Do you believe the ads?

Many companies spend millions of pounds on advertising campaigns, but do you ever believe the ads? Does advertising really have any effect on what you buy? Do you choose what you will buy depending on how good an advertising campaign is? Or does pressure from your peers influence your buying policy? Do you buy into particular "brands", preferring them to others?

I don’t feel that advertising has any real positive effect on my buying policy, although they often have a negative effect die to my getting annoyed with the advert. I do notice that if the goods are heavily hyped in an advertising campaign, and the goods are being promoted as “must haves” or “ the newest fashion” then I will purposely not buy that product.

To be honest, I feel that most advertising campaigns promoting “branding” tend to have more effect upon the teenage group, as I cannot really see an adult with half a brain in their head being influenced in their buying policies because that product will “make you seem more professional” or “make you cooler”. Anyone with a few weeks worth of life experience knows full well that the advertising campaign is complete rubbish and not to be believed in any way. I would not trust any claim made on any advert about any product. If they told me that the sky was blue at midday, I would double check to make sure.

This is especially the case for “designer wear”, where prices are overly inflated simply through the use of a logo or name on the product. One of the things that most annoys me about people who buy these products is that they claim that they are paying the extra for the “quality” or “reputation” of that brand, claiming that by only buying that brand they know that they are getting a better quality of workmanship or goods, when everyone knows that the exact opposite is in fact true, where it is well known that that particular brand employs people in sweatshops to make their products, so giving a lower than usual workmanship in order to maximise profits for the company in question. So not only is that company paying their workers less than their competitors are doing, but they then have the audacity to charge a higher price than their competitors because of their “brand”. Which just goes to prove to me even more that anyone that pays extra because of the brand is a complete simpleton who has fallen for the ad campaigns.

In general, to my mind, anyone that really believes that buying a particular brand or product will change who you are or how you are perceived by others deserves everything they get for being so gullible.

I think the most important thing to remember when seeing a product that you may be interested in on an advert is:

The advertiser will always promote the good things about the product, but never tell you the bad things. The advertiser is paid to make you choose that particular product over any others, so always take what they say with a pinch of salt, look at the other products on the market, find out the bad sides to the product that the advertisers isn't telling you about and most of all weigh up whether the good points about that product really do outweigh the bad points. Never take the advertisers' word for it.

Personally, I don't buy from adverts. I go by word of mouth from what people who have tried it think or i just take a chance and If i don't like it, don't buy it again. I think adverts are much too over rated and expensive for the non good they do lol.