Money --> Advertising

In class, when we read the facts and figures of companies who advertise, we see a number. This number is typically shocking--somewhere in the millions and billions. 800 million to cereal brands, a few hundred million more for McD's--whatever.  Can you truly measure the effort of advertising with money?

The article we read, the "Searching for the Why of Buy," is, in my opinion, a better "taste" of how far you need to go in advertising. Not necessarily spending money on advertising/PR firms, but what works best. Money can only get you so far, and it shouldn't be the last thing we look at when we examine the effects of a consumer society-- we need to see the prevalence of these methods, not just their price tag.

I personally find it frightening that advertising has gone so far that it actually takes up enough of our brain that we know corporate logos and slogans--thousands of them.

Time Magazine released an interesting article last November entitled "Shoptimism". The article is an interview with a former top-man at both Land's End (clothing company) and Esquire magazine. In the interview, Eisenberg explains the two different types of "buyers":

The classic buyer who tries to buy only things that he or she needs, who thinks about it rationally, who compares prices. The romantic buyer shops with his or her heart. The romantic may buy something because it is trendy or it has a really cool design or because he or she is feeling blue and needs a pick-me-up.

Which buyer are you? How has this changed as a result of the recession? Perhaps most interesting is the romantic buyer, for whom buying something actually affects their mood. Is this making buying something like a drug?

A little less than a year ago, the New York Times published a similar article, entitled "Message in What We Buy, but Nobody's Listening". Please check it out. In my view, the most interesting passage is when Dr. Miller explains how we subconsciously interpret signs of wealth, like this example: 

 Suppose, during a date, you casually say, “The sugar maples in Harvard Yard were so beautiful every fall term.” Here’s what you’re signaling, as translated by Dr. Miller:

“My S.A.T. scores were sufficiently high (roughly 720 out of 800) that I could get admitted, so my I.Q. is above 135, and I had sufficient conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellectual openness to pass my classes. Plus, I can recognize a tree.”