Mixed Signals: The Ad Made Me Do It

Mixed Signals is Erin Straza’s weekly musing about marketing miscellany in advertising, branding, and messaging.

I’m a sucker for fancy packaging. Add witty messaging to that, and I have a hard time resisting the pull to purchase. That’s because product messaging and packaging is designed to speak to our strongest desires and needs—things like love, acceptance, pleasure, and safety. A well-crafted message beckons the audience to try Product XYZ to get one or more of those needs met.

Most of us believe the messaging may warm our hearts and minds toward a product, but few believe that advertising influences us specifically. We all want to believe that we wouldn’t be manipulated by messaging. But really, would companies spend all that money if it didn’t make a dent on consumer behavior? As consumers, we must come to grips with the influence of advertising upon our thought processes and purchase decisions.

Research has revealed how the brain responds when people view advertising. In an  NPR report,  Maya Cueva explains what she learned from Ben Hayden, a neuroscientist who studies decision-making.

“You can literally witness this battle going on,” says Hayden. He told [Cueva] about researchers at Caltech who scanned the brains of people on diets while offering them junk food. A certain region of the brain lit up when the dieters resisted junk food. Hayden says that self-control region is in a tug of war with the parts of the brain affected by ads. “When advertising comes into the picture, it kind of is the opposite of self-control,” Hayden says. “It encourages you to just go out and buy it, just do it.”

So it’s true: Advertising has a strong, subconscious influence. Perhaps instead of blaming our behaviors on the devil we can now say, “The ad made me do it.” But does that mean we have no power to override the messages that encourage us to indulge or shop or drink or collect?

Hayden disputes that notion, stating that when you think critically about how ads work, you “create new patterns in [your] brain that strengthen the self-control regions.” Sounds a lot like Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

There’s no way to avoid the intake of the world’s messaging in regard to products, values, and priorities without completely disengaging and becoming an eremite. But each time we take those messages and run them through the filter of God’s Word, we strengthen our brain to stand firm in what is really true.

After all that, we may still choose to purchase, but the choice is still ours to bear.