I had always wondered why companies spend so much money in ads. I did understand that it's important to introduce the customer to the product and to compare their product with competitor’s product and all that. But, I never understood why we have ads repeated at such short intervals that after one day after, the ad's first appearance, the ad gets so irritating that we develop a dislike for even the product! You know how it goes after that, we start to even make some stupid mocks about the ads yourselves.
But this mad behavior of the ad firms to repeat ads every minute, recently stuck to me as not-so-stupid. And I reached a few conclusions of my own, which I came to from these situations I went through:
One, I went to buy toiletries with my family and I wanted a soap for the summer. And the first product that I could recall was the one which had the ad I hated the most. The one I hated so much, I had even started hating the mock-up of it that I'd myself created. So obviously i didn't want to buy it. So I bought the other one? Well no, I didn't buy any thing other. I bought that exact same thing I never wanted to buy. Why? Well cause that ad had filled my head with “summer+soap” so much I couldn't recall any other soap! I spent 5 minutes scratching my head before I had no choice. So I guess that conclusion number one is : the repeated ads are used to brainwash you and to eliminate the competition from every living brain cell in your head.
Two, I came home tired one evening. Wanted to rest and was happy eating a biscuit, cause I didn't want to get up and make a proper snack for myself. But there it was on the TV, Maggi, maggi, maggi, every 15 seconds I could see those people in the TV slurping away those unhealthy noddles, taunting every taste-buds in my mouth that they were so “deprived”! After 15 minutes, I had joined them in the slurping. So I conclude, it's not only important for the companies that you buy the product, but also that you consume it fast enough so that you buy more and that's where those ads strike at the right place and time.
Anything I missed?
Akshat
