Critical Thinking and Advertising

okay so what we're going to look at today is advertising we've been looking at where our claims come from what our information sources are and what to what degree we trust them what degree they have credibility and you'll remember that a couple lectures ago when I talked about all the different types of information sources we had you know your personal experience your background knowledge which you can usually trust although it could be wrong occasionally we media we have cousin Billy come in and talk about the media we talk about experts last time now we're going to look at advertising we want to look at that why does the book actually give it its own section well two reasons one is advertising is somewhat different in its nature than any of these other information sources here's a welcome anytime somebody's putting out an advertisement they're an interested party anytime you know it could be that your doctor's an interested party that he advises you to get an operation because he needs to pay the bills right but usually your doctor is fairly disinterested the media is supposed to be disinterested as Kevin Billy pointed out if they if they lack the impression that will you submit disinterestedly loses credibility with advertisements Only Fools expect advertisements to be fair honest or disinterested but a lot of people actually get sucked into that the other reason why your book focuses on them is the advertisements actually do work they're one of the biggest failures of critical thinking and they usually hit you in here what in your pocketbook so people buy things because a sort of psychologically tricked into it or will let you know willingly down the path and some of the things that we're going to study we're going to actually just wing at the ends but a lot of this is applied psychology and they do this with a lot of other things yeah there was an interesting story just recently I forget what your paper was sort of an editorial I was talking about how you know all these schools and our trance which two healthy choices there's malaria at this you know we should be offering fruit instead of candy bars as dessert all that sort of stuff well how do you get the kids to actually do that one way to actually do that is put the fruit you know well-lit place in a bright yellow or orange or red bowl and that sounds stupid doesn't it that shouldn't affect anything if you do that then the consumption of fruit goes up like 200% why well because we're using to manipulate there are certain cues you know if it if it's in a sort of dingy corner somebody says hey I want that for that looks kind of nasty but if it's a very nice well-lit place that it looks very legitimate I should you know I should have that candy bar they found that if you put ice cream I guess a lot of schools had ice cream for dessert if you put ice cream in a frosted glass case as opposed to a glass case we can actually see the ice cream ice cream consumption goes way down isn't that silly but it works and protections worked if so we're going to look at a little bit of what's behind that but first I want to I want to sort of explore this so what a advertisements ultimately try to get us to do that's that's one thing if we're buying the very process let's talk about what do you think when I think when I say byproduct it's the first thing that comes to mind probably purchasing going to the store and actually setting some money down giving them your credit card cookies all purchasing is that the only way that we buy products from advertising think about the other kinds of advertisements that are out what else do you have good yeah I'm thinking instead of the format whether it's TV online or anything like that I'm thinking about the object what is it trying to get you to to buy it yeah ideas water another thing can sometimes be behavior you know you must also you know will seat belt dance or the cigarette ads you know they don't have the ads for cigarettes on TV they're the anti-smoking ads those are designed to get you to to not do something and to feel a certain way that's why they're gonna do stuff to gross you out or shock you what else these are two main things to create change yeah and then on consistent with this but there's another way of creating change you're on the right track promotion well let this sort of broad technique that they use in all of these one of the ways can you create change in your city your country yes political ads they're not trying to actually get you to buy something they're not just trying to change your ideas what are they aimed at what's up to vote for a person so sometimes there's before a person sometimes that are just playing against and I suppose you could have some of the ads that can blur the boundary is like you tell go online and vote for coke instead of Pepsi and the Coke Pepsi challenge or something like that that's that's kind of blurring the line between the Institute or you know these two can blur together pretty easily as well because a candidate stands for certain things or at least they had possessive standing for certain things if the candidate is a liberal so and so wants to afford all the nation's children saying that they stand for something if they're on the right way someone so wants to lock up everybody okay you know a false attribution but they're saying that the person stands for something so these are the three different types of things that the ads trying to get by buying can be understood in the you know the very strict monetary sense but it can also be understood buying endosome when you buy into something you're changing your ideas about we're going to mainly be looking at the purchasing vitamin C aspect but you can also keep these in mind as well this is