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from the ad-viewing-quota-enforcement dept.
The University of Warwick's Andrew Oswald and his team compared survey data on the life satisfaction of more than 900,000 citizens of 27 European countries from 1980 to 2011 with data on annual advertising spending in those nations over the same period. The researchers found an inverse connection between the two. The higher a country's ad spend was in one year, the less satisfied its citizens were a year or two later. Their conclusion: Advertising makes us unhappy.
Oswald: We did find a significant negative relationship. When you look at changes in national happiness each year and changes in ad spending that year or a few years earlier—and you hold other factors like GDP and unemployment constant—there is a link. This suggests that when advertisers pour money into a country, the result is diminished well-being for the people living there.
HBR: What prompted you to investigate this?
[ . . . ] I can't help noticing the increasing amount of ads we're bombarded with. For me, it was natural to wonder whether it might create dissatisfaction in our culture [ . . . ] In a sense they're trying to generate dissatisfaction—stirring up your desires so that you spend more
[ . . . . ] exposing people to a lot of advertising raises their aspirations—and makes them feel that their own lives, achievements, belongings, and experiences are inadequate.
[ . . . . ] we controlled for lots of other influences on happiness. Second, we looked at increases or drops in advertising in a given year and showed that they successfully predicted a rise or fall in national happiness in ensuing years.
So always take two ad blockers before bedtime.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:15PM (2 children)
but about product associations.
It's not like Coca Cola advertises the organic processes their sugar (HFCS that is...) is made with, or how the scientists meticulously perfected the process for their coca leaf flavouring extracts - they just show happy (diverse too, these days) people to associate with the product. Your brain can't unsee the association once it was seen.
Fortunately for my happiness, I'm somewhat mentally allergic to the happiness shown in advertisements. Particularly beer advertisments with happy football (soccer to you 'merkins) watchers in hip bars, where the ad climaxes in trying to transport the excitement when the team scores. These make we want to become a hooligan in my old days, just for the sake of crashing such parties with some nice third-half ultra-violence to achieve peace of mind. :)
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday January 17 2020, @10:21AM (1 child)
Unfortunately for them, the people shown in the ads I see (I do glimpse some when I'm fast forwarding through the ads of a TV recording) are people I don't identify with.
One that comes to mind (in the UK) is a dork who walks along the road with near-miss accidents happening around him, like a building just collapsing behind him and an open man-hole cover being replaced just before he steps on it. He remains oblivious of what is going on and finally walks into a bar and orders the cider being advertised. But why would I want to be like this idiot Darwin Award wannabee?
I also notice a high proportion of black actors in the ads, much higher than in the UK as a whole. Is this simply out of fear of being criticised by the PC brigade, or is it because they think black people are more gullible to this shit? Rarely see an Indian, perhaps as they are seen as untrusworthy (largely thanks to Indian phone scammers). You do see young Asian women, perhaps because they are seen as non-threatening and cute.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:48PM
I can't speak for the cider ad you're talking about, but in the US, when I rarely watch TV I've noticed a lot of ads that are basically "here's a funny skit, now buy this beer/car insurance/gizmo/whatever". Some - to me at least, seem to be total non sequiturs, where there seems to be little relation between the skit and the product/service they are advertising. They also seem to contain a bunch of inside jokes and references. Perhaps if I was a TV junkie and had been seeing these ads and characters for years I might get the joke, but they mostly leave me going "huh?". Or perhaps I'm just too out of touch with pop culture now.
I'm not sure what their reasoning is. Perhaps they are hoping that if their commercials are entertaining enough, people might watch them instead of just using a DVR to skip them. However, if you try to watch a football game (American football), which now take about 3.5 hours to broadcast thanks to all the ads, you'll see the same tired skits at least a dozen times.