Their is a new article up about money saving at www.MoneyAhoy.com entitled Advertising Strategies to Brainwash You!
This article discusses how companies that buy advertising for TV, radio, billboards, internet banners, junk mail, spam e-mail, etc. use tricks and strategies to brainwash you into buying their product or service.
There are 6 type of influence that Robert Cialdini refers to in his book Influence. These are (taken from wikipedia.org):
- Scarcity – People will create a demand for something if they believe there is a limited amount of it (i.e. Limited time offer while supplies last, so act fast!)
- Reciprocity – People feel inclined to return a favor (i.e. free samples in the grocery store)
- Social Proof – People like to follow what the crowd is doing (i.e. Apple is the “cool” product right now)
- Authority – People listen to others in positions of power (i.e. 5 out of 6 doctors recommend using this new drug)
- Liking – People will follow or listen to those they like (i.e. celebrity endorsements)
- Commitment – People feel inclined to honor their commitments once they’ve been made (i.e. 30-day money back guarantee is hardly used if folks are not happy with the product they received)
If you can learn to recognize these types of influence, you are one step closer to preventing advertisers from manipulating your money spending behavior.
To truly be protected, you have to minimize your exposure to advertising as much as possible, but that is a topic for another post!