specially is insidious because if you think about what's going on there that's a little bit different than coming straight out and saying hey we want you to buy this watch your purchase our product is rich it's easy to tell the interest there isn't it if I'm selling you a product of X said you should buy my product because it's going to you know pick whatever you want make you successful clear of your acting make your house beautiful I'm an interested party and it's really easy to tell the family if I'm running an ad for or against the candidate it's pretty easy to tell - the choice of party - is it so I'm running ads that I'm saying that not really interests that I'm running a public service ass this is a public service I am trying to help you I'm just trying to you know we rent you to you know make better decisions I'm just providing you information is that really all that's going on if it was they wouldn't be putting the ads on the air they would they were just applying pamphlets or information in other ways why do they choose to go on TV or on the Internet yeah you could reach a broader audience there's something else to them when you're watching TV you're actually much more ready for manipulation just physiologically they've done all these studies yeah people are much more receptive just the very format it's on the visual format things are very short punchy they don't allow you a lot of time to think you have something in front of it you can actually read it over so for clients and think about it we get bombarded with commercials you may and if you don't look you know if you don't have your mind already made up about something that looks fairly strong will you may find yourself changing your mind about things and that's exactly what they want to do I'm not saying that that's a bad thing necessarily but that means that they are interested first I'm not saying that that anti-smoking ads are bad because they're you know telling you live everything they're actually telling you the truth smoking is bad for you but for the critical thinking perspective women if there's something and you might say well you know you have to fight fire with fire we're going to look at that later on this semester that's a fallacy called two wrongs make a right oh yeah the tobacco companies have been forced to pray for the anti tobacco ads as part of the cost of doing business well that would that has to do the sort of political compromise that got worked out there was such a few remember this which is about 15 20 years ago there was such a strong anti tobacco sentiment this this feeling that you know the companies have been a long hanging to to you know consumers for years and then you know causing all this death and destruction we've got to make them pay you remember that right but actually you know that's that's effective North Carolina pretty severely yeah the economy here tobacco and tobacco in textiles the other than so yeah there's been some diagnostician but as they call it from from tobacco farm in part because there's known as many consumers right the big consumers are overseas and they open that up that's a good point sometimes companies are actually forced to take a stand against their own product as the cost of doing business now who's the interested party they're the company is doing it in order to keep going alright so they can make profits but the middle man there is the agencies that are producing the ads and their holy truth is some of those are pretty gross so this is something to keep in mind now something I've grown up over the course of the semester each time that we brought advertising it is the idea that an advertisement is always an argument and it may not actually be explicitly framed as such but every advertisement just like any other way to try to motivate people to action is always an argument it's what we call practical on interpretation has to do with what you ought to do so what's the ultimate conclusion of these these arguments it's always nice and then we have some sort of dependencies and they're supposed to lead us so things like our products is the most superior you're going to love our product put our our clothes on and they'll make you and sexy all sorts of things are not the ultimate claim of the advertiser the ultimate claim that they're trying to get you to draw is hey I need I need that I should go buy that everything else in the advertisement is designed to somehow get you to that place and there's a lot of different ways you can do that that's where your book breaks acid out into several different categories now they the book points out how do they do this advertising firms understand their fears and desires at least as well as we understand them ourselves are any of you psychology majors communications majors well I'm impossible for that because the dark side would be you know going to the dark side once you become an advertising person how many advertising firms actually going to pull it off well they hire experts people who understand motivation what gets us to like certain things to dislike certain things and we're not usually a hundred percent honest with ourselves about what it is that we like don't like anyway advertisers they tap into them they've been doing this for about sixty years in a deliberate rate employing psychologists deliberately as experts there was a book that I got a confident at home called the hidden persuaders and was one of those expose tell-all books about the advertising industry and how they work and show that they were actually using depth psychology one of the big things at the time to deliberately set up as to appeal to are not necessary surface emotions but are deep desires and that was in the sixties that that book came out so just think about how sophisticated