You probably simply never noticed. Maybe the grocery chain you buy at. Maybe a particularly flashy packaging of a food item in said grocery store. Maybe an outrageous fun sex toy you saw in porn. Maybe you’re subscribed to a Patreon somewhere. Maybe you have a t-shirt of your favorite show. Do you really make all these decisions completely conscious of all advertising you saw before, making sure that you do not miss any better alternatives with worse advertising?
No person can think so much about all their decisions to spend money. No one can be so perfectly conscious of every single sensory input. Advertising works on everyone, you just don’t even notice when it works on you.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Aw, I wish I didn’t need to budget every cent, but with the small amount of pocket change I’ve got to buy things, being careful with it becomes normal. Most of the food I buy is straight up raw vegetables, or store brand frozen/canned items (which are bought because they’re cheapest. Or is “advertisement” so broad of a term that it applies to ordinary price tags?) Clothing is whatever’s affordable, fits, and looks and feels good enough.
Even if ads are still sneaking info into my brain, I’m hard-pressed to think of any purchases I’ve made where brand names factor in. I’m really trying to think of something here, but even the less common things I’ve spent money on were chosen through experience (like a game I played with a friend, then decided I wanted a copy of) or research (like when I bought a solar generator last year. I’d never even heard of the company before I sought it out for myself.)
I guess a local Chinese food flyer put on a doorknob counts as advertising that works, though even then if they don’t have decent veg options and prices, it’s going to be a no-go. So sure, that’s your “gotcha.” Chinese food flyers. All the money spent on ads around the world, and the only thing I can recall purchasing based on it took some person taking a walk and hanging menus on doors.
I get it, ads are designed to manipulate, to put ideas into people’s heads as a latent reminder, like a virus waiting for the right moment to strike. Maybe some day if I actually make enough money to not have to be extraordinarily careful with it, more of them might get a chance to work. Who knows. Right now, price is the biggest pain point, overriding brand recognition. With the way things are going, I don’t expect that to change any time soon.
Perhaps the best advertisement would be if a company decided to lobby for higher wages - that’d definitely make a company name stick in my head in a positive way, and would provide me the opportunity to spend money on them, to boot!