Advertising Summary JIB Fowles \"Advertising\'s

Advertising Summary

JIB Fowles "Advertising's Fifteen Basic Appeals"

Advertising above all else must make an emotional appeal. It plays on people's desires, and promises them that the advertised product or service will help to fulfill those desires. This is especially prominent in the incredibly congested American marketplace, where subconscious appeals are also prominent. These appeals are based on certain assumptions about people's personalities that have come from years of trail and error. This part of advertising constitutes the second order of content of most advertising, where the first order of content is information regarding the product being advertised. In some advertising the second order of content seems to dominate the first. Though people in advertising do not usually speak about their profession in these explicit terms, these trends are clear in advertising results.

A list of fifteen basic appeals sums up most advertising's second-order content. Topping this list is the need for sex, followed by affiliation and other desires such as dominance, autonomy, and security. The need for sex is played to very ambiguously in advertising, with images promising attention based on physical attraction but rarely explicitly referencing sexuality. The need for affiliation is a basic need to belong, and images of companionship play to this. Children and pets play to people's (especially women's) need to nurture, while authority figures speak to the human need for guidance. Aggressive behaviors must be carefully played on in advertising, and campaigns that play to the need to aggress often cause a public backlash. Sports heroes are a common feature in advertisements playing on people's need to achieve, associating certain products with success, and the need to dominate is usually invoked by certain products proclaiming their being the best in their field -- the King of Beers, for example.