it is now every time an advertisement goes down unless it's you know this you know mom and pops carpet store you know and you know you notice those answers are very persuasive by the way but the slick processed ads that you see these days those who've usually passed through several different experts hands those experts are tired you know filing reports and saying this is what we want to appeal to this is why remember the advertisers who do they also have to appeal to they have to fill the clients they have to be able to tell those clients when you shell out a million dollars for this app you're going to actually get some results and they do that results so lady do you know like he says they employed trained psychologists some of the world's most creative artists and they use theories about motivation they also have a lot of money to spend advertisements are one of the reasons why going into business or going into politics is very expensive some of the products that you buy especially the really high happen things the products have to cost to the product maybe just advertisement one you know if you're buying luxury items a lot of that's advertisement if you want to go into politics you have to raise money why why do you raise all that money it's not just a big scampers it's primarily to pay for those advertisements and actually if you accumulate enough money you can keep your opponents from running they build up a huge war chest you'd say fifty million dollars they say well you know if you run against me you need to have at least fifty million dollars because I'm going to spend that much against you that keeps a lot of people out of politics so advertising it out has a really deep bruise in our culture not only convertible wonderful that like it says do we need to understand the deep psychology and advertisement you have to go and get yourself a PhD in rhetoric and communication it or philosophy or even Media Studies and our instead of see through advertisements no a just have to apply some critical thinking start out by telling yourself when you see an ad and you feel tempted you know if you like going along with the advertisement it's not a problem if you like the stories they tell you not a problem I love watching advertisements that are funny myself but if you're tempted to buy something after watching the ad you should go through this process try to plan things from your critical thinking class start with the conclusion if it's an ad it's always got the same conclusion you should buy those how do they get there here's here's what you would do would reconstruct the how and then you assessing say now that I see that does that actually provide any good reasons for buying that product and 99.9 percent of the time the answer to this right no yeah the only the only time in the advertisement could actually be making a solid argument is what it's a very rewarding habit life and if you look at the history of advertisements when they first came out how many have ever seen those old magazines National Geographic you go back in the library look at them from the 30s and 20s and all that and you see some of the advertisements in there some of them are already pretty slick but some of them are just straight out you know steel bench good for working on cost this much that's an advertisement and they're trying to say well you know if you need this you should buy up in tiers of specifications that could actually be a good argument every other advertisement they could look at is waiting in they had arguments so with that said let's look at them at how the book devices up yeah the port says it basically depends two main things one is as that divided by the product vote for John McCain because he is going to do this mr. this vote for Barack Obama because he's going to do this list for this well against John McCain because he's made to do this this what against Barack Obama because he's gonna do this this was within about a year you guys are going to start seeing a lot of blueglass not just among with republicans we have to figure out who they're going to run against Barack Obama but you're also going to see a lot of Democratic that's for Barack Obama even before you know real racism is going on before the Republicans in Canada the Democrats are actually gonna be running the ads this happens I'm not just thinking on the Democrats here the Republicans do this when they're the ones in power they're going to be running as trying to mess with the other party trying to get you know people to vote for the weaker cannabis or trying to weaken the stronger candidates they're going to be getting reasons you should you should vote this way because of this a lot of advertisements that you see on TV for products they give you reasons why you should buy that product you know thinking about what does that active medication see constantly come Proactive yeah Jessica Simpson used it and that's going to get into a different thing but what do they do they show you about before and after and if you buy proactive this could be you know that was actually giving you reasons those reasons are the premises in your argument they may not be good reasons you know we'll well us think about the Proactiv commercials we're never really any commercial where they show you before and after in one case or two cases is that enough to generalize on to a strong inductive conclusion that this probably is going to work for me I should buy this place so heads shaking yeah we do get suckered into it why because we love examples we love to think yeah I'm probably like that person that's probably just like my case and a lot of people buy things that work for one or two people I'm not so I'm not backing correct apparently that that product does work fairly well kind