Inside the Shopping Brain

It works only with those for whom "As seen on TV" has meaning. Has sales of liquor decreased now that it is advertised less? Seagrams saved a fortune when forced to drop commercials. Does anyone actually buy a product because they saw an ad? Ad agencies are self deluded in terms of their own importance. They don't advertise more and more because it works, but because it fails to work well at all. They try to make up in quantity what fails to work in quality.

btw, bigger vehicles sell here because that's what American's have wanted, not because they have been brainwashed into wanting them. Safety and comfort are immediate concerns, even above fuel costs. Having been in an accident, my Oldsmobile, and its passengers, ended up better off than the little wagon that ran the stop sign and crashed into us did. No ad man talked me into buying that Oldsmobile, I'm happy to say.

Advertising is what gets you to shop in the first place, and then you're on their turf - they have the advantage. Your "shopping brain" has been carefully and relentlessly preconditioned since the day your infant eyes first gazed into the abyss of television. It is a medium that requires no language or reading skills. Advertising is the key, along with the incredible concentration of ad vehicles that we willingly invite into our lives; most of which we actually pay for. TV, radio, direct mail, newspapers and periodicals are only the low-hanging fruit, but it's everywhere and getting more pervasive all the time. It's on shopping carts, public restrooms, sports stadiums, public schools -- people even sell their bodies for tattoo ads. Generally speaking, advertising agencies can precisely predict the response they get from an ad campaign. So when you see more and more ads for something, you can be sure that it's working. This is why you have never seen a decrease in the number of credit card offers coming to your mailbox. This stuff works. It works incredibly well for banks, automakers, drug companies, and so-called "free credit report" businesses which are actually just data mining operations who sell your invaluable demographic details to the highest bidder, leading to even more targeted efforts to extract your cash or credit. They've got your number, folks. Consider this. In the 70s, Congress tried to set emission and efficiency standards for automobiles. The result: US automakers began tuning trucks into luxury vehicles to get around the regulations. This had the added benefit of packaging up an extra half ton of metal they could sell to "consumers," while simultaneously the Big Three were cranking out small, fuel-efficient cars for the European market where gas was already double or triple the cost US drivers were paying. They knew what they were doing. Advertising paved the way. We are helpless to resist advertising, the most scientific and precise US industry. Ad men have a saying: "the masses are asses." Not because they think were stupid; but because they know it.

I agree wholeheartedly with this theory. When I was a child, I was happier with 8 pennies than I was with a dime.