Adverts

When I first saw adverts on TV, when I was a young boy in Amsterdam, I thought they were magical. Those short stories advertising usually food and stuff you’d like to own were mesmerising and actually very memorable. Well they repeated them over and over, day after day, many times during an evening and therefore they just stuck in your mind, potentially, forever.

I still remember that in between each advert they presented a lion character and he did strange things in between each advert. I was also very interested in seeing what he would do in between the adverts as well as the adverts themselves. Here is an example of a Dutch advert, advertising Dutch Peanut Butter. Notice the Lion’s antics before and after. I now realise that the Lion, played a massive part in getting you to stay watching and locking in a massive hook into your brain.

[embed]https://youtu.be/iy6AhWkSKo8[/embed]

After all, adverts are short interventions in your brain, they get lodged into your memory banks for recall at a later date. Have you ever found yourself walking around a shop and noticing a product that you actually didn’t need, but you still bought it? You may not have been able to make the association in that moment, you may not make any association to the advert ever, but the signal was still there without you even noticing, the signal to buy something you actually didn’t need.

Happy shopping!

Michael de Groot