of funny these things are so relative when I was in high school I had really good skin and so if I got one pimple it was like because you know you know you know self-conscious you're in high school everybody's going to be looking at me and you just get that one and there ain't other blemishes but you have that one blemish yeah that's gonna undo everything and then you don't want to go to school and you're worried and you don't put your hair down to get you know covered up or whatever you can do then here it'd be like you know some kids next to me you know the poor guy just coming in you know and he wasn't bothered at all because he is used to you know day in day out being stuck with that a lot of our problems are in that way you know some of the things that we that we're really really bothered by there the end of the world for us are kind of small potatoes when you put them next to somebody outside reasons why they should buy the problem instead they do something else does that mean they're not providing us any reasons at all click back to implicit premises a lot of arguments you're requiring you to assume something or you know connect the dots these hands are still expecting you to do them and there's a couple different techniques that they they use these aren't all the advertising techniques if you're really interested in this we have a lot of books in the library covering this and you could you could talk about this I mean you can talk about it with me at office hours but you could also talk with some of the communications professors or some of the business professors the marketing professors and they can tell you all about different techniques and user editors your book breaks it down into three cameras as that bring out feelings those that depends link says to pick the product being used or endorsed by people we admire or think of ourselves as being like and I'm going to use a term for that that we often use yes that's why densification and then ask that depict the product being used in situations in which we would like to find ourselves or and I would also include in that situation we wouldn't like to find ourselves so yes good or bad situations now what are some examples of these well think about your range of feelings later on in the semester we're going to spend some time just talking about feelings not in the sense that I'm going to say you know mr. solace how do you feel today or anything like that alright but in the sense then we're going to look at how our feelings affect our our critical thinking and whether they can take it off the rails sometimes which they do sometimes their feelings sometimes their feelings we think they give us good reasons to act or to think a certain way to quit off and they they can be misleading think about anger anger is not used quite so often in advertisements think about how anger leads you have attractions in real life once you become angry it's really easy to come up with all sorts of reasons why you should stay angry why you should take revenge on that person why else who's connected to that person's jerk you know are these really good reasons usually what kind of emotions - advertisements appeal to you happiness yeah that's that's a lot of the ads want to make you feel count warm and fuzzy about the product that the idea is that show you some some nice scenes and your family together and then you'll associate the product with that bottom use humor why do they exhume her how do you feel when you're laughing yeah I have somewhat different sense it's not the sort of contentment that comes with just hanging out you're right that's a good way to put it there's a certain brush that comes with laughter laughter is one of those some psychologists call it a borderline phenomenon meaning that it's a state that's kind of fluctuating and it's actually kind of difficult to figure out exactly what's going on and when they're amused you know why we find certain things funny you ever try to be funny yeah and you know what sometimes the same joke really funny the first time doesn't have quite as big of a payoff the next time although there are certain ones that will always remain workable a lot of physical okay so the camera went out where was it with pity right we're talking about getting these hammer time that's trying to appeal to our sense of pity in order to get us that money if they make us too sad they don't work though then we don't want to do that some habits actually do try to appeal to anger a lot on political ads we get angry at John McCain they're shorter therefore you should vote for Barack Obama actually the John McCain ads the anti John McCain ads were actually trying to direct people's anger against George blush and then say John McCain is like of course they're for all political ends are always happening they they work they're very effective they sometimes decide oh okay that's a good point so those are two different questions do they are they effective yes effective are they effective and actually setting out the real issues and communicating about them they're actually effective and obscuring them that's that's one of the problems let's look at the ads that rely on identification these are where you have a celebrity endorsement so sometimes the celebrity might actually be an expert on so when we're talking about people who seem to be experts but hourly experts lot of celebrity endorsements and products they're not experts on that product but if Michael Jordan actually Nike Footwear like has done a lot of running in his wife as me a lot of jumping so philosophy he might actually have something to say about that when he endorses Hanes underwear is he an expert on underwear no more than me no more than you right yeah we're not we're up there right oh well most of