This page has been accessed
since 29 May 1996.
This page has been accessed
since 29 May 1996.
For further readings, I suggest going to the Media and Communications Studies website.
This is Part Two of a discussion about personal enjoyment. If you have not read Part One, I suggest doing that first.
Go to Personal Enjoyment, Part One
When advertising uses personal enjoyment, the ad shows how the product or service will not only aid but apparently cause the enjoyment. It stimulates the senses, or provides the variety that people crave, or both. For example, a soft drink ad showed Pe psi and Coca Cola delivered to the wrong places. The Coke turned a fraternity party into a lethargic bingo game, while the Pepsi turned a retirement home into a wild celebration of life. Obviously, the Pepsi provided the stimulation and variety tha t brought enjoyment to these elderly people.
The ads may also imply that the product brings or increases those things
that people enjoy, including sexual or romantic encounters, greater wealth,
or higher esteem. However, the ad will often show how the product will
provide stimulation or variety, n ot for the purchaser, but for someone
else, to the benefit of the purchaser. The ads are less appealing to sex,
greed, or self-esteem than showing how much more enjoyment there will be
in sex, gaining wealth, or a rise in self-esteem.
Sound
Many advertisements show how much more enjoyable sound will be if the consumer buys the advertised product. Such products include stereo components, personal stereos, blank and prerecorded tapes, and CDs. For example, an ad for Maxell tapes shows a ma n sitting in an armchair looking like he's in a windtunnel as the sound blasts over him. The ad implies that you'll enjoy music much more if you have it recorded on Maxell tape, since the tape will increase the quality of the sound. The same applies to many other sound products, that their quality will increase the purchaser's enjoyment.
Sight
Enjoyment appeals often use the sense of sight, particularly for entertainment media such as television and movies. For example, the visual stimulation of most movie promotions (trailers), consisting of brief scenes from the movie, implies the enjoyment a movie goer will have if rhe sees the entire movie.
Visual stimulation may also include sex appeal as an element. For products such as cosmetics and hair coloring, clothing, colored contact lenses, and toothpaste, the purchaser's appearance is shown as appealing to the opposite sex. The images used show the purchaser enjoying the attention (and implied possibility of sexual activity) because of what the product has done for rher appearance. This, of course, can also appeal to a person's self-esteem.
Smell
The enjoyment of aromas is a large part of many ads, particularly for those products whose major function is not one that an ad can clearly show. For example, cleaning products such as laundry detergents, soaps, and bathroom cleansers will emphasize how much better clothes, bodies, and bathrooms will smell after the buyer uses the product, even though the main function of these products is to clean, not perfume.
Of course, there are many products whose function is to provide a good smell (or mask a bad one). These include house and rug fresheners, deodorants, and mouthwash. These products are, of course, sold based on smell.
Other products link the sense of smell to sexual attraction. These include perfume and cologne, mouthwash, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, and other personal hygiene products. For example, in a perfume ad, a woman walks along a street. An attractive m an smells her perfume and begins chasing after her, often stumbling and bumbling like a puppy. He quickly buys a bouquet of flowers, and, when he catches up to her, hands the flowers to her with an adoring look. She smiles at him condescendingly and con tinues walking, pleased with his reaction, as he stands and watches her go. Both of them clearly enjoy how she smells and the effect it has on them.
Touch
Ads rarely use how a product itself feels as an appeal. Ads for cotton use the slogan, "The touch, the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives,"© but few products have a specific feel that can be effectively promoted as a selling point.
However, advertising often equates the sense of touch with sensuality: touch of silk or satin, or smooth skin. From a skin cream's slogan "skin he'd love to touch,"© to a shave cream's "take it off . . . take it all off,"© a product's function is redir ected from practical (moisturizing skin or making shaving easier) to sensual.
Taste
Taste, of course, is applied to food and drink, since taste requires putting the product in your mouth. Naturally, this wouldn't apply to products like bug sprays and radial tires.
