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Modern advertising has been around since the late 19^th and early 20^th century and has rapidly increased in the past decade. In 2007, spending on advertising was estimated at more than $150 billion in the United States and $385 billion worldwide. The latter is expected to exceed $450 billion by 2010, which is this year.

What Is Advertising Exactly?

By definition, advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade its viewers and readers to take some action. It usually includes the name of a product or service and how they could benefit customers, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that particular brand.

There are two sides to advertising; the good and the bad:

Good

At its best, the honest advertisers serve the public interest by informing us the availability of rationally desirable products or services and the policy proposals of political parties.

Bad

Some deceptive advertisers unconsciously manipulate a vulnerable public to buy things and ideas that they don’t rationally want. This group of advertisers are called spellcasters.

Facts on Advertising

-          9 out of 10 Americans don’t trust advertising

-          “Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need” Will             Rogers

-          An average child views about 20,000 30 second television commercials every year

-          An average person by the age of 65 sees about 2 million television commercials

Neuromarkerting

This is a new field undertaken by marketers and advertisers that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive and affective response to marketing stimuli. Researchers plugged in willing human guinea pigs to measure activity in specific regional of their brain response and sensors are attached to them to measure changes in their physiological state. Purpose of this experiment is to learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and discover what part of the brain is telling them so.

Spellcasters want to learn what turns us on inside and use that to seduce us into buying their products or services; all this happening without to our knowledge. On top of that, not only brands are using this; even politicians are joining in the fray to sway our votes.

Conclusion

This then raises the question, where’s the integrity of brands and politicians to inform consumers that they are in our minds controlling how we think since there are no companies so far that admits to using neuromarketing to drive their brand.

What do you think of neuromarketing? Is it here to stay? Is it ethical? Do share with us your opinions through the comment section.

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