the special to change its ordering around the room so you know celebrity endorser what's going on why do they put these celebrities in there well because people like celebrities we identify with them one of the the ads that I actually have in this pool for you is that that classic McDonald's ad that has two sports bike comes to basketball icons this is Michael Jordan's a young man old man right and Lee rebirth as a middle-age variable man basketball standards right yeah and they are they're playing against each other for the big man the winner gets to eat the big neck that he was familiar with this commercial I do have them in blackboard for you it's the one they're shooting shots and they get wilder and wilder increase through there on the top of the Sears Tower and do some some crazy shot well why did they put those bags in there they were both well-liked basketball guys and if you think about the way that he had was set up you want to peel them as many people as possible that had set up to kill them that not so much together think about that they captured you had a black man and a white man you got a young man and an old man yeah they're getting as many in there as they can do some very smart yeah they have a new hideout apparently that's about a year old where two other guys are I forget who they're there's some of the big players now they're playing against each other what happens Larry vs1 Kielder sandwich you guys see what happens it's out there take a look at that sometimes that sometimes it's he adds that have celebrities that we like we identify with sometimes it's just gather you know somebody that's white dust and we can identify with as well then this is kind of similar overlap a little bit I think there are ads that to pick situations you don't want this to happen even think about those ATT commercials what do you see in those exactly breaking and this is a done they sort of get a matter-of-fact way the others some dramatic music all right they get scared they run to the phone abt is there for them don't worry man all the monster all those are very dry yeah so you know when those first came out I found those actually upsetting you know remember the one where the kids are talking and they're just driving along and then suddenly they get the blindsided and there's glass everywhere that was kind of shocking wasn't and what's the message there well we really want to have OnStar in a situation like that don't you because otherwise might die now they're not all you know a bad situation I actually have a they greatly added there somebody who may have seen this commercial it's a condom yeah if you guys seen the Zazou condom man and that's this guy he looks like it's you know early 30s maybe and he's in the supermarket with his kid and his kid is just totally misbehavior again this ring about he's like pulling things off the shelf can Travis all that and then at the very end of the end that says azu condoms what's the idea there whatever is there a point well you don't want to have rap kids like that huh not all kids are brats yeah we know that you're gonna have grandkids like that and buy our product it's depicting a situation you don't want them though there's a lot of bands that are depicting situations you do want to be you know you can buy our product this will be you it's not a celebrity to ads along those lines that are kind of funny one of them I can in there all these my anger gets all right now some of the viagra ads I gave that men you know satisfy your partner you know be a real man again that sort of thing the one that I've got in black word for it is from the woman's perspective and it's a musical it's all these middle-aged women and they're singing this good morning good morning we taught the whole night through song and that's code of course right good morning good morning - they're all cheery right happy because through the miracle of Viagra their love life has been rekindled together now you know if you're if you're in that sort of situation you see that yeah viagra might look like a real answer think about those enzymes who's the main character in those ends eight male enhancement out of the way but who's that who's the Kenyans yeah smiling Bob goes all the way those cookouts all that sort of stuff there's one there's there's a Christmas one where he's Santa Claus no what's the idea behind that well again in Planet it's appealing to fears right but it's also it's geared towards the middle-aged men trying to say if you buy our product you will be in a much better situation most beer is fitted to this don't their most so dads and welcome do had an entire sort of remake of their image in the 1980s through mom do manage to associate itself with a certain lifestyle street extreme sports extreme of this extreme that so people you know jumping off of bridges and then they drink the dew so even if you're you know over the weight and not in shape and you know I'm not given to a lot of outdoor activities you know like me if you drink the do or do the do then you'll be like these people now clearly not the case is it if you buy that the beer will will your life suddenly become bonded magically it's not a thief so like I said I put a lot of these ads into blackboard for you guys to take a look at I'd like you to take a look at the next couple days and try to see where they fit in I know I've got them categorized but some of them make 50 more than one category and for the ones that are giving reasons try think about one of the reasons they're actually going are they any good

Channel: Fayetteville State University

Views: 8,822

Rating: 4.9375 out of 5

Keywords: Critical, Thinking, and, Advertising

Id: 0IOv6MxS8VQ

Length: 37min 38sec (2258 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2011