From "Less Filling. Tastes Great"© to "the flavor lasts an extra Extra EXTRA long time"© a major selling point for many foods and drinks is their taste. Often these are parity products, such as the above examples of beer and chewing gum, and thus have little else to differentiate them from others like them.
Variety is a major selling point using taste. From "You deserve a break today"(c) to Kellogg's Variety [breakfast cereal] Pak®, the emphasis is on a change from routine. Products may even be developed the purpose of which is to provide variety in taste , even though there's no other change in the product. For example, Quaker Oats has several flavors, including regular, apple/cinnamon, and others. The oatmeal is the same -- it's the variety in taste that sells it as a daily food.
The most common types of ads that use personal enjoyment as an appeal are lifestyle and slice-of-life. The latter usually consists of a scene in which characters are either stuck in a routine or dreading going back to one. For example, American Express has a commercial in which a couple is at the airport getting ready to return to their home. She is clearly disappointed their vacation is over. He pulls out an American Express card and asks what she needs. The next scene shows them enjoying their v acation again. It was his possession of the card that allowed them all this enjoyment; without it, going back to the old routine was their only course.
The former, the lifestyle ad, is quite common for personal enjoyment appeals. In these ads, people are interacting with the product, an element of their lifestyle, that obviously is the source of much of the fun they are having. For example, in an ad f or Le Menu frozen dinners, there are several scenes of people enjoying eating the meals, smiling, laughing and even kicking up their heels in happiness. The implication is that the meals are the source of all their joy -- without them, life would be dul l.
Personal enjoyment is the fifth strongest of the psychological appeals that advertising can use to help promote products. It is a pleasurable stimulation of the senses. There is no absolute biological necessity for an animal to enjoy anything to surviv e, reproduce or gather resources. As long as its senses are stimulated sufficiently for it to perceive and react to the world around it, that's all that is necessary. Enjoying the stimulation isn't. However, it seems clear that at least some activities in which animals indulge are pleasurable to them.
One aspect of enjoyment seems to be the need for variety of experience: the more routine an animal's life or activities are, the fewer signs of enjoyment there seem to be.
The above is certainly true for humans. Humans enjoy many things that stimulate their senses. Humans, however, have many advantages over other animals. First, the stimulation of the senses doesn't have to be real: we can imagine that which doesn't ac tually impinge on our senses, and derive pleasure from it. Second, our brains and societies have allowed us to invent more, and more complex, ways of stimulating our senses than any other creature on earth. We are also able to find and/or create more wa ys of doing things, of creating such variety that possibilities seem endless. As the cliché goes, "Variety is the spice of life." Our lives can be as enjoyable as we can make it.
Advertising can take advantage of our desire for pleasure by showing (or at least implying) that the use of the sponsor's product will provide the sensory stimulation and/or variety that we crave. Almost any product can make this connection, be it wine or radial tires. Enjoyment is another element in the consumer's bundle of values attached to the product that makes the product desirable.
Return to Taking ADvantage Contents Page
Return to Taflinger's Home Page
You can reach me by e-mail at: richt@turbonet.com
This page was created by Richard F. Taflinger. Thus, all errors, bad
links, and even worse style are entirely his fault.
Copyright © 1996 Richard F. Taflinger.
This and all other pages created by and containing the original work of
Richard F. Taflinger are copyrighted, and are thus subject to fair use
policies, and may not be copied, in whole or in part, without express written
permission of the author richt@turbonet.com.
Disclaimers
The information provided on this and other pages by me, Richard F.
Taflinger (richt@turbonet.com),
is under my own personal responsibility and not that of Washington State
University or the Edward R. Murrow School o f Communication. Similarly,
any opinions expressed are my own and are in no way to be taken as those
of WSU or ERMSC.
In addition,
I, Richard F. Taflinger, accept no responsibility for WSU or ERMSC material
or policies. Statements issued on behalf of Washington State University
are in no way to be taken as reflecting my own opinions or those of any
other individual. Nor do I take r esponsibility for the contents of any
Web Pages listed here other than my own.
This Web page created in Web Factory.