The Persuaders

"The Persuaders" begins by questioning the increase in the amount of advertising we typically encounter in our daily lives. How would you assess the amount of advertising you see? Too much? Too little? Just right? In your view, what difference does it make to know that people today see much more advertising in their daily lives than people 20 or 30 years ago?

In our daily lives we are constantly being bombarded with advertisements. As society continues to move forward we, as a group, are becoming far more materialistic. This is proven with the amount of advertising we are subjected to every day. In order to really make an impression with advertisements it takes either shock factor or repetition. The advertisements feed off of each other so in order to compete to get their message or product out they need to advertise as much as their competitors. I personally think that it is too much advertisement right now. If the main objective of advertisements was to produce the best ad and not the most often shown ad we could decrease the repetition and possibly increase the message within the advertisement. There are so many outlets for advertisements now. They are everywhere we look; on the television, internet, newspapers, magazines, on the sides of menus, billboards, on top of taxis, etc. We cannot escape advertisements in today's society, it has definitely increased in our daily lives since 20 or 30 years ago and I believe that if we continue like this it will only increase more.

Where are things headed in the future? What are some possible scenarios that could play out as far as the direction that future persuaders may take their marketing techniques.

As advertisements continue to get less broad and much more personal and intimate the advertisers can better target their market. I think that as far as marketing techniques they will need to continue to really reach smaller targeted markets. Instead of just putting mass amounts of advertisements out it will be more beneficial to improve the messages within the advertisements and try to reach out to the target audience for that message. The advertisements placement is one great way to reach out to select audiences, placing ads where their demographic frequents. The main objective of advertisements need to change from amount of advertising to the message and the audience of these ads.