Coke with no Cups.....

So this week we were suppose to showcase our experiments in front of the class in order to show how people's perception of certain products is effected by what they are lead to believe. Unfortunately our experiment never quite went ahead because of a particularly prominant case of Freshers flu which I have to say does sound rather nasty and surprisingly contageous even though i am yet to come down with the virus myself. As other members of my group were suppose to provide plastic cups our experiment wouldn't have worked. I don't think me pouring cola into people's mouth's would have been appropriate do you? I guess i'll have to carry two very large and very heavy bottles of Cola back to the halls of residence where i shall give it out for free. Something tells me that a full two litre bottle of 17p cola will not go down as well as the trusted brand of Coca Cola but it's free and all students like free stuff don't they? Well if not you can always just add Vodka - trust me it works every time.



Now onto the boring bit; that's theory of course. Today we were informed about the intergeral theory when it comes to packaging which every ad man or woman knows they have to complete to gain a sale. This is the Perceptual Process, this put simply is Sensation followed by Attention and finally Interpretation. Now in my previous posts i have mentioned the constant barrage of advertisements that are thrust upon us on a daily basis. I can now confirm that there are in fact roughly 5000 forms of media vying for our attention every day. This is just crazy and impossible to compute every single one surely. No wonder headaches are part and parcel of everyday life, that really is a lot to take in. Well in fact we only take in 10% of this as on average 500 of that 5000 we see everyday are actually noticed by us. This is where the second stage of the process comes in as our attention has been caught by the adverts that we've seen. This however doesnt mean that it will stay in our minds, i mean i get told my till pin number in work at the start of my shift every week and yes i may remember it for that four hours but as soon as i leave those doors and enter back into the world of sanity do i remember it for next week? Of course not! It's exactly the same with adverts, the things you particularly care or that strike a chord with you are the ones that your going to actually remember whereas the things that you see that are ok but nothing special are going to fly out of your head as soon as you look away from the poster and start thinking about what your going to put with those chips for tea. This is why many adverts now use Stimulus Ambiguity as this will catch the consumers attention which already gets them to second base. Now they've just got to make a strong enough impression for the consumer to take action. The NHS for example have to make sure that the picture of a smoking baby grabs the readers attention so much that when they get off of the tube escalators they will start interpreting this information and looking at it in their own personal lives and how by them smoking their children are also. If this happens they are more likely to quit and hey presto the advert has reached the holy grail and has been successful.

So don't worry too much guys it's not that much of a big deal really, 10 Ad's a day - Bring it on!