U N I T III

HOW DOES IT WORK?

I.Pre-reading task.

Advertising tells you what to buy, how to buy, and why to buy any particular brand or product. The thing that is amazing is that it continues to work. You'd think that, after all these years of the same old line people would have become immune to it. But it is not so. And the real question is:
How does it come?
How does it come people keep believing?
How does it come you keep buying things you know won’t do what they’re supposed to do?
How does it come advertising works?
What effect does advertising have on you?
Does it tell you about products, or does it persuade you to buy?
Are you sure?

II.Read the text.

TV COMMERCIAL

In a TV commercial the advertiser is trying to persuade you to go out and buy something. He wants to make you feel that you really must have it. There are a number of different ways of doing this:
a) The snob effect. You are told that the product is most exclusive and of course rather expensive. Only the very best people use it.
b) The "scientific" effect. A serious-looking man with glasses and a white coat, possibly a doctor or a professor, tells you about the advantages of the product.
c) The world-and-music effect. The name of the product is repeated over and over again, put into a rhyme and sung several times, in the hope that you won't forget it. The sung rhyme is called a "jingle".
d) The ha-ha effect. The adviser tries to make you laugh by showing people or cartoon figures in funny situations.
e) The VIP (Very Important Person) effect. Well-known people, like actors or football-players, are shown using the product.
f) The supermodern effect. The adviser tries to persuade you that his product is a sensation or something really new.
g) The go-go effect. This is suitable for the teenage market. It shows young people having a party, singing, laughing, having a wonderful time, and, of course, using the product.
1. Give the examples of the advertisements you’ve ever watched on TV made in the mentioned ways.
2. Name some famous people who have ever taken part in the advertisements on TV. What product did they advertise?
3. Read the following advertisement. Which of the ways was it made in?
Man: Excuse me! Miss!
Woman: Yes, love?
Man: What’s on the menu today?
Woman: Well, let me see. We’ve got pie and chips and chop and chips and steak and chips and plaice and chips and skate and chips and cod and chips and egg and beans and chips. Everyone loves chips.

RADIO ADVERTISING

How radio advertisers use our emotions to get us to buy the products they're selling? There are so many emotions that advertisers try to influence. To affect a particular emotion, advertisers make what we call an emotional appeal. One of the most popular emotional appeals that advertisers use is the appeal to humor. We all like to hear funny stories, so by making an ad humorous, the advertisers hope that we'll remember it and will, therefore remember the product. Another appeal is the appeal to thriftiness. By thriftiness we're talking about the desire to save money. Most shoppers are more likely to buy something if it's on sale than if it's full price.
The next kind of ads is the advertisement that appeals to our egos. Our egos make us do things to look good in front of others. For example, we might buy a luxury car to look rich, or we might join a health club to get in shape... all because we want to look good. This desire is so strong that advertisers often create ads that speak to our egos.

1. Give examples of the advertisements that use these appeals.

2. Read the following advertisement. What emotions does it appeal to?
Voices: 10-9-8-7....
Speaker: It's countdown time!
Voices: ...6-5-4....
Speaker: Only a few more seconds until Benton's Furniture opens its doors for its annual clearance sale! Save big on dining room furniture! Dining tables 50% off! Save big on living room furniture! ... So hurry before it's...
Voices: ...3-2-1....
Speaker:... too late!
Announcer: Benton's Furniture. 142 Willow Creek Road.
(Notice also the use of the countdown technique. As the actor counts down from 10 to 1 it makes us feel that we should hurry to Benton's before everything gets sold.)

3. There are many other emotional appeals not mentioned in the text. For example:
a) fear
b) desire for convenience
c) senses (sight, smell, sound, touch)
d) hero worship (admiring famous people).

4. Read the following advertisements. Which of the emotional appeals does it use?
Mother:Hi,kids!How was school?
Girl & Boy: Fine!
Girl: How was work? -
Mother: Busy, busy, busy!
Boy: What's for dinner? I’m having soccer practice at 7:00.
Mother: Soccer! Oh no! I completely forgot! Let's see... what can we make?
Girl: How about a Clayton's dinner?
Mother: Great idea!
Announcer: Clayton's dinners are perfect for today's busy families. They're made of healthy ingredients with very little fat and no preservatives. And they're delicious, too. Choose from chicken teriyaki, lasagna, beef pot pie, and dozens of other dishes. So good! So easy! Just pop them in the microwave, 15 minutes, and they're ready to go!
Boy: Hmmm! This is great Mom!
Girl: We should eat like this every night!
Announcer: "Clayton's dinner." So good! So easy!

5. Do you feel that it is OK for advertisers to use our emotions to get us to buy products? Why or why not?

6. In the ads, the actors emphasize certain words to help us focus on new or important information.
Example:
Liz: It's amazing! You really do look younger!
Kathy: Thanks! Now people don't believe I'm a grandmother.
Liz: I should try it!
To emphasize a word in a sentence, use one or more of the following techniques:
a) say the word louder,
b) say the word slower,
c) say the word with a higher pitch (tone).

7. Look at the following advertisements. Underline the words you will emphasize. Read the ad, emphasize the words you have underlined by saying them louder, slower, and/or higher.

Advertisement 1 Advertisement 2

8. Imperatives are often used to give orders or suggestions. Advertisers often use imperatives to get people's attention and to make their message simple and direct. To form an imperative:
a) omit the subject,
b) use the base form of the verb,
c) to form a negative imperative put don't before the verb.
Example: "Don't delay. Get a Doggie's Friend flea collar. It's available in most pet stores."

9. Choose one of the following problems. Make an advertisement using an imperative:
a) My hair is turning gray.
b) I get home late every evening and never have time to make dinner.
c) I'm tired of work. I need vacation.

10. Customers often want to know how to use a product before they buy it. For this reason, many ads provide instructions on how to use the products they are selling. To make instructions clear you can use signal words. Signal words are words that are placed at the beginning of a sentence to tell the listener that there is another step coming up. Here are some signal words you can use to give instructions:
First...
To begin with...
Then...
Next...
After that...
And then...
And next...
And after that...
Finally...
Last of all...

11. Choose a product from the list below and write an ad that includes instructions for how to use the product:
Hair color
Instant coffee
Photocopy machine.

12. Work with vocabulary. Read the sentences. Find the synonym or phrase in the list below that is the closest in meaning to each underlined word:
a) have an effect on (something)
b) ways of doing things
c) feelings
d) do one thing very well
e) the way we feel about ourselves
f) pay attention to
g) match
h) desire to save money
i) things that have power to make someone interested
1) Advertisers use our emotions to encourage us to buy products. They make us feel happy or sad,for example.
2) After seeing ads for milk, more teenagers in Australia started drinking milk. This shows how advertisements can really influence what we buy.
3) Advertisers control our feelings by using emotional appeals that attract our attention.
4) We all like to hear funny stories, so advertisers often use humour in their ads.
5) It wouldn't be good to make a funny story ad about a serious product. The two wouldn't fit.
6) In the world of advertising, some advertising companies specialize. For example, some companies create ads only for radio while others create ads for TV.
7) By emphasizing cheap prices many advertisements use our thriftiness to get us to buy.
8) The goal of the advertiser is to get us to focus on the product. If we don't think about the product when we watch the ad, then the ad is not success.
9) Sound effects, music and songs are different techniques that advertisers use to make their ads interesting and easy to remember.
10) Our egos makes us want to look good in front of others.