dir. Alex Feil. 2018. And the guy who's photographing the Gnu looks at his photograph and he imagines what's going to happen to the little Gnu. It's going to be captured, it's going to be put in a zoo, it's going to have things thrown at it... So, he decides not to take the photograph. And the message is, with Huawei you can be your own judge of morality. What absolute nonsense! I mean Huawei's a phone, it doesn’t allow you to do anything. But, emotionally, very appealing. CAPTION: HOW DO WE RESIST? How do you stop your emotions being influenced by advertising? Well, in my book, there's only two ways to do it. One is just don’t watch any advertising. The other way, curiously enough, is to watch the ad very carefully, is to look at it and to say: What are you trying to do? "What are you trying to influence?" "What's really behind this ad?" If I see this little furry animal in the woods, what's it there for? Is it there to make me feel good about this brand? Yeah, of course it is. And by doing that, you can do something called counter-arguing. We're not used to counter-arguing the emotion in advertising, but if you look at the ads, if you look at the emotive content in the ads, if you listen to the music you can say, "Ah! I know what you're trying to do." So emotionally you can counter-argue that ad. Of course, it probably won't work but at least you can feel you're slightly more in control of your life than the advertisers are.