Advertising Related To A Doggie?

Being an interactive media designer, sometimes I have to design for mass audiences. This would mean needing to put the knowledge of mass communication and media & psychology into practice. A good book to start with the basic introduction to psychology is "Introducing Psychology" by Nigel C. Benson.

Photo credit: hongray29 (STOMP Talkback)

This bring us to the theme of today's topic - psychology. I am sure you guys have seen this advertisement on the bus stop somewhere before right? Placing the photo of top students and the New Moon chicken essence together. What kind of feeling or emotion do you get when you see this?

Another similar one appears as a television advertisement. Vitagen uses a local celebrity and students to market their product. The focus here is on the students though, as the advertisement want us to believe that smartness is related to consuming their product.

But before you come up with any conclusion, take a look at this diagram above. This is one of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov famous experiments. Initially, the dog will only drool whenever it was given food. But by ringing a bell at the same time when food was given to the dog, after a while, the dog will naturally drool whenever it hears a bell!

Although that is a rough model usually for behavior therapy, a similar model can be applied to marketing and advertisement. I am making an educated guess here but let's take for example the New Moon chicken essence, the chicken essence itself is good for health, but there is no proof that the chicken essence will actually makes you ace for your exams just by drinking it.

The marketing agency thus make use of Singapore culture where "being smart leads to better future" and incorporated that into their product. chillycraps of Department of Crappy Engineering even mention "did the kids become top students first, or did they drink chicken essence first?".  Again, same can be applied for the Vitagen advertisement. If you follow the advertisement closely, Felicia Chin did not speak a single word about how good Vitagen is for students. The advertisement could just be well off without the students.

But no, I am not here to flame about how marketing and advertising agency is "psycho-ing" us to buy their client's products, but rather, I just want the consumers to be more aware of how some marketing and advertising agency works. Of course, designers can also make use of this to help their clients increase the sales of their products. It all boils down to the morality and ethics of our society.

The corporate identity and brand (New Moon & Vitagen) featured here are used solely for case study purpose only.