Perception 10-10-08

‘Perception is the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world.’ (Wilkie, 1994)
Using all of the 5 human senses we, as humans, automatically perceive something when it is first noticed or identified. Sight is the most commonly used sense as by looking at an object many different aspects can be seen. When consumers use more than one sense more of an interaction can be made developing a relationship. An example of this involves customers at a department store. Clothes are now regularly place on a shelf where the customer now, not only sees the object, but touches it, interacting with the product and developing a relationship. Now they have touched it they may not like the colour but they could enjoy the texture of the product allowing them to look at it in a different colour.
Adverts need to have a specific target audience as different types of people want different things. The main difference is between the two sexes. Men prefer simpler and easy to understand adverts, these adverts will not have much detail within them but use mainly dark colours and images to get the point across. Guinness is a perfect example as the product is easily visible with dark colours to make it look more manly.
Women are the complete opposite; their adverts consist of detailed images and copy. This makes them read what the advert is about as they benefit from the complicity.
Sound can play a huge part within an advert, either making or breaking it. Different pieces of music can make an advert more appealing to a target audience but then a different piece of music can persuade a different target audience. The music/sound needs to make the audience want to buy the product and different pieces of music will make the audience think a certain way. An example of this is Sam Sparrow's 'Black and Gold,' the introduction of this makes me feel energetic and want to move. I found that this could be used on an energy drink advert to show energy, making audience member think of memories that they had to this song, often in a club or with friends. Herbal essences uses sound within advert campaigns so that people can remember their adverts. The following advert uses 3 different senses. Visual as the audience can see her using the shampoo, Sound as the audience can hear her enjoying the experience and touch as it is visible she is touching her hair.

Advertisers can use the sense touch for their clients campaign. When men look at roughness they value it as positive where as women have a posivite reactions to smoothness. This Dove advert demonstrates this enabling the audience to see the soft bubbles and the models hands touching her face.

To incorporate smell into still images, photos of objects that have a strong scents are photographed. To the left, is an example of a perfume which has a lily holding it giving the impression that the perfume has a strong scent like a Lily. By using smell it enables the audience to relate and this enables viewers to relate to the smell.

The final sense is taste, this can be shown by actress/actors eating the actually chocolate. Galaxy have been using this technique when adverting. The following video shows the way Galaxy makes the actress eat the chocolate giving the impression that she is getting a sensation from it and it wont make you fat.

During today’s lecture I have seen how different aspects of our own lives can decide how we think and how these adverts can use our senses to involve the audience with the product.