,1:15. MOTIVATIONPierre MartineauIfi ADVERTISING: A SUMMARY*VIRTUALLY all human behavior is some form of self-expression. Every-thing we buy helps us to convey to others the kind of people we are,helps us to identify ourselves to the world at large, Besides the practicalqualities of any product or service, what does it help people to sayabout themselves? How does it satisfy their psychological goals and theirself-concepts? The product which only has use meanings is narrow andstatic. A primary task of the advertiser is to invest his product or hisinstitution with rich psychological overtones.Any product is defined partly by its functional qualities and pa~lyby the attitudes which people have toward it, In many instances theproduct desirability lies wholly in the realm of these subjective attitudes.A cigarette, a necktie, a home permanent have no physiological functionwhatever. When products and services are far more alike than they aredissimilar, the real buying appeals and distinctiveness will have to come~ from attitudinal, subjective associations and meanings.mCertainly the consumer is interested in quality and value. All of the& training of our society has taught him to look for rational reasons asjustihtion to himself and to others for his purchase. He wants to be-lieve that the objects of his choice do have functional and economicadvantages, Nevertheless the psychological overtones have to be desir-able, also. Even when he cites logic as the reason for his choice, thereal buying force may have come from the psychological overtonesattached to the product. This is why the ideal advertisement effectivelycombines both approaches. It is a blend in varying degree of both logicand emotion, of both realism and fantasy.There is a vast difference in potential motive power, however, be-tween reason and feeling, between an intellectual attitude and an emo-tional experience, Human communication is essentially an exchange offeeling, not of infonhatiom Advertising which merely supplies infor-mation is barely a first step in the process of persuasion. The advertisermust also involve the consumer’s feelings. He may do this with obviousemotional appeals. But esthetic approaches, such as art and color inprint and outdoor advertising, music and the modulations of the an-nouncer’s voice in electronic advertising, also supply powerful feeling● Reprinted from Mothmtbrs {nMcCraw..HiU Book Co., Inc., 19S7).Aduertkhg, by Pierre Martineau (New York:190(Motivation In Advertising: A Summary191associations. Affectivity will create far more motive power for advertisingthan dull, uninvolving information about te#@df~tims.We live so much in the world of verbaliiih tbsit we overlook the tre-mendous amount of meaning which humans convey to one another bynonverbal symbols. Actually there are countless areas (friendship, statusstriving, masculinity, sincerity, etc. ) that are rarely discussed in words.But the other party to the communication is always looking for cluesto the speaker’s deeper meanings, his real intentions. The advertiser maybe unwittingly saying something with these nonverbal symbols entirely”at variance with what he thinks he is saying.Always in communication there is an emotive level of meaning occur-ring simultaneously with the rational meaning. By gesture, facial ex-pression, tone of voice, manner, etc., we talk to the “third ear” of thehearer in spoken communication-the intuitive “organ” which plays sucha dominant part in any judgment. Similarly in advertising, the creativepeople, besides putting together a sales story about the product, aretrying to reach the levels of intuitive judgment in the audience withother kinds of symbolic meaning than mere claims. By emotive associa-tions and/or esthetic meanings, or simply by nonverbal symbols, whichmay be far more expressive than words, the advertiser hopes to createa prelogical preference for his product, a deep inner conviction that“this is the best.”Successful persuasion through advertising consists of far more thandoing clever tricks with words. The consumer has developed a protectivehusk against mere word claims. Words generally are too shopworn, toocommonplace. Words have to create an image of some kind in theindividual’s mind before he can act. But other kinds of symbols, such asthose in illustration, communicate images so much faster, with far lessresistance, with much greater persuasiveness, The visual symbols are notjust a support for the word claims. They can contribute meanings andassociations entirely apart and of much greater significance, The physicalappearance of department store advertising-the layout, the art, thestyle-operates as a language all its own to communicate the characterof the store,One of the primary functions of advertising is ~0’ hdp people articu-late their convictions, It does put words in their mouths which will beacceptable reasons, People are looking for conk-nation of their judg-ments. But very often the words they use are merely emotional symbolsfor much more powerful attitudes. In virtually every product area thereexists a certain jargon of acceptable attributes-”taste,” “convenience,”“economy,” etc.—which the consumer wants to believe are the qualitiesof his choice. Often this jargon is a playback from the advertising. Ofcourse, the advertiser will supply such acceptable supports. But at the192THE ROLE OF ADVERTISINGsame time he has to appeal to the really important motive forces whichare underlying these words.We are accustomed to think that a product is a physical thing withan absolute set of advantages and that the function of advertising isessentially to call attention to these advantages. But nothing is an abso-, lute. Rather, it is what people think that it is. A product or an institu-tion is a symbol whose shades of meaning lie mostly in people’s mindsrather than in the product itself. Beauty and taste, for instance, arelearned. What is attractive to one person may be entirely unattractiveto the next. There is no such thing as the taste of margarine per se,existing in a vacuum-or the taste of coffee or the taste of a cigarette.In every case the physical properties act only as stimuli capable ofsetting off certain associations in the individual. And these may be pleas-ant or unpleasant associations, depending on the individual.The objective of advertising is therefore to help mold this productimage (personality, character, reputation ). Product image is