“Be Like” Advertisements

Advertisements are used to introduce a product into the market and call attention towards it to target the consumers. They portray people we want to “be like” using that product so that we are inspired into buying the product and feeling better that we are using a product which is endorsed by our superhero. Businesses rope in the glitterati to endorse their products and thus hitch a ride on the euphoria created among consumers by such ads. But do many ads actually use this technique to sell products in the first place. Many ads also use emotions, costumes, celebrations, and animations for delivering messages in an effective way. There is no particular success model for advertisements.

The majority of ads provide some sort of model that most consumers in the target market would want to emulate or “be like.” While some ads actually portray people who are the opposite of what the viewer would want to “be like,” these ads invariably convey the explicit message that to avoid being like the person in the ad the consumer must buy the advertised product. The technique of portraying models is certainly effective in selling products otherwise advertisers would not use it so persistently.

The claim that the “be like” ads are effective because they help people who buy the advertised products feel better about themselves is specious. Consumers lured by the hope of “being like” the person in an ad might experience some initial measure of satisfaction in the form of an ego boost. However, this sense of optimism is ephemeral, invariably giving way to disappointment that the purchase did not live up to its implicit promise.

One informative example of this false hope involves the dizzying array of diet aids, skin and fairness creams, and fitness machines available today. The people in ads for these products are youthful, fit and attractive-what we all want to “be like.” And the ads are effective in selling these products; today’s health-and-beauty market feeds a multi-billion dollar industry. But the end result for the consumer is an unhealthy preoccupation with physical appearance and youth, which often leads to low self-esteem, eating disorders, injuries from over-exercise and so forth. And these problems are sure signs of consumers who feel worse, not better, about themselves as a result of having relied on the false hope that they will “be like” the model in the ad.

Another informative example involves products that pander to our desire for socioeconomic status. Ads for luxury cars and upscale clothing typically portray people with lucrative careers living in exclusive neighborhoods. A certain line of products would hardly have contributed even one iota to the socioeconomic success of the person being portrayed in these ads. The end result for the consumer is envy of others that can afford even more expensive possessions, and ultimately low self-esteem based on feelings of socioeconomic inadequacy.

So, it can be concluded that while ads portraying people we want to “be like” are undoubtedly effective in selling products, they are equally ineffective in helping consumers feel better about themselves. In fact, the result is a sense of false hope, leading ultimately to disappointment and a sense of failure and inadequacy-in other words, feeling worse about ourselves.