Advertising is one of the most popular techniques of a human’s conscious manipulating in the 21st century. It has a long history that goes back to ancient and medieval times. It gained its particular popularity in the middle of the 19th century. Although it has changed a lot since then, the purpose to create an atmosphere where an individual intends to buy a particular product or service has preserved the technique, but the tools to achieve this goal has changed. The launch and development of advertising are strongly connected with the humankind evolution, improving technologies, and progress in general. As the number of products and services increased compared to ancient and medieval times, the competition between brands also grew considerably. To create a successful advertisement takes a lot of creativity and background knowledge considering such facts as the influence of ethos, pathos, logos, and other appeals used in modern commercials. The transformation of advertisements from their earlier written and printed billboard and magazine forms to digital variants in the Internet, together with teaser format that has appeared recently, became possible due to a constant development of a human’s mind through scientific researchers and taking into consideration the future time perspective which is impossible without a focus on the personal past of consumers created by nostalgic advertisements.
A lot of brain efforts were needed to transform previous earliest forms of advertising that were mainly written in papyrus and rock wall to modern digital messages. Serving the goal of persuasion, which is present in any advertisement through its history, the development was made particularly in enriching appeals, starting from Aristotle, who distinguishes three main appeals, namely, ethos, pathos, and logos, to a present day variety which recognizes personal, social, humor, fear, sexual, romantic, endorsement, youth, popularity, musical, adventure, empathy, and brand appeals within the emotional one, pain solution, scarcity, testimonial, contrasting, status, statistics, beauty, transparent, natural appeals as subcategories of the rational type, and so on. Such detailed classification of advertisement appeals is explained by the effect which they create in relation to the mental activity of the human brain as advertising develops headlong with humanity and its intellect. New ideas, characters, and concepts appear, as well as the ways to transmit messages. Therefore, advertising is studied from the effectiveness standpoint, which also assists in its development. Different sciences explore the brain functionality and its activity under the influence of various advertising techniques.
Among other interdisciplinary studies, psychology and marketing analyze the phenomenon of advertisement and human behavior in relation to different types of advertisements. Thus, neuroimaging methods study the reactions of the brain to advertisements, such as positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and electroencephalograph (Cook et al. 148). All of them analyze the way the brain processes information under the conditions of perceiving advertising images. According to the findings, state the brain reacts in a different way depending on the rational, logical, or emotional appeal (Cook et al. 148). This fact proves the necessity to concentrate on a particular appeal in the process of creating a successful advertising.
The next step in investigating the development of advertisement is the analysis of the future time perspective and its connection with nostalgic advertising. Thus, experimental marketing explores the ways of increasing product or service appeals via customers’ experience (Ju et al.). The difference between traditional advertising and the one that relies on responses to nostalgic advertising techniques is that the first one addresses the characteristics of particular products or services and the last one relies on individual customers’ past knowledge and skills, such as feelings, senses, and thoughts. It is important to take into account such experience, which is called diachronicity from the scientific point of view, as it shapes customers’ preferences in the future by eliciting positive and nostalgic feelings. In this connection, considering the mental time travel aspect is also important in the process of creating effective advertisements.
Except above-mentioned innovative techniques in investigating the development of advertisement, a new type appeared, namely, teaser advertising. By creating the information gap, teasers are able to arise customers’ curiosity. Remarkably, teaser advertising is not a single, but a series of advertisements and a final revealer that is usually known as teaser campaigns (Trehan and Maan). Although in people’s mind, it is associated more with the cinema industry, it finds its popularity in the marketing sphere as well. This is a creative advertisement format which is also strongly connected with the identification of particular brands. Behind a successful teaser campaign, there are usually the frequency, freshness in the concept, powerful story, considered design, and set timing. The most effective use of teaser advertising is even before a product is actually launched.
Referring to the history of advertising, it is possible to see how the methods and techniques used to promote different products and services change and become more complicated. With the possibilities of modern technologies and advances that different gadgets provide, new advertisement campaigns reach customers quickly, and there is an immediate feedback from them. The advertisement itself is permanently in the transformation stage, which is connected with the evolution of humanity and accompanied by change in the tastes, views, and needs of potential customers and the development of a human’s mind. Due to the brain perception of advertisement and the influence it creates, more and more effective ways to promote goods still appear, develop, and are implemented. One of the examples is the teaser format of advertisement that has gained its popularity recently.
Reference
- Cook, Ian A. et al. “Regional Brain Activation with Advertising Images.” Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, vol. 4, no. 3, 2011, pp. 147-160.
- Ju, Ilyoung et al. “Future Time Perspective Moderates Consumer Responses to Nostalgic Advertising.” GeroPsych, vol. 31, no. 3, 2018, pp. 137-150.
- Trehan, Kulveen, and G. S. Maan. “Teaser Campaigns: An Effective Advertising Execution for Varied Goods, Services and Ideas.” Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism, vol. 2, no. 11, 